Pimp My Novel

Hiatus

2011-08-31T10:00:00.002-04:00

As you may have noticed, lords and ladies, I haven't quite been bringing my "A" game the past couple of months. Between increased responsibilities at work and a host of other demands on my time, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put Pimp My Novel on indefinite hiatus.

Not to worry—nothing terrible has happened/is happening. It's just that there are only so many hours in the day, and I know I'm not going to be able to do a consistent or good job with this blog once the Publishing Giant reawakens in September.

It pains me to write this, folks, since so many of you have been here since day one. You've encouraged me to write about the industry, shared with me (and your fellow writers) your tips, advice, stories, works in progress, successes, and setbacks, and I want to thank all of you for your time and generosity over the past two years. Seriously, y'all are the best.

So: thank you. Hopefully I'll be seeing (read: posting for) you again soon.

Hurricane Day

2011-08-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

No damage as a result of the hurricane, mes auteurs, but slow intracity transit and allaying the fears of many publishing folk is taking more time than I expected. We'll be back on Wednesday with more book-based bacchanalia!

Stormageddon

2011-08-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

No round-up today, mes auteurs—we New Yorkers are all preparing for Hurricane Irene. We'll (hopefully) be back on Monday, and for those of you in Irene's path, stay safe and stay dry!

Book to the Future

2011-08-24T10:00:00.002-04:00

Y'all might remember the grand entrance of the Vook in 2009. If not, in short: it's a form of enhanced e-book with movies and other media built into it. Video + book = Vook. Simple, cool, innovative, no?

Unfortunately, many readers found the videos and additional media distracting, particularly for works of fiction. (I could have told you that countless nonconsecutive video clips do not help a reader immerse him/herself in a fictional world.) Vook has since moved toward more nonfiction titles, however, and received a better response.

How a Vook differs from the Internet, I have no idea.

However! If you thought the Vook was the pinnacle of book/media mash-ups, you thought wrong. Enter Booktrack, a company that makes soundtracks for books.

Yes, soundtracks for books. Now while you're reading about a forest, you can hear THE SOUNDS OF A FOREST. Like, I don't know, birds and whatnot. When Bro McLadiesMan begins playing a mega sweet power ballad for his lady fair, you can listen along. When you get to a super intense part, you get to listen to super intense movie trailer-style music. &c, &c. (There are previews on the Booktrack website if you're interested.)

The Booktrack speed can be adjusted to your reading speed, as well, so the synchronization between sound effects and text should be reasonably good.

Be that as it may, I think I'll find Booktrack books similar to Vooks: over-hyped and distracting. I'm all for innovation in the field and I think it's necessary to the future success of print media, but I'm not sure rocking the audio equivalent of a movie trailer in the background is the best way to achieve this.

However! I'm curious, as always, to hear what you think. So, mes auteurs: yea or nay on the Booktrack experience?

More Terms to Know (Rerun)

2011-08-22T10:00:00.002-04:00

Meetings abound, mes auteurs, so here's a quick rerun re: publishing terms to know! — E

Episode: "More Terms to Know"
Originally aired: Monday, February 28th, 2011

In the world of publishing, mes auteurs, there are a lot of terms to know. As our digital overlords begin to claim more and more of this territory for themselves, I think an e-update of sorts is in order.

Therefore! I've put together a list of indispensable e-book/Internet-related terms I think you should know. If you think of any more (and I'm sure you will), please don't hesitate to post them in the comments.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). A system for separating a web page's or e-book's style/formatting from its content. For example: rather than putting a tag around every block of text that specifies the font as Garamond, you can just have CSS declare that all text should be in Garamond from the outset.

Think of it as like giving directions from the passenger seat of the car: you can just tell the driver, "go straight until I say otherwise" from the outset, rather than saying, "keep going straight" at each intersection.

E-book (also ebook, eBook). An electronic book available in a wide variety of formats (e.g. AZW, EPUB, MOBI, PDF) on a variety of devices (e.g. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook).

EPUB (also ePub, ePUB, EPub, epub). The industry standard e-book format. It's basically a zipped-up website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The language used to write websites and e-books. It's currently on version five (HTML5).

PDF (also .pdf). Standing for "Portable Document Format," a .pdf is a file format readable by many (but not all) e-reading devices. Its primary selling point is that it represents documents independent of the machine it runs on, so a .pdf e-book looks the same no matter what devices is used to read it. For this reason, however, .pdf files are not reflowable (see below).

Reflowable content. Content (words, diagrams, illustrations, &c) that can change or "reflow" depending on the device designed to read it. Text "reflows" when you change the font size on your Kindle or when you switch back and forth between devices with different display sizes.

This is one reason e-versions of the same title look different on different devices; another is that different e-tailers do different things to the source files they receive from publishers before making the book available to the consumer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, this is the idea of improving your visibility via search engines on the Internet. For example: if you Google "[your name] author," you want your personal website to be one of the first few hits. Taking into account how search engines work and what search terms people use, it's possible to move up the list of results (often dramatically).

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language). A family of XML languages (see below) that serves as an alternative to HTML (above).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Wikipedia says it best: "A set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form." If you're using Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you're already familiar with one of XML's many uses (it's the "x" in ".docx," ".xlsx," &c).

Keeping Your Butt in the Chair

2011-08-17T10:00:00.001-04:00

This is, à mon avis, the most difficult part about writing, folks. I've been having some trouble with it lately myself, so I thought I'd dedicate a post to the subject.

• Make a list of your usual distractions. It's helpful to recognize your weaknesses before they become an issue. Do you obsessively check e-mail? Go out for a coffee? Play Farmville? Whatever it is, write it down. Being aware of it will help you stop doing it (see below).

• Block out time to write. Scheduling is half the battle, mes auteurs. Pick a time that works well for you and do your best to stick to it. If you're a morning person, 6:00 am is great; if not, maybe not so much. Be as regular in your commitment to writing as you can, even (especially) if you're not writing every day.

• Get any distractions out of your system before you sit down to write. Trying to quit all your distractions cold turkey will probably result in your caving and going back to them to blow off steam, potentially during time you'd otherwise spend writing. Play your games, check your e-mail, tweet, update Facebook. Then write. And write when you're supposed to, not just in between rounds of StarCraft.

• Take steps to prevent distractions while writing. If you can't stop checking Twitter, turn off your Internet connection. If you keep getting up to see whether the guy next door is still trimming his hedges into the shapes of Jersey Shore cast members, close your blinds. &c, &c.

• Schedule regular breaks. You're not a machine; it's just as important to know when to stop writing as it is to set a time to start. I usually take ten minutes off for every hour I set aside. If you try to write through your break and you're not seriously on a roll, you'll probably end up more prone to your usual distractions anyway.

• Reward yourself for sticking to your schedule. After you finish your hour of writing, go get that coffee. After a week of sticking to your schedule, buy yourself a new book. The more you reward yourself for a job well done, the more you'll start looking forward to that scheduled writing time you've set aside. Pavlov! He was perhaps on to something.

That's all I've got for you today, meine Autoren. How do you keep your butts in your chairs each day?

Prithee, Inform Me: What Are You Writing?

2011-08-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me, lords and ladies, that I have not asked you about what you're writing in over a year. A year! So, without further ado:

What are you writing? If you responded the last time I asked, have you finished that project? Have you secured representation, self-published, given up on that MS, started a new one? What genre, what's it about, what's going well, what are you struggling with? How many projects are you juggling at once?

To the comments!

Rainy Day Round Up

2011-08-14T10:00:00.002-04:00

Friday round up with Laura, totally late:

Happy weekend, friends and foes! I hope you're all sharing this post and books on Google+, and reading on your Amazon cloud reader, the cloudiest of readers. If not, eh, it's okay. The great books aren't so great, and this, honey, is not as great as that. I wasn't even distraction-free when I wrote it, because I can't choose which distraction-free writer to use.

