Rightsizing is the New Downsizing

There comes a time in every young Sith apprentice's life when he or she must decide to turn on the master and kill him/sell him out to the Jedi/decimate his sweet Google Analytics stats by diverting web traffic to her new blog. That time is now: Laura has just started her own blog, Combreviations, where she will talk about... whatever she wants. Fear not, gentle readers: she'll still be doing the weekly round-ups here at PMN. You just have significantly more content to read every week. Hooray for you, and congratulations, Laura!

Speaking of Laura's new blog—or, more specifically, the content of her first post—if you haven't heard, Walden is being "right-sized" to 130 stores (down from around 330). Now, it'd be easy to go a little nuts and declare this another nail in the Borders coffin (for those not in the know, Borders owns Walden), but I don't think this is the case. Here's why:

· While I think decreased foot traffic through malls (vis-à-vis the recession) has been partly responsible for the decision, you have to realize that these stores have been on their way out for nearly a decade. Borders has been steadily reducing the Walden store count since 2001 in an effort to increase efficiency and profitability, and if pushing the count down to 130 stores helps them do this, then I encourage it—although I am sorry for anyone losing a job due to the restructuring. My good thoughts are with you (yes, I occasionally have good thoughts).
· Theoretically (and according to the company), this "right-sizing" will allow Borders to finally fully integrate Walden into their computer system, which will be a huge relief for everyone in the industry currently having to juggle the separate (and oft-incompatible) Borders and Walden systems. This alone will contribute considerably to increased efficiency in title (re)orders, getting titles listed in the computer system, and so on.
· Barnes & Noble is making a similar move with their B. Dalton mall stores, which indicates to me it's more of a "mall book store" problem than a chain-specific one. With the rise of e-books imminent and the current print-book market currently split between the the superstores, Amazon, mass merch retailers, and large independents, there's not much room left for the mall folks, and that limited space is shrinking fast. I'm not even sure I know anyone who buys books in a mall anymore.

What do you think?

Fridays are Fundays

Friday is Laura round up time:

This week, I learned something important: there's no need to blog, people. No need at all. You can be successful without it and, in the case of the PMN bloggers, perhaps despite it. You can use your iPhone instead and read your eyes out, or write your novel on your cellphone for NaCePhoNoWriMo, or tweet some literary chatter. Or you can use Twitter to find Amazon products that aren't clearly marked as advertisements (FDIC, now you don't pay attention?). If you're into snippets, you can buy some books chapter by chapter from Simon & Schuster, although you might be screwing the author on e-royalties (but who knows? I have no idea—unless you're MacMillan, in which case the answer is yes).

And all you smug, hippie e-book readers—you think you're saving the Amazon rainforest with your interweb books? Nope! And as someone from New Jersey, I can say: the environment? I don't even know what that is.

Bruce Springsteen is writing a memoir, and again, as someone from New Jersey, I can say: this is better than if Jesus Christ himself came back from the dead (again or for the first time, depending on your belief system) and wrote a memoir. Because Jesus couldn't sing for shit.

People are going nuts for authors, and authors are going bananas in general. Frank Bruni's book is being turned into a TV show, someone distilled Jodie Sweetin's memoir to the good parts, Rick Riordan is starting a new series, and Jerry O'Connor is writing a book on parenting (because being a parent for like thirty seconds requires a book, if your wife is really hot).

Glenn Beck is the new Oprah for thrillers, which is fitting, since the man's life is thrilling. He had his appendix removed after collapsing on the air (cough on the radio which is less cool cough)! But who trusts the appendix-less? I demand a full organ contingent, friends. Organ-less need not apply.

Mike Huckabee is going on a book tour, and I do have to say, I love Mike Huckabee (not necessarily for his politics, but for his adorableness and jokes). AC/DC is not going on a book tour (as far as I know) but they have a book too, and are adorable. The estate of the late Stieg Larsson is having a less than adorable baby momma drama moment, which hopefully will shake out before the ghost of Stieg has to get involved. Let this teach us all: write a will. And if you don't have any beneficiaries, I am happy to fill in for you. "Laura who blogs at Pimp My Novel" is actually my legal name.