Spoiler alert: the Kardashians are writing a novel. And don't sass me about spoilers, because I've read that people like spoilers, especially since we keep reading spoilered classics anyway. That said, I still won't be reading the Song of Ice and Fire food blog until I'm done with A Dance With Dragons. No, I'm still not done. Don't judge me.

I will judge our new Poet Laureate, who is awesome. This fact is not recognized by the "I hate reading" Facebook page. I don't know what those people are going to do when they find out Facebook bought an ebook publisher. These must be the literary geniuses I hear so much about. They must be the same people who banned Slaughterhouse Five in high schools. Luckily, the Vonnegut Library is giving free copies to students. Huzzah, sanity.

That's it from me folks—keep your malicious book thoughts out of reviews, stay out of price fixing class action lawsuits, and price your Vook carefully. Until next week!

Taking Stock of the Market

2011-08-10T10:00:00.002-04:00

What with all the financial turmoil dominating the news these days, mes auteurs, I thought an extended financial analogy might be timely. So! The popularity of various genres, authors, and books: sort of like the stock market.

The performance of certain types of books, much like certain types of financial instruments, is cyclical. Vampires were cool in the middle of the last decade (and are still cool to some extent). Is this the first time this has happened? Absolutely not. (I mean, who doesn't remember the vampire riots of the 1720s/1730s?) Is this the last time this has happened? Also absolutely not.

We're probably at the tail end of all this vampire business. This means you can either 1.) focus on writing something else, or 2.) write your vampire novel(s) anyway and hope those angsty blood-chuggers become cool again sometime soon.

Note: a lot of nonfiction titles are dependent on the news cycle. As stories break, people want to learn more about the issues being discussed. Where do they go for that? Well, the Internet. But also books.

Inexperienced participants often make the mistake of buying high and selling low. I've said this before, but if you notice, say, paranormal Amish bromance* is suddenly huge and you want in on the action, you're probably already too late to the party. By the time you get your book written, sold, and published—roughly a year to eighteen months later at the very, very best—there's no guarantee that the genre will still be popular.

On the other hand, some people won't write in a particular genre or category because said genre or category hasn't sold in forever. That's fine, but you should always be aware that today's Huge Trend™ was under everyone's radar yesterday. (Not that I expect poetry sales to magically take off OH WAIT THAT IS SORT OF HAPPENING**.) Which leads me to my next point:

To succeed, you have to do your homework. This entails knowing the fundamentals as well as actively searching out information you don't think is widely disseminated or carefully scrutinized. To have a shot, you've got to have a good handle on the basics of this industry. To have a shot at outperforming everyone else, you've got to constantly keep an eye out and an ear to the ground. Find out what's selling, how the market is changing, what's historically worked (and what hasn't), &c, &c.

Remember, when it comes to book sales, you're competing for eyeballs and dollars. Why should someone pick up and purchase your book as opposed to someone else's? What knowledge or specialization do you have that might grant you an advantage? You can tell me you're authors and not businesspeople 'til, as my father says, the cows come home. That doesn't change the fact that by trying to make careers as writers you are, effectively, taking a shot at running a business. Do your research and do it well.

Both the stock market and the publishing industry react to new information. Neither system cares about old news. When doing your research, ensure that you're minimizing assumptions about what information hasn't yet been incorporated into the market. Chances are, you're not as ahead of the game as you might at first think. If you are ahead, however, you've got to be prepared to run with it.

Every event is an opportunity for someone. The stock of Company A is down? It's an opportunity for someone to buy at a discount. The stock of Company B is reaching new heights? It's an opportunity for someone to sell, make some cash, and reinvest it in another asset they find promising.

The same goes for publishing: the changes that have been rocking the industry for years are constantly producing opportunities. Borders went out of business; some independent stores are seeing growth as a result. The industry is transitioning over to a digital format for a substantial subset of its titles; some authors have found new audiences in the e-book format. And so on and so forth.

The point of all this is: as dissimilar as the worlds of the stock market and the publishing industry may at first seem, there are a lot of parallels. Publishing is a business. Research and a working understanding of the market are essential for success. Yes, your writing has to be good enough. Yes, you have to have a great story. But you also have to convince people to spend their hard-earned cash on that story.

Writing is half the battle; the other half is selling.***

*This isn't a real genre, but I really want it to be.

**This is more an example of the news cycle-related publishing hit, as mentioned in the previous example. But I just couldn't help myself.

***I lied about the other half being lasers. I'm sorry.

An Open Letter to the Industry

2011-08-08T10:00:00.001-04:00

Dear everyone: please, please stop asking me to fax things.

The publishing industry gets made fun of enough for its technological prowess—or, really, lack thereof—as it is. Please let me scan documents and e-mail them to you rather than force me to rely on a fax machine that is, in all likelihood, older than I am.

While we're on the topic, please let me use e-mail, cloud-based services, and flash memory devices to move information from one place to another. There is no need for me to write a PowerPoint presentation to a DVD. There is no need for me to print something out so I can fax it to you (this is happening less frequently, but really, it shouldn't be happening at all). There is no need for me to print something out so I can mail it to you when I could scan and e-mail it instead.

I understand that you're used to paper. There are many purposes for which I prefer paper, too. But the transfer of time-sensitive information is not one of them.

Speaking of! What are we doing chasing news stories with physical books, folks? By the time we set up, print, and distribute the book in question (assuming it's already been written, which is a big assumption), the public interest—and therefore the opportunity to make a sale—has passed. E-books, I say, or nothing.

Not that I'm an unapologetic advocate for the e-book, but I think this particular realm of publishing is an area in which the Internet will almost always do better. Many topical books need to be electronic in order to get them out in a timely fashion.

All of this to say, then, that time is money, and the less we do things because it's the way we've always done them and the more we look toward more efficient ways to get our stories out there, the better off we'll all be.

P.S. It's been over two years since anyone asked me for anything on a floppy disk. Keep up the good work.

Prithee, Inform Me: What Are You Reading?

2011-08-03T10:00:00.001-04:00

We've only got a month left of summer, mes auteurs, so prithee, inform me: what are you reading?

Books I'm currently reading:

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Fall Higher by Dean Young

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Books I've recently finished reading:

The Iliad by Homer

Sum by David Eagleman

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender

The Lifting Dress by Lauren Berry

Reviews of these books potentially to come in future posts!

More on the World of Tomorrow

2011-08-01T10:00:00.003-04:00

With Borders no longer with us and digital sales comprising more and more of the market, I thought now would be a good time to revisit how these trends have evolved over time and where they might lead over the next few years.

First, while I don't think there's much of a physical future for magazines and newspapers, I do think there will always be a market for physical books. (I think magazines will go entirely digital over the next decade, with existing name brands already finding some success—the New Yorker has made a cool $1 million with their iPad app.)

The market for physical and used books five and ten years from now will certainly be smaller than it is today, and my expectation is that most physical media will eventually be found only in libraries. Independent and used book stores will, I believe, remain in business, but I think by the end of this decade almost all new books—almost certainly all new fiction—will be produced and consumed electronically.

Categories such as coffee table/art books and children's books will probably take longer to make this transition.

Second, I expect a continuation of a phenomenon which I predicted last November: the resurgence of the independent book store. Will indies control as much of the market as they did before the chains took up residence in the 1980s? I don't think so. But I do think there is a demand for physical books and that there are dollars to be had, and many areas that have lost Borders locations may well turn to independents to supply their books.

Also, as I've mentioned before, the independent book store is the go-to location for author readings, book signings, community events, open mic nights, and in-person browsing. Try as they might, online vendors can't replicate these advantages.

Finally, while I'm not sure how Amazon and Barnes & Noble are going to develop as competitors, I think that each will have to offer a spate of unique—perhaps proprietary—perks and technological advantages in order for them to coexist. Right now Barnes & Noble's primary advantage is its physical retail space, but I don't know how long that will continue to be the case. The further we trek into digital territory, the more important the Nook and e-book sales will be to B&N, and the less appealing it will be for the company to maintain its warehouse, shipping, and storefront infrastructures.