Also making ghosts confused: re-imagined Dr. Seuss covers. Ghosts are not confused by, but rather are jealous of, the continued vampire love. Gawker asks the vampire trend to please die, but this brief history of vampire literature and this book about Dracula say otherwise. EW got an except from the Harvard Lampoon satire of Twilight, called Nightlight, which I think begs the question: what person who likes Twilight is going to buy this, and what person who dislikes Twilight is going to chuck twenty bucks down the hole to let someone else make fun of it, when they have me and I charge nothing?

If you do love Twilight, and also love Barbie, Twilight Barbie is here! If you'd like to geek out about something a little less doll-creepy, XKCD has this awesome, awesome map of where different characters are throughout the story in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It almost makes you want to buy the XKCD book, which has an odd traditional publishing path. Geek Dad has a book gift guide for the geeky man in your life, and there's a great list of 70 facts you never knew about Marvel (the Hulk was almost red! History: rewritten).

And NaNoWriMo writers: this e-book publisher wants your NaNoWriMo romances, and this playlist will break writer's block, as you have no time for writer's block. Keep on trucking (only 24 more days!) and you, like the fake AP Styleguide Twitter guy, can be sassy and agented.

NaNoWriMOhNo

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the birth of NaNoWriMo, or "National Novel Writing Month." If you're not familiar, NaNoWriMo works as follows: you sign up in early November, write as much as you can during the month, and if you break 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th, you win. Hooray, you! You wrote a novel!

...or did you? Here's the deal: first, 50,000 words is not a novel, unless you're writing middle grade. You're going to have to beef it up to 60,000 words—minimum—and would probably be better off getting it into the 75,000 – 90,000-word range. Over 100,000 is probably pushing it.

Second, even if you have 75,000 – 90,000 words, that is not necessarily a novel. Unless you've got all the necessary parts in place and working, it's just a pile of words.

Third, no one in his or her right mind should be submitting a manuscript to agents if it isn't the absolute best piece of writing he or she is capable of. If that's true of whatever you churned out in a month without editing, you probably shouldn't be writing. Period.

Last, it seems that a lot of people are missing the point of NaNoWriMo altogether. Despite Chris Baty's invitation to "write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together," a lot of folks are getting really amped up about having finally written a piece of fiction of substantial length and are more concerned about FINALLY BECOMING AUTHORS ZOMG than about having fun writing crap, which is what the contest is really about. If even one sentence of whatever you concoct in the spirit of NaNoWriMo leads you into a publishable novel somewhere down the road (with substantial editing and revision, of course), you should count yourself lucky.

Think of it this way. Over 119,000 people signed up in 2008. If even one in ten of those people thought they could pass off what they'd written that November as a finished novel and tried querying agents, that's eleven thousand nine hundred queries (thanks to Marshall in the comments for correcting my mega-sweet math skills), assuming each person only wrote one. And who only queries once? No one. Especially not people who think they've got a representation-ready novel after a month of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writing. As you can imagine, it gets kind of annoying when a small minority of NaNoWriMo-ers believes they're done at 11:59 PM on November 30th and starts the Query Machine going at full tilt at 12:01 AM on December 1st. It's especially annoying because the holiday season is the industry's busiest time, meaning agents and editors are already swamped and really don't want to have to deal with an influx of terrible writing from writers who may or may not understand anything about the book publishing industry.

So, in summary:

· If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, have fun!
· Don't send your 50,000-word MS—or even 90,000-word revision—to agents until and unless it is the strongest piece of writing you could possibly forge in the fires of Mount... Your Imagination.

Tomorrow: Laura! Round-up!

Monday Mailbag: Wednesday Edition

Continuing on from yesterday's post: real questions. Real people. Judge Judy.

SM Schmidt writes: What exactly does the big craze behind the holiday season mean for a debut author?

Probably not much, unless you're lucky enough to score some co-op. If so, you may see a reasonable spike in sales (the holiday season is the industry's busiest). If not, you might see a small increase in sales, but I wouldn't count on it.

e writes: I'd love to learn about everything that happens "after the sale": covers, interior layout, galleys, ARCs, blurbs. And, how the sales team view all of this. What gets you excited about a book, excited enough to really push it to buyers?