What do you think, mes auteurs?

July, July! (Round Up)

2011-07-29T10:00:00.001-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Well, it's been a while. Mea culpa, readers—I've been reading A Dance with Dragons and neglecting important things like the round up, and showering. But other things are going on in the world too, I guess, that are just as important. ...Close to just as important. Bradley Cooper will play Lucifer in Paradise Lost, which should be hot as hell (ba dum chh). Devilishly good? Other puns? That plus this imprint dedicated to zombies are going to keep me busy for a while. Plus I can watch musical Bridget Jones, scored by Lily Allen. Elton John approves! All of these things are sweet like candy from kids' books, which you should not take from babies.

In other news, you can learn from submitting writing, lessons other than "rejection is saddening." And if you learn enough lessons you could get on the Booker longlist with these ladies and gents, or be the next Maurice Sendak. If you're extra lucky you might be a top ten Rainn Wilson pick or make the cash money for your partial manuscript just like Jane Austen.

Well, I'm off to finish A Dance with Dragons. Have an excellent summer weekend, folks... because winter is coming.

License to Thrill

2011-07-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

First! PMN turns two years old this month, mes auteurs, so please leave any and all presents in the comments. Be warned: I already own every Transformers action figure and Kurt Vonnegut novel ever produced.

(I kid. At least with regard to Transformers action figures.)

Now then, ladies and gentlebros, I'd like to revisit a topic of yore: the mfa. As I've mentioned before, there's no such thing as a license to write: while the mfa is useful as a qualification to teach creative writing at the postsecondary level, there is no academic prerequisite for writing commercially successful novels. None whatsoever.

However! If you're writing literary fiction, the mfa might not be a bad idea. First, it provides you with a community of writers who can support and provide invaluable feedback for your work; it allows you access to a network of writers, editors, and educators to which you would never have otherwise been privy; and it makes you comfortable with revising and reading your work aloud on a regular basis. I don't think the degree is necessary in any sense, and I think getting it out of boredom or as a result of the misguided belief that it will make you more attractive to agents or editors are tremendously poor choices. It does have its uses, though.

So! If you're thinking of pursuing an mfa at some point, take the following into consideration (in more or less the following order):

• Location, location, location. There's no sense in spending one to three years in an area you dislike—or potentially even hate. As great as the programs in Iowa and Michigan may be, seriously ask yourself whether you'd want to spend that much time there.

• Funding. I firmly believe that there is no reason whatsoever to go into debt for an art degree. So, if you're choosing between the slightly more prestigious school with the $100,000 price tag and the less well-known school that'll pay your way, go with the latter.

• Time commitment. Do you want to attend a less intensive studio program? An academic program that requires 40+ hours per week of preparation? A full-time program, a half-time program, a low-residency program? Keep in mind that you'll have to balance your personal and perhaps professional life with your academic existence as you earn your degree.

• Reputation. How successful are the alumni of the programs you're considering? As crass as it sounds, do the names of your schools serve as social currency in literary circles? The better known your school, the more likely you are to participate in social circles that will benefit your writing career.

• Faculty. This sounds like it would be a top priority, but in reality, faculty move from program to program on a fairly regular basis. The danger of selecting a program based on its faculty is that the poet or writer you most want to work with may be on sabbatical or may have left the institution entirely by the time you begin your studies. If a single individual is your primary criterion for attending a program, you may want to rethink your decision to enroll in said program.

So! Those are my current thoughts on the mfa. Responses, thoughts, corrections, questions, and tangents welcome in the comments!

Notes from the Writing Life

2011-07-25T10:00:00.002-04:00

Summer has always been a time for me to get a lot of writing done, so I suppose that's why it's also when I tend to learn the most about the writing process.

So! Here are some things I've (re)discovered about writing over the past few weeks:

1. There's a time and a place for everything, including writing. I like tables that are supposed to be for eating—cafeteria tables, my dining room table, diner booth tables—either early in the morning or early in the evening.

2. Editing can oppose as well as complement writing. I know a lot of people who can edit as they go along, but I can't. It kills my momentum.

3. Writing is mostly practice. Practice, patience, perseverance. You make mistakes. You learn from them. You write some more. It's more about discipline and introspection than talent, though talent certainly helps.

4. Being good at one type of writing doesn't automatically make you good at the others, but it means you can learn to be. I'm a decent poet. I used to be a lousy fiction writer. I think now I'm a mediocre fiction writer. The form you practice more, the one you read more, is the one you'll get better at.

5. Trying to publish keeps you honest. It keeps you writing, it keeps you rereading your work to understand why it wasn't accepted, it keeps you humble, it keeps you hungry. I think writers who don't attempt to publish their work can very easily become complacent and many cease to improve.

6. You can always be better. I'm skeptical that individual pieces of writing can never be improved, but flat out deny that individual writers can never improve.

7. Creative writing can be taught. This doesn't mean all students will be equally capable. Nuclear physics can be taught; are all students of nuclear physics equally capable?

8. Writing is a habit. Writing every day, even if the product is sometimes—even often—terrible, is useful. I think it produces stronger long-term results than waiting for the proverbial Muse to move you.

9. Writing well is a real skill. Although I believe that many, if not most, people could write reasonably well, very few actually do. Further, I believe that most people think they're good writers because they write every day—grocery lists, e-mails, birthday cards, &c. Literacy is not equal to writing ability. Good writers are rare and should be paid well for their work.

10. Writing is work. Writing is difficult, writing takes time, writing is not always fun. If it's what you want to do above all else, you'll find a way to do it. If you don't have the patience for revision or desire to succeed or the stomach for rejection, this line of work isn't for you.

What have you recently learned about writing, mes auteurs? And/or what are the best, worst, most and least helpful pieces of advice you've ever received with regard to writing?

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

2011-07-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

· I should not have broken my vow to never again fly United Airlines. You know they break guitars, right?

· The Iliad is phenomenal, though not nearly as good as The Odyssey. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I've been meaning to read for a long time, is fantastic so far. I'm reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad next.

· New York City is smellier and hotter than I remember.

· Rayne Summers has figured out how to save the book industry!

· I don't really "tan." I mostly just turn red and then white again. I may have known this already.

· It is possible to play Plants vs. Zombies for an entire six-hour flight. If you haven't yet played it and are looking for a distraction, you can play a free online demo here. Make sure you finish your writing first!

The Last Chapter

2011-07-18T10:00:00.001-04:00

I've returned from parts unknown, mes auteurs, and I trust y'all enjoyed last week's guest posts while I was gone. Many thanks to our five guest posters!

All is not sunshine and lollipops in Ye Olde Publishinge Lande, however. If you haven't yet heard the sad news, Borders is converting from Chapter 11 bankruptcy to Chapter 7, meaning they are liquidating their assets and going entirely out of business.

First, my sincere condolences and heartfelt thanks to all the Borders employees who have helped me so much over the years and to whom I wish the best in their pursuits and endeavors after Borders. BGP's liquidation will entail roughly 11,000 layoffs—not including potential job losses at ancillary corporations, such as publishing, shipping, and food services companies that may have departments dealing exclusively with Borders—and my best wishes are with those who will be seeking work in this economy in the next several months.

Second, this will impact the industry in many significant ways, not all of which will become immediately apparent.

• There is now only one major bricks-and-mortar physical book retailer in the country: Barnes & Noble. B&N no longer needs to contend with any other major player in terms of physical co-op, in-store couponing, &c &c. I expect they'll continue to compete heavily with Amazon, however—especially in the increasingly popular e-book arena—so I don't foresee any immediate or comprehensive shifts in the price of physical books.

• There is now a significant surplus of physical books in the market. I'm not completely clear on the returns policy for distressed retailers, but I believe they're entitled to return most—if not all—of their unsold stock to the appropriate publishers. While I imagine many publishers moved to minimize their exposure back when Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, I think a lot of them are going to get hit with big returns as Borders dissolves.

• Print runs are going to become smaller. When making final decisions in terms of binding books, publishers have taken two major chains into account; now they'll only account for one. While it's true that Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and (to a lesser extent) big-box retailers like Wal*Mart and small, independent book shops will absorb some of that business, a portion of it will be permanently lost.

• I think this will hasten physical/electronic equilibrium in the market. With fewer physical books being printed and more consumers going to Amazon and Barnes & Noble—many purchasing books electronically via the Kindle or Nook, respectively—I think the American market will be fully half e-books by the last quarter of 2013 or the first quarter of 2014. Over time, areas traditionally resistant to electronic media (such as art books, children's books, and international editions) will increasingly move in that direction, as well.

Again: is the physical book dead? Absolutely not. But the loss of Borders will, I think, hasten its transition to a secondary format.

The times, they are a-changin', ladies and gents, and I don't pretend to know what's going to happen over the next several months. I can tell you, however, that I'm not surprised by this turn of events—in fact, Borders managed to hang on much longer than I expected—and I was by no means alone in the industry in that expectation. Though the methods by which customers purchase books will undoubtedly continue to change, people will still need great stories. Books, whatever their form, are here to stay, and it's my sincere hope that Borders' demise will engender more opportunities than it dissolves.

Guest Post: Rotten Rejections

2011-07-15T10:00:00.002-04:00

I stumbled upon the following gems while attempting to gather statistics (via the Internet) on what percentage of books get picked up by agents, but are never sold to publishers. I have a novel currently on submission (via my agent Weronika Janczuk), and I was (somewhat morbidly) curious about just how bad my odds of finding a publisher might be. (The only source I could find mentioned that good agents typically sell three out of five projects: 60%. Ouch.)

Unfortunately, the publishing world is notoriously tight with their figures, and I don't mean dress size. Most published authors can't get actual numbers on how many books they've sold. (The publishers only share estimates, and even that data is not public.) The New York Times doesn't say exactly how they determine the books on their best seller lists, but they will tell you that they don't collect data on internet sales (no Amazon! Which explains why Amanda Hocking isn't on it.)

Getting information on the reservoir-side of the dam is a bit easier. Most agents will tell you how many queries they get a week, and you can check out author sites such as QueryTracker to get statistics on how many manuscripts agents select to read out of the hundreds of queries they receive each week. My agent was kind enough to share some of her numbers (and give me permission to tell you about them):

Ms. Janczuk's queries per day: ~25 or nearly 200 a week.

Of these queries, she requests, on average, two partials (8%).

She typically requests one full for every ten partials (0.8 %), and considers offering representation on one out of 15 full manuscripts (.053 %). I have to add that she is a voracious reader, and passes that benefit along to the authors that query her: her request rate is higher than average, and her response time is lower!

If you query Ms. Janczuk, your chances of getting an offer are about 1 in 2000 (all things being equal, which of course, they are not.)

If your chances of finding a publisher (once you have an agent) are 60%, then a finished manuscript has a 1 in 3200 chance of being published (and, although I'm already better than one in two thousand, my chances of finding a publisher are still only so-so—probably worse than so-so because my book is cross-genre).

If you take into account that there are only around 10,000 new novels published each year (and better than 80% of those are by known authors) the chances for a debut novel to see the light in any given year are: 1 in 15,625. Given that number, it should come as no surprise that gems fall through the cracks (and explain why people are going over in droves to e-publishing).

In any case, as every author who wishes to get published knows (or will very soon learn), rejections go with the territory. But, it might be nice to learn that you're in good company:

Stephen King received 30 rejections for his novel Carrie before throwing it in the trash. His wife retrieved it, and convinced him to keep trying. The editor from Doubleday who finally bought the book had to send King a telegram because his phone had been disconnected.

George Orwell was told that "it is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA" when he submitted Animal Farm.

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 26 publishers. (I love that book.)

Audrey Niffenegger couldn't find an agent for her cross-genre book The Time Traveler's Wife. She gave up on finding an agent and began submitting the manuscript to small publishers. The book has sold more than 2.5 million copies and was made into a movie.

Rudyard Kipling was given this helpful feedback: "I'm sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."

Margaret Mitchell had Gone with the Wind returned to her 38 times. Now that's perseverance.

J.K Rowling, who may have single-handedly inspired a whole generation of kids to love books, had her first Harry Potter book rejected by a dozen publishers (including Penguin and HarperCollins). It was finally picked up by a small London publisher whose 8-year-old daughter begged him to print it. (Our debt to that little girl is great.)

Here's to Rotten Rejections!

(Check out the book Rotten Rejections for an extended list, e.g. On Sylvia Plath: "There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.")

D.L. Orton writes mainstream fiction, creative nonfiction, and the occasional off-color limerick.

Please visit the writer's blog on getting published, Query Shark Bait , or her blog on love and relationships: Between Two Evils .

The author has a novel on submission and can be contacted via her website: Just Write.

Guest Post: Writing Without a Net(Work)

2011-07-14T10:00:00.002-04:00

by Lorna Graham, author of The Ghost of Greenwich Village (Ballantine/Random House, 6/28/11)

My debut novel is about to come out and, and, like so many writers before me, I’m uneasy. Okay, anxious. In just a few weeks, my work, for better or for worse, will be out there in the world to be enjoyed (hopefully) and judged (certainly).

The ironic thing is, I should be used to it.

I’ve been writing professionally for years and my work has always been for public consumption. You might even be familiar with some of it. Maybe you enjoyed an interview with Stephen King or Ellen Degeneres. Maybe you followed a “film noir” true crime story about cheating husbands and lethal wives through every delicious twist and turn. Or maybe you learned the dirty truth about the health code violations of a restaurant near you, or how a new kind of designer drug stays one step ahead of the law.

I've been a writer for both a morning news program and a primetime news magazine and have written for at least a dozen household name anchors.

But you’d never know it. Because in this kind of writing, the writer is for all intents and purposes, invisible. My name is well below the radar and I betray almost zero of my self, my sensibility, or my psyche in my work.

Why? Mainly because I make very few choices in the stories I help tell. And the ones I do make, which are creative ones that relate to style and rarely substance, are subject to extraordinary constraints.

In news, first of all, we start with the story. Facts. You do not get to mess with these; we play them as they lay. (Contrary to the low opinion some people have today of journalists, there is an extraordinary effort to discover the truth and tell it.)

All we can do is decide the way we’re going to tell it. As a writer, it’s my job to make you want to watch what we’re about to show you. I try to think about what makes each story unique, and how best to highlight that to intrigue you. But between my typing fingers and your ears is a long, bumpy road.

Before you hear anything I’ve written for a correspondent or anchor to say, I must obtain written approval of every syllable from at least five people: our executive producer, a lawyer with our legal department, a representative from standards & practices, the producer of the story, and the show’s anchor.

This chain of command is vitally important. It’s how we ensure what gets on the air is of the highest quality and accuracy. Each of these people is a seasoned professional who wants the best for the show, but they don’t always agree on how to get there. For my words to run the gauntlet from my computer to your television screen unscathed is pretty much unheard of.

I always start with my best shot, something I believe that’s going to grab the viewer while also being scrupulously fair. I spend the rest of the day accommodating the wishes of everyone else, hoping to preserve what I like best about my original version. Very often, because of time constraints – if my intro to a piece is supposed to run twenty seconds, that’s all I can write – the thing I like best, the little flourish that made it fresh and, well, mine, is what goes.

The best thing about writing for television is that it’s collaborative. You work with so many smart, caring, funny people. I adore my colleagues.

The worst thing about writing for television?

Same answer: it’s collaborative.

When I first started writing fiction, I felt like I was throwing off heavy chains. There were no facts to adhere to, no legal department fretting that anything I wrote was libelous. Within my novel, I could create my own world, my own rules, from the inside out.

I felt like writing about a ghost? I did. (Try that in TV news.) I wanted to write an extra chapter to fill out a character’s back story? Fine, we’re not cutting to commercial break. I wanted a rude character to say something off-color? Totally cool, there’s no F.C.C. to worry about.