I'll have to write a separate series of posts on this. Be on the lookout in the weeks to come.

Anonymous @ 1:05 writes: How do some books become movies while others become tv shows while still others become graphic novels?... What about deadlines? Let's say the book sells to editors on January 1st. How long does it take for it to get to the bookshelves and how long does the author have to write book 2 (if it's a series). Can deadlines be pushed back?... How are book tour schedules decided?

1.) This really depends on how the film/TV rights are optioned and sold, so, short answer: case-by-case basis. You could push to have your novel released as a graphic novel if your heart were set on it, but don't count on anything happening on that front if you're a debut author. Plus, if you want to write a graphic novel, why not cut out the middle man and just... write a graphic novel?
2.) Case-by-case basis. Usually it's a year or so between acquisition and publication. Deadlines can be pushed back for any number of reasons. Or not.
3.) Book tours: case-by-case basis. It's something you'd work out with your publicist through your agent.

She Wrote writes: What about bringing along your own illustrator?
What if your mss has maps? Do you have to use the publisher's artist for that or can you use your own?

How about the use of real towns/cities and agencies. My series is all centered on a protagonist who is employed in one particular law enforcement agency. Are there any particular "no-no's" I have to watch out for?

It really depends on your publisher whether you can bring your own illustrator, and this may be a question better answered by a children's book editor like Editorial Anonymous. As for real towns/agencies—no problems that I know of.

Terry writes: I would especially like to hear more about series.

I'll do some research and get you a post on that sometime this holiday season. In the meantime: I get the impression you're more or less right that mysteries tend to be sold as series. The most recent dozen or so mysteries that I remember doing kits for were generally part of two-book series, minimum.

Anonymous @ 3:48 writes: I'd love to know how authors decide on which publisher to sign with. Do editors ever approach writers or just wait for an agent to approach them. Also how do smaller publishers make themselves known to agents and sign books?

Totally on a case-by-case basis, although factors include royalty rates, advances, terms of contract, sub rights issues, publisher/editor reputation, and so forth. Editors have been known to approach authors, but I wouldn't hold your breath. As for smaller publishers: general schmoozing and conference/convention-attending. It's all about connections.

lauren writes: I'd like to know about publishers' logic behind acquiring and publishing books that are given very little marketing push. You know: ARCs, page in the catalog, and little else. And what happens to those books and their authors when said books get little to no sell-in at the chains?... Why do publishers continue to spend money packing their lists with books that disappear? And is there anything an aspiring author can do to avoid being in that situation in the future?

1.) YOU AND ME BOTH.
2.) A slow and painful death.
3.) I have no idea. I think the lists overlap too much as it is.
4.) Probably not.

Anonymous @ 6:44 writes: They say the time to get yourself into viral marketing is before your book is sold. Give me some examples of what you'd suggest. Blog? Facebook? Website?

"They" are correct, and all of the above are excellent ideas. Check out this post for more details.

Since several of you asked about auctions and series, I'll do my best to address those sooner rather than later. Tomorrow: NaNoWriMo, and why (despite its good intentions) it gives me (and the publishing industry as a whole) a migraine!

Monday Mailbag: Tuesday Edition

After many a delay, fair readers, I've finally gotten around to answering some of your questions. Without further ado, part one of two—

Ghostfolk.com writes: What I really would like for you do is tell me exactly what to produce that a publisher simply could NOT turn down because the product (novel) is just what the market gets exicted about and every professional in the sales department of a major publishing house dreams of having assigned specifically to him/her.

P.S. Any idea for a character name?

If you are J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter #8: Harry Potter and the Endless Denouement would be great! If not, then I can't really think of anything. (In all seriousness, I don't think such a project exists, aside from aforementioned HP book.)

Character name: Longfellow J. Turing-Test III, Esq.

Anonymous @ 10:16 writes: I'd love to see you talk about what goes on behind the scenes at a publishing house when an editor decides to bid on a novel that's up for auction, particularly from an unknown debut author. We've seen the P&Ls for a normal acquisition, how does the process change when bids must be made quickly? Does sales have any input then?