Another thing about TV news? Credits rarely run; there usually just isn’t time. Executives, producers and editors may see their names on screen but writers, almost never.

Now my name is on the front of a book. It looks odd to me, and loud: like a trumpet’s blare, demanding everyone look in my direction.

This time, there’s no one to hide behind. Though I’ve had a dream team of fabulous people help me with this book, including my agent, editor and fiction workshop, the choices in my novel are all mine. For the first time in my professional life, I stand alone.

Thrilling.

Scary.

Lorna Graham was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Barnard College. She has written for Good Morning America and currently writes for Dateline NBC. She also wrote a short film, “A Timeless Call,” honoring America’s military veterans, that was directed by Steven Spielberg. She lives in Greenwich Village. The Ghost of Greenwich Village is her first novel.

Guest Post: The Glamour Life on a Book Tour

2011-07-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

by Wayne Arthurson

I’m riding the bus through downtown Los Angeles. It’s packed, it’s hot, I’m wearing a suit and I’ve been standing since I got on 30 minutes ago. I will stand for the entire 90 minute trip.

Why am I riding LA Transit on a book tour for my big American novel release? Because I’m paying for everything, flights, hotels, food, beer, cabs, all of it is on me. I may be one of the few Edmonton/Alberta writers with a major US book deal, but in the US, I’m unknown and untested. My publisher is paying for nothing.

Well, not really. They are paying for my LA hotel. And it’s nice. Located in posh area of Westwood, the Palomar is a funky boutique hotel with free wine in the lobby everyday from 5-7 pm.

Unfortunately, the Palomar is 20 miles from the University of Southern California, the site for the LA Times Festival of Books. To get there I took a cab. $45 dollars before tip. Which explains the bus ride back.

The festival was great. It’s more of a book fair really, with hundreds of booths selling anything related to publishing. There are some great panels featuring great writers, poets and celebrities, all of it free. But I have no time for that. I must get a book signed by Mo Willems for my daughter. It’s hot, sunny and I’m wearing a dark suit. After 75 minutes in line, I get Mo’s signature on Knuffle Bunny, Too. My pits are sticky; my pale Canadian skin is sizzling.

Fortunately, my event is in a shaded tent. It’s an hour-long signing at the Mysterious Galaxy, a San Diego Bookstore. I’m signing with Michael Koryta, 28, with seven published books already. Nice guy, but I want to kill him because of his youth and talent. I sell about 10 books, which is good, and I later meet up with LA writer/filmmaker Stephen Jay Schwartz. We met at a mystery convention in March and bonded because our main characters have addictions. He’s an actual book festival panelist and sneaks me into the green room where there is free food and soda. Nice, but a Canadian book festival would at least have free beer. Since Stephen’s from LA, I ask him about taking the bus back to my hotel.

“No one who’s anyone in LA takes the bus,” he says. “But if you have to, don’t make eye contact and watch your back because you’ll be going through some sketchy neighbourhoods.”

But the LA bus in LA is no different than an Edmonton bus, except that it’s only $1.50. Nothing weird happens.

The weird stuff comes later. After showering, eating and phoning the family, I head to the hotel bar for a beer. I missed the free wine.

News breaks on the TV. Osama bin Laden is dead. No one leaves, we wait for Obama to speak. When he does, the patrons get up from their seats and gather around the TV. The bartender turns off the Muzak. A few take cell phone photos of the TV. It’s like the first moonwalk or some other awe-inspiring historical event. No one speaks, no one cheers. There’s just a hushed silence. The bartender does not turn the music back on. I finish my beer and go back to my room, setting the alarm an hour earlier than planned because I know airport security is going to be tight tomorrow. I’m heading to Vancouver.

Wayne Arthurson’s latest detective novel, Fall From Grace, is available on Amazon and various other online locations—plus, at good old fashioned book stores. His recent book tour in Canada and the U.S. is recounted in an exclusive four-part series for GigCity. Part 1 starts in in Los Angeles. (Read: Part II, Part III, Part IV)

Guest Post: Four Elements of a Great Book Signing

2011-07-12T10:00:00.001-04:00

by Corrie Garrett

A couple Saturdays ago I spent the afternoon in downtown Los Angeles at a book signing for John Scalzi. He’s a NYT best-selling author for Old Man’s War and several other fantastic scifi novels, including his latest one, Fuzzy Nation. Basically, he’s an experienced guy who ran an excellent book signing. I’ve been to a few other book signing/reading events—and they are, sadly, not always a blazing success.

So, let’s say you’ve done your promotion and your marketing and you’ve managed to gather a respectable crowd at your local Barnes and Noble. What do you do with them?

1. Audience participation

Get involved. Scalzi was chatting with all the early arrivals when I got there, funny stories about his travel or whatever. When he started the "real" bit, he asked us a lot of questions. Did we hear about this from his blog? Did we want to hear him read from his new novel, or his next, unpublished one? He let the audience vote on it, and he then he had us all swear secrecy for the excerpt from his new book.

Take away: Talk to the audience before you start; this is the best way to assuage nerves if you’re uncomfortable. Ask questions. Maybe do a poll on favorite genre, how they know you, favorite character (particularly if you have an Edward/Jacob setting), or maybe how far they drove to come. The people coming to a book signing want to feel known even if it’s only a small way.

2. Elite status

Make the audience feel privileged. Signing books is only part of it. By coming to your book signing, they’ve formed a tenuous relationship with you, and inside information is a great way to cement the feeling of that relationship. Scalzi read from his novel that will be released in 2012.

You might not have another book contract, but you can still give inside information. If you might (possibly) be doing a sequel, give some clues about it. If you have nothing in the future (hopefully not!), give some insight into how this story came about. If the main character is based on your dog, or started as a ghost and turned into a vampire—talk about that.

3. Question control

A Q&A session is great for audience involvement, but you have to be on top of it. Scalzi told us up front that some questions he couldn’t answer (for legal reasons), and he didn’t hesitate to say, “Nope, that’s all I have to say about that,” on a couple questions that were off topic.

Some questions will be off the wall—only glancingly related to you or your book, or even inappropriate. A short answer is good, but don’t let them hijack the session with questions of no interest to anyone else. The rest of your audience will appreciate it.

4. Humor

Do funny. Okay, so a lot of us don’t have great comedic timing or fantastic impersonations or anything like that. But you don’t have to. Scalzi read the first few sentences from a prologue he spoofed on April Fool’s Day; the writing was hysterically awful and over the top.

Maybe you’re not into spoofs, but most of us authors have some pretty hysterical rough drafts and drawer manuscripts. Dig one out (an old one that doesn’t grieve you anymore), and find a section to give your audience. If you read from your current book, don’t be afraid to spice it up. Dramatic pauses, voices, gasps—whatever fits. They’re ready to be entertained, so be brave. Collect some anecdotes from your travel or tour and have them ready. Self-deprecating humor is always a safe bet, too.

Getting people to your book signing is fantastic, making them tell all their friends about it is even better. Have fun!

Guest Post: To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish?

2011-07-11T10:00:00.002-04:00

Apologies for not getting a round-up to you last week, mes auteurs. However! You've now got a full week of guest posts to look forward to, starting with this one by Chevonese Fender. Sit back, relax, and enjoy! — E

"Self-publishing used to have a real stigma attached to it. To be self-published meant your work was SO BAD that not one publisher would take you seriously. But that’s just not true anymore. Readers just want a great book to read." — Kaia Van Zandt, from Alan Rinzler’s post, "Advice for Amanda Hocking from authors and agents"

It is true that I, too, fell victim to this stigma. When I spent some time in New York, I would always see street vendors alongside 34th Street hustling to sell books that I would never take one second to peruse, let alone purchase. The approach is a turn off and the quality of the books, i.e. the print and cover quality, are a no-no in my standards.

Two years ago I was on the 2 train to the Bronx and noticed a Caucasian girl reading an urban novel, which I decided must have been self-published based on the distasteful cover and book quality. I was not surprised when I got a glimpse of the content and how less than classy it was. That was my impression of self-publishing. So when my friends and family have the gall to suggest the idea, I literally cringe and regard them with utmost disdain. Me, self-publish? Oh heck no! The goal is to be seen and known as a respected author, not the other way around.

I always agreed with Van Zandt's description of how self-publishing used to be [1]: that to self-publish meant my work was not good enough for a literary agent or publisher to give it the time of day. So, for a while I continued with my upturned nose, bent on having representation. It was not until I realized how the self-publishing industry had transformed and how beneficial it had proven to be for countless struggling and aggravated authors that I began seeing self-publishing for what it was.

Granted, there are those self-published authors who, out of anticipation, eagerly publish their work without serious editing and consulting. These authors partly contribute to the negative connotation that self-publishing carries. But it seems as if the tables have been drastically turning. Now, self-publishing appears to be the second best approach, if not the first, for getting your unpublished work out there.

So with two stories completed—one short story and one full length novel with its sequel on the way—would self-publishing be my best bet? Well, I would no longer have to hopelessly wait, after submitting my query letters for representation, for months to know if I’ve been given a "yes" or "no." I would no longer be limited to sharing my stories with my ten friends and family members and accept their praises as mission accomplished. And most importantly, no longer would I have to WAIT!

So many tools, websites, and literary agent blogs offer advice and tips, weighing the pros and cons of publishing on your own or taking the traditional route. It doesn’t hurt becoming your own agent, marketing and representing your own product, and reaping total benefits from book sales, as opposed to splitting it three ways if you were represented by an agent who found you a publisher. Most importantly, you are in full control of your content! Sounds like hard work and it most certainly is.

Is there respect for self-published authors today? Absolutely! Exhibit A: Amanda Hocking, after being told "no" numerous times, went on an ambitious whim and published on her own, only to find that her audience did exist and that her work is now worth a two million dollar contract with St. Martin’s Press. The publishers simply got on the bandwagon because they saw that there was money to be made; a foundation that was already set had been set through self-publishing. Even traditionally published authors like thriller and suspense writers Stephen King and Barry Eisler have self-published. Eisler [2] consciously opted out of a major contract simply because he wanted full control of his work and his money. Certainly these authors have an upper hand, as they have years of experience with the market—but the fact is, self-publishing is becoming more appealing than it was five or six years ago. Now, many services offer print-on-demand, which cuts out unnecessary printing costs.

We Jamaicans have a saying: "Puss and dog don’t have the same luck," which simply means that one man’s success story may not be the same for another. There are a lot of factors to consider if you desire the same success story as Hocking. The genre, writing style, content, target audience, cover images, and marketing and promotional strategies are all vital things to consider. But who’s to say how successful you will be unless you actually try it? In my book, not trying is failing.

Based on the numerous dialogues that I’ve come across, I’ve deduced one main thing: go off your gut instincts and your pocket. So should you venture beyond the traditional and daringly choose self-publishing? I’m certainly not against taking the bull by the horns, and there are many reputable authors, agents and editors who aren’t either. However, at the end of the day a decision has to be made.

Here’s what I advise: create your checklists of short term and long term goals for your books and your literary career; weigh your options, do your research, understand the benefits and pitfalls of choosing either publishing option; and be patient.

So, you tell me. Where do you stand?

Chevonese Fender is from Jamaica. She modeled for five years, the latter part spent working in New York. She was represented last by Boss Models in New York, and a little over a year and half ago she made a life-changing decision to actually put her God-given skill to use and write. She writes edgy, inspirational romance and has not yet been published, but her first novel is recently completed and she finds herself at the crossroads, so to speak: publishing traditionally or just say, the heck with it—publish the darn thing yourself!

[1]

http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2011/04/04/advice-for-amanda-hocking-from-authors-and-agents/

[2]

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/ebooks-and-self-publishing-dialog.html

Guest Posts: Redux

2011-07-06T10:00:00.001-04:00

When I last asked for guest posts back in May, I received so many quality submissions that I couldn't take just five. So! I accepted an additional five guest posts for next week, as I shall be out of town on Ye Olde Holidaye Times.

Where will I be? Well, somewhere significantly less stressful (and smelly) than New York City. I suppose that's not much of a hint, though, since that's pretty much everywhere else on the planet. At least you know I won't be in Beijing or L.A.

Without futher ado!

Monday, July 11th: "To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish? That is a Darn Good Question!" by Chevonese Fender

Tuesday, July 12th: "Four Elements of a Great Book Signing" by Corrie Garrett

Wednesday, July 13th: "The Glamour Life on a Book Tour" by Wayne Arthurson

Thursday, July 14th: "Writing Without a Net(Work)" by Lorna Graham

Friday, July 15th: "Rotten Rejections" by D.L. Orton

I'll return on Monday, July 18th with more gems, pearls of wisdom, and other assorted literary treasures for you. Until then, enjoy Friday's round-up and next week's guest posts!

Happy Fourth of July!

2011-07-01T10:00:00.001-04:00

Due to the Fourth of July weekend, mes auteurs, there'll be no round-up from Laura today and no new post on Monday, July 4th. Check back on Wednesday, and have fun blowing things up in the meantime!

The Summer Slowdown

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Your queries have been met with silence. Your agent has inexplicably vanished. Your editor has departed for parts unknown. What gives?

The answer: it's summer.

The publishing industry doesn't exactly go into hibernation during the summer months, but it's fair to say that business slows down substantially between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Aside from physical production, everything winds down a bit: offers from agents, acquisitions from editors, &c, &c. It's sort of the calm before the storm of the holiday season (October through December).

If you're currently submitting a manuscript, don't be surprised if it takes longer than usual to hear back. Not only is there an industry-wide downtrend in acquiring new work, but the majority of publishing professionals take vacation during the summer months, meaning that at any given time a large percentage of available staff are out of the office. Even if your agent is around, if (s)he depends on his/her assistant to filter submissions and that assistant is in Cancún for the week, you probably won't be hearing back about your novel for at least that long.

My advice? Spend the summer writing. As I've mentioned before, I ~~waste~~ spend my non-publishing, non-blogging time as a poet, and since most literary journals and magazines are affiliated with universities, they either close submissions or are much slower in responding during June, July, and August. I take this time to recharge my batteries, burn a little well-deserved vacation, and write/rewrite in preparation for the autumn submission period.

What about you, mes auteurs? Are you submitting now? If not, how are you spending your writing-related time?

The Vanishing Advance

2011-06-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

You may have been hearing about this from other publishing professionals or from fellow writers, mes auteurs, but in case you haven't heard, the average advance has declined a bit over the past couple of years. Much of my evidence for this is either proprietary or anecdotal, so hopefully there are a few literary agents or editors in the house to confirm the trend.

In case you're curious, though, there are a few reasons I think lower advances have been—and continue to be—the norm.

Belt-tightening. With forbidding economic indicators such as unemployment still high and talk of a double-dip recession floating around, editors and publishers have become much more frugal in terms of the advances they offer. Many have modified their P&Ls to reflect current sell-through and consumer habits, and decreased demand for physical books has resulted in decreased up-front cash for authors.

Publishing is a business, and we've got to try to make money on as many books as possible in order to stay in business. Speaking of physical media, another reason (à mon avis) for lower advances is:

The shift to electronic media. Because e-books don't face the same kind of supply chain/distribution challenges as physical books and are not returnable, it's easier for publishers to run P&Ls for e-books and to simply offer higher royalties than to stick with the advance model.

True, the vast majority of titles currently acquired are eventually released as concurrent physical and electronic books, but I don't think the day is long off in which a substantial section of the market will comprise e-only titles. Once that occurs, I think the idea of the advance will become even more antiquated; it's much easier to pay an author a fixed percentage of dollars earned in the more or less real-time environment of e-book sales than to bother with advances.