I'm always curious what makes the difference between a book that gets a little deal and one that generates a major deal.

This is probably going to require an entirely separate post, but the short of it is: pretty much everything is the same, but happens, well, much faster. (I'll have a chat with some of my editorial bros in the near future to get a more specific & thorough answer for you.) Suffice it to say, major deals are usually brokered by and between major agents and authors, although there are exceptions. More to come on this.

Anonymous @ 10:26 writes: WTF is going on with art departments? Half of my books have marginally-competent covers--I mean, really deeply crappy--and my editor agrees and still can't get a new cover. I've worked with three publishers, and at every single one I started to suspect that the art department had evidence of the publisher sleeping with the interns, or something. They're unassailable. Why?

I have no idea, though I tend to think it's all bureaucracy and politics. Will talk to the art bros on this one & get back to you. As for series—again, more of an editorial question, but the impression that I get is that they're pitched as such and agents/authors generally try to go for the multi-book deal from the get-go. If a publisher signs you for three books and your first one bombs, I'm sure there are methods by which they could cut you loose, but my feeling is that if they're locking you in for three books, they're going to put enough money and resources behind the project to—in the immortal words of Tim Gunn—make it work.

Anonymous @ 11:53 writes: What is the difference in value between a big best-selling author and a midlist author? (Obviously money, but how much exactly?)

And how much value do midlist authors have to publishing houses?

It depends, and I'm really hazarding a guess here, but my theory is several hundred thousand (or even millions) of dollars in billing, depending on how "mid-list" or "bestselling" one is (there are shades of gray, so to speak). Midlist authors are the bulk of represented authors at a house and are important as such, but their titles don't get the same treatment as the Big Fancy Authors, the Hot Shot Authors, or the Celebrity Authors.

Anonymous @ 11:58 writes: I'd like to see a post on how publishing handles books with non-white main characters and multicultural relationships etc. from the percentage of such books published to the marketing to the cover-selection etc.

Though I know you may not want to because not a lot of people are comfortable talking about race, but it is a very important subject for those of us authors of colour who aren't writing the 'norm'.

It's not that I'm uncomfortable talking about race, I'm just not sure I know enough to answer your question—or even whether the data you're looking for exists. As for cover selection, apart from the recent fracas over the cover of Liar, I haven't seen anything specifically problematic with regard to books by or about people of color in general.

Fllay writes: What does it really mean to be on the New York Times Best Sellers List?

Again, this will probably require an entirely separate post, but the short answer: it means the New York Times, through a process that is considered a trade secret (so even if I knew it, which I don't, I couldn't reveal it to you), solicits data from a wide range of national book retailing chains, independent stores, and wholesalers, then uses that information to figure out whether it thinks you're cool or not. (I kid.) Seriously, though, they do their best to calculate who's really selling the most copies here in the good ol' U.S. of A., and they slap them onto the pages of the NYT once a week. (More data from our One True Lord Wikipedia here.)

Tomorrow: part two!

We Regret to Inform You: The Form Rejection

For those of you in the know (and there are more of you than you might think), there have, over the past several months and years, been periodic imbroglios re: the use of the form rejection by literary agents. I don't usually foray into this territory, but I thought a patented PMN Analogy® might be of some use. It's actually not my analogy—I'm shamelessly appropriating it from a guy I was talking to last week—but I find it too good to pass up.

Remember when you applied to college? Fun, right? The standardized tests, the trips to the guidance office, the teacher recommendations, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, &c &c. The point being: remember when maybe you didn't get into that one college? Did they send you a personalized four-page essay on how you were super great, but they just didn't have room for you? Or did they send you a one-page "thanks, but no thanks, better luck elsewhere"?

Aha.

As I've said before, you, gentle (though as-yet-unrepresented) readers, are not any given agent's primary focus or responsibility. Their time and efforts go first and foremost to their clients, and only after they've negotiated contracts, calmed down their own hysterical authors, sat through endless rounds of auctions, and attended every known (and many an unknown) conference on the planet do they have time to sit and read your query. This is why said query has to be good, and this is why you can't be upset with a form rejection. Not only does an agent not have time to respond to every individual person who queries him or her, but to be completely honest, he or she wouldn't owe you a personal rejection even if he or she did have the time. Disheartening, perhaps, but true.

Caveat: this doesn't mean I wholeheartedly endorse the form rejection for, say, partials or fulls, and I've never been a fan of the idea that no news is bad news (i.e. no response means rejection). And I do realize that most (if not all) writers view their work as reflections or extensions of themselves, and often (perhaps subconsciously) equate rejection of their work with rejection of their overall abilities as writers, or even with rejection of themselves, period. But this is not the case, bros and she-bros. It's simply a rejection of your novel, not an indictment of your character.

I don't mean to sound harsh here. I write, you write, we all write, and we all get rejected. None of us likes being rejected, and I'm sure agents don't relish the opportunity to reject us. But it's a necessary evil of the system, cats and kittens, and if you want to graduate from the Publishing School of Hard Knocks, you've got to be able to take a form rejection or two. Or ten. Or two thousand.

All I can say is: soldier on, dear readers. Never give up! Never surrender!

Fridays Were So Much Better When TGIF Was On

Friday round up, Laura style:

So last week went round up-ly awry, and I apologize. I will make it up to you with compliments. Ahem: the holes in your earlobes ever make me think fondly of the pock-marked landscapes upon the lunar surface. And you blink thrice warned that I can but think of the eyebrows of Richard Nixon covering a hostess of furry Twinkies. Impressed? The Surrealist Compliment Generator comes to the rescue, saving yet another relationship!

Yes, I'm (clearly) back on the train of internet love. But where else would I get the exclusive trailer for Under the Dome? How could you get electric literature without Electric Literature? Why else would the Nook be Barnes & Noble's best seller? Reading is fun in all sorts of mediums, like Kanye West's book of illustrated lyrics (sidebar: for someone who doesn't ever want a book's autograph, he puts out a lot of books), or Ang Lee's interpretation of Life of Pi, or the animated Zeitoun. And apparently costume type period dramas sell books like crazy.

Stephen King also sells books like crazy, and is putting out a graphic novel. And while he's a celebrity who writes books, he's not the kind people have been chatting about when discussing celebrity books killing or supporting publishing. Sarah Palin, with her million plus dollar advance (at least: no one knows!) is exactly what people are talking about. And yes, it's a loose interpretation to call it "Sarah Palin's book," since she didn't technically "write" it, but hey, if Sinclair Lewis ghostwrote, there must be something to it. Question: if I refer to Palin as "Turdsworth," based on her equivalent worth to a turd, is it classy because I'm quoting Byron?

If somehow that's not classy, then I'm out of classy ideas. And I can't even fall back on having good grammar, because that would make me classist and snooty. Also not classy in the new zombie romance anthology. I'm not pleased with this, as it's a slippery slope to zombie erotica (oh God I just thought of a zombie losing a limb mid-coitus and I can't get the image out of my head). And while some people are saying vampires won't die (get it? Because they're undead?)--although Anne Rice is saying angels are the new vampires--I firmly believe the zombie problem should get more attention. That, or Sully "I am awesome at landing planes on the Hudson"'s book should get our monies. Apparently people buy more books when they're cheaper, e-book or Walmart style, but we should really spend all that money on Sully and fighting zombies.

These cheap books might be the death of publishing, book sharing might be the death of publishing, Stephen King is delaying his e-book because e-books are the death of publishing...is anyone else bored of this conversation? I'll tell you how alive publishing is. It is so alive that someone made a list of reasons the novel isn't dying. It's so alive that a whole book festival says so. It is so alive that Isaac Asimov is writing a trilogy from beyond the grave. Robert Jordan isn't technically finishing The Wheel of Time from beyond the grave, but there's a really cute video of how his widow picked the writer.

When you go to pick up your (almost almost almost) last book in the series, remember to practice good bookstore etiquette. If an author is reading, be nice--a lot of energy went into organizing the tour. And don't shove when picking up your free copy of Gregory Maguire's new book.

That's all from this end. See you next week, with more library vandalism and cheap, lazy aggregation.