In fact, much (though certainly not all) of the work done by advances is obviated by the fact that:

Advertising and marketing budgets for e-books are often lower than for physical books. While a publishing house—particularly a large one—will pay the advertising and marketing costs for their lead titles, there are many midlist titles and titles published by smaller publishers for which the burden of lining up media and marketing falls squarely on the author. The advance is a way of mitigating this hardship; authors can use the money given to them by publishers to pay to promote their books (e.g. conduct book tours, create book trailers, and so on).

As advertising and marketing have become easier and cheaper—predominantly by way of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter—the cost of promoting books through these channels has necessarily also fallen. If publishers feel they can pay less money for the same commercial success from any given title, they absolutely will. Wouldn't you?

So that, dear readers, is my take on why average advances seem to be declining in this industry. It may be a relatively short-term reaction to the continuing economic uncertainty inherent in the recession, or (as I believe) a long-term reaction to the drastic changes that are occuring in the publishing industry as it transitions from physical to electronic media. Regardless of which, I think it signals an industry-wide recognition of the challenges the business is facing.

What do you think, gentle readers?

It Came From the Round Up

2011-06-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

Friday round up, with Laura:

Welcome to Friday, friends and foes. Although Game of Thrones ended last week (boo), we only have until Sunday until True Blood starts (yay!). Some might go so far as to say that True Blood the show is better than the books. Having never read the books, I have to say I wholeheartedly agree. In other books-on-film news, J.K. Rowling launched Pottermore on Thursday. There were many oohs and aahs (and it may be that Rowling is a marketing genius), but I fall in the camp of, "WTF is Pottermore? This launch didn't explain anything about it, except that the HPotts will be e-books now. Hurray?

Listen. I don't like things that are confusing. I like to be told what YA is essential, how much I have to pay for events at indie bookstores, and where I can buy my newsprint scented candles. I don't want to have to use my own brain to find out that the new version of The Rules has perhaps the worst advice I've ever heard, or that there is irony when 50 Cent writes a book on bullying. How do I know if e-books come out too quickly? What are the different routes for selling a million copies of a self-pubbed e-book? I'm stumped, and kind of sleepy, and don't plan on thinking thoughts anytime soon.

Not wanting to think thoughts is, coincidentally, why so many celebrities put out kid's books. It's much quicker to write than a for-adults book (unless like Snooki, you have your ghost writer do the heavy lifting). On the flip side is the new Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly memoir. Collectively they are a Congresswoman, an astronaut, and survived a gunshot to the head. They are invited to my house in memoir form (or real form!) any time. Also invited to my house are more stills from The Hobbit, and my new favorite thing ever, a poetry book by Keanu Reeves. Bring it on, world.

That's it for this week—have a good weekend, and see you next time.

The Long and Short of It

2011-06-22T10:00:00.002-04:00

Caveat: this post pertains more to those of you writing literary fiction than genre fiction, mes auteurs, but I do think there are aspects that writers of genre fiction may find enlightening.

So!

I'll be the first to tell you that short story collections don't sell well—it doesn't matter whether you've had short fiction in The New Yorker, it doesn't matter whether you earned your mfa at Iowa, it doesn't matter whether you're drinking buddies with the ghost of Flannery O'Connor—they uniformly don't sell very well. Often an agent will only take a short story collection from a promising new author on the condition that they also get his or her first novel.

However! The short story itself can be a way of grabbing an agent's attention, and getting yourself represented is half the battle. For example:

Publishing short stories lends you street cred. True, the agent is more interested in your writing than in your biography, but a biographical note that includes "Chester A. Author has recently published fiction in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker" will almost certainly catch an agent's eye. That doesn't mean (s)he will immediately sign you, but (s)he might decide to send a request for a partial rather than a polite rejection.

Literary agents read literary journals. I know a few (and know of several more) agents who regularly read literary magazines in search of new talent. The more you publish, the higher your profile.

Literary agents recommend writing and writers to each other. Even if your dream agent hasn't read anything in which you've been published, (s)he still has plenty of friends, colleagues, and friends of colleagues who may have. Remember: a huge number of new authors are signed based on recommendations rather than via queries culled from the slush.

Publishing short stories entails writing short stories, and writing short stories entails a ton of practice. It goes without saying, but if you've written enough to publish several short stories in reputable magazines and journals, you've put a fair amount of time and effort into your writing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: patience and discipline are worth more in this business than talent and luck (though you'll need some of the former and a lot of the latter).

There you have it, amigos and -as. So now, prithee, inform me: which magazines/journals do you regularly read or subscribe to? Where do you find new authors? Which authors or stories have you read recently that you loved, were excited about, or recommended to others?

In Fact, I'll Commend It Again

2011-06-20T10:00:00.003-04:00

Television for Children Ages 8 – 10

Raunchy Late Night Comedies

Science Fiction/Fantasy with a Strong Female Lead

If any of this looks familiar, we'd probably be bros in real life: these are a few of the category recommendations Netflix has recently made for me. Whether it's via Netflix, Amazon, or our friends and families, recommendation is an undeniable and potent factor in our media consumption decision-making.

Now for the book-related part of today's segment! Some books I've recently been told I absolutely must read:

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Bossypants by Tina Fey

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

What's been recently recommended to you, gentle readers?

The Great Late Night Round Up

2011-06-17T22:00:00.002-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Happy belated round up, friends and foes! It's late, but hopefully soon you'll hear Samuel L. Jackson reading you the sweet, sweet words: Go the Fuck to Sleep. If that's not your jam, you can preorder your copy of Pawnee by Leslie Knope, which I super want. Or you can grumble about the whole Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher thing. People are grumbling. (I am one of them. — E)

I've brought you a list of the top 100 nonfiction books, so you have something to read until the big Pottermore reveal next week. And you can read about Amanda Hocking before you can read her new books. Fun? Paper or ebook, she'll still need an editor. Let's hope one of her novels isn't a (gasp) fake memoir. The shock would send me off the edge, and make me in dire need of extreme survival books for my extreme sadness.

I'm full of information now, so mourn the death of first print, be jealous of the top Amazon reviewers who get swag, and see you next week!

Publishing Time

2011-06-15T10:00:00.002-04:00

I was reading an article in The New Yorker awhile back by a foreign correspondent in West Africa who introduced to me the phenomenon of "African time." This consists of a much more relaxed attitude toward scheduling, punctuality, and time in general across many African countries than is traditionally found in the United States.

In case you're curious, there is such a thing as "publishing time," and it's similar in some respects. An editor might sit on an e-mail for two weeks even though it could be answered in five minutes; an assistant might take a week to read a partial even if (s)he could reasonably get to it in an afternoon; a marketing or sales manager might take several days to post materials to an internal website even though it could probably have been done much sooner.

A lot of this is the result of the kind of prioritization and reprioritization that is endemic not only to publishing, but to any major corporate enterprise—some projects just keep getting pushed back. Some of it, however, is due to the nature of the business.

Publishing—at least in general, and at least below the very top echelons of management—is not a fast-paced business, and the sense of urgency and desire for efficiency you might find in the offices of an investment bank or law firm don't generally exist, simply because publishing doesn't generally attract the sorts of people you often find in those fields. Couple that with the overworked staff of smaller publishers and the bureaucratic red tape of the Big Six, and it's no wonder you haven't heard back about that royalty check question you posed a month ago.

Publishing professionals are not inefficient or lazy, but a combination of multitasking/prioritizing and the culture of the industry means that it may take awhile for your e-mails to be returned, your manuscript to be read, your questions to be answered. Be patient, but don't be afraid to send reminders or request something a second time if your initial query is met with a protracted silence. We're not ignoring you, I promise! We're just busy. And a little strange.

Prithee, Inform Me: Summer Releases

2011-06-13T10:00:00.004-04:00

'Tis the season for new releases, mes auteurs, and I was curious as to which you're most excited about!

While there are a number of books I'm dying to read, I'm most looking forward to A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (July 12th, fiction), Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems by Marvin Bell (July 1st, poetry), and In My Time by Dick Cheney (August 30th, memoir). That last one should be pretty interesting.

In music (in which I have really eclectic taste), I'm pretty excited for Alpocalypse by "Weird Al" Yankovic (June 21st). Why? Because it's his first studio release in five years and the album contains a track called "Polka Face." Done and done.

Finally, in movies, I am super amped for the Green Lantern film this week (June 17th)! I've been waiting for this movie since I was about six, folks. If it disappoints me, I may never recover.

What about you, cats & kittens? What are you looking forward to in books, music, movies, and more over the next three months?

V.S. Naipaul, Videos, Vampires: Round Up

2011-06-10T10:00:00.005-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

It's been a while, friends and foes, but I'm back—with tons of important book news. Most important: have you seen the Breaking Dawn trailer? It's... well, I dunno, it's fine? I know Mitt Romney is excited, even if we're not all in agreement about whether or not lit professors should read Twilight. If you're looking for book-to-movie trailers, I can also provide I Don't Know How She Does It, the trailer, the trailer for Mr. Popper's Penguins, a True Blood sneak peek, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, trailer edition. I've also got the best and worst book trailers.

For those who'd rather not waste half an hour on videos (although why not? It's Friday!), I've got a cup full of controversy for you. First was the case of V.S. Naipaul v. women, where Naipaul holds that women can't write. And it must be true, because a man said it. QED, society. Heck, I'm not even writing this, I'm dictating to a typing chimp who edits for me. A male chimp, of course. Then again, the chimp bombed this quiz of guess what gender wrote this, so what does he know?

The other shenanigan wagon was the whole "is YA too dark?" article. To which I say: as long as Jaycee Duggard's abduction, captivity, and innumerable rapes are on the 6 o'clock news, no, it isn't. Problem solved. Or, if you'd prefer more arguments, here you go. If you need a little more direction, here's what Toni Morrison has to say about life, what Junot Diaz has to say about the apocalypse, and what his editor had to say to Roald Dahl. Also, a bonus: what text punctuation says about you.

So check our your periodic table of storytelling, get your Angry Birds cookbook, and I'll see you next week!

Market Update

2011-06-08T10:00:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile since I've talked about what seems to be selling, mes auteurs, so below are the five categories I've noticed particular growth in over the past few months.

Keep in mind that (1) these are based on a healthy mix of data and anecdotal evidence, and (2) these are my thoughts on what seems to be selling now, not what will necessarily be popular in a year (the earliest your book would come out, assuming it's acquired in short order).

Graphic novels. It's likely these are seeing a bump because summer is superhero movie season, but it's pretty clear that this category is up from earlier this year. And (according to BookScan) it's not just properties with movies out/forthcoming, such as Thor or Green Lantern, so if you happen to be a graphic novel type of guy or gal, this is good news for you.

YA apocalyptic fiction. This (to my mind, anyway) was probably touched off by Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games in the same way vampire mania was touched off by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, but I feel like I'm seeing an awful lot of end-of-the-world scenarios (Harold Camping's failed Rapture prediction and the New Age folks' Mayan 2012 nonsense notwithstanding).

Weird diet books. I've seen everything from "only eat raw foods and if you eat a cooked vegetable you will die" to "feel free to eat your weight in bacon." Some of this is probably seasonal—while a ton of diet books come out in January, I figure there's always a beach season bump—but I feel like I've been getting an earful about Paleolithic diets, raw food diets, Mediterranean diets, and no- or low-carb diets for months.

Thrillers/horror novels. While I still firmly believe the mass market paperback is on its way out, sales appear to be holding steady in this format for thrillers and horror novels (not so much straight mysteries, for some reason). Again, it's beach season, and I imagine anyone without a Kindle is buying a stack of inexpensive paperbacks for the beach or pool.

Romance. A perennial favorite, romance is probably doing well for the same reasons as the aforementioned thrillers—it's generally inexpensive and great for beach or poolside reading. Romance readers also tend to buy repeatedly and generally buy more books per purchase than other readers, so the effect may be amplified by those kinds of consumer habits.

That's all I've got for today, cats & kittens. What books have you been hearing about/reading about/seeing everywhere lately?

It Came From The Cloud

2011-06-06T10:00:00.004-04:00

First, many thanks to our five guest posters from last week! The activity in the comments section and on Twitter seem to indicate that all were fun, informative, and well-received, and I tip my digital hat to the five of you.

I'm still unpacking and settling in from my vacation, so today's post will be about you. Prithee, inform me, ladies and gents: how do you feel about Apple's iCloud?

Personally, I fear that Apple will use my information for iNiquity™, but that could just be my own paranoia talking. While I initially balked at the idea—Apple has made its name principally as a hardware, rather than software, manufacturer—I've since realized that this is a pretty smart move for the company. Most of the people I know who own Apple machines own multiple devices (laptop, desktop, iPhone, iPod, iPad, &c), and being able to link them together via the magic of the iNterwebz™ makes a lot of sense.

So, while I'm not sure I'll be partaking in Apple's newest venture—what about you?

Guest Post: My Novel Cracked 10 Amazon Top-100 Lists—YOURS Can Too!

2011-06-03T10:00:00.002-04:00

by Phoenix Sullivan

That headline is true. But is it truth?

We're jaded, right? Bombarded by marketing every day, we turn a blind eye to all the "Look At Me, Me, ME" headlines. Until one pops up that hits our hot button. That promises to help us write better, attract an agent, get published or gain a huge audience. Deep in our hearts, we know better than to be reeled in by such claims.

Tenet One of good marketing is to not make false claims. There are laws against that, even if you're happy to ignore ethics. But what's the definition of "false?" As Cyrano so aptly put it: "...a lie is a sort of myth, and a myth is a sort of truth." Marketing spins its gold in shades of myth.

Readers see a headline about a book being on a list and, while they might not be persuaded to buy, it makes a favorable eyes-on impression. Being "on a list" legitimizes not just the book but the buyer's purchase of that book. It makes buying less-risky behavior. What the casual reader will never ask is: Which list? They're happy just to register the statement at face value.

But you're not a casual reader. You're reading beyond the headline. Not because you give a rat's patooty about which lists, but because you want to know how YOUR book can get on those lists, too—am I right?

You've probably read about the importance of metatagging everything you do online for better SEO—search engine optimization. Amazon in no different. When you upload your book, Amazon lets you choose two categories (genres/subgenres) out of a set of predefined tags. So even if, like mine, your novel set in the Dark Ages is a cross between women’s fiction and historical fiction and features strong romantic elements as well as war, you can only choose two pre-set categories for it. The good news is Amazon lets you input more key subject tags—these of your own making—limited only by a ceiling on the total number of characters you can use.

Input your subject tags wisely! They serve two purposes. The first is to help buyers find your book. That means a couple of the tags may just be a word that people might input into the search field when they're looking for a book like yours. I included "knights" and "Camelot."

Category tags are predefined by Amazon.

Subject tags are defined by whoever uploads the book.

They can be anything, limited only

by a predefined total character count.

The second purpose is one you can use to your marketing advantage: subgenre lists. My novel, Spoil of War, is part of the King Arthur canon. People reading historical fiction will likely use "Arthurian" as a search word, so I created these related tags: Arthurian romance, Arthurian fiction, historical fiction Arthurian. Romance readers, though, would likely refer to the time period as medieval, so I included a "medieval" tag. Include multiple ways of phrasing your subgenres if you can. Because here's a secret: Your rankings on the bestseller lists depend on EXACT phrasing of these tags—"99 cent" and "99 cents" may well return different results.

By creating areas of smaller markets for your book using subject tags, your book is no longer competing with the entire Amazon catalog but just its designated genres. That could mean anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand books.

Now, Amazon has a nifty little filter for its book searches. The default filter for whatever term you enter is "relevance." I have no idea how relevance is determined; part of it is based on words in the title and description, of course, but it also somehow changes with number of sales. It’s good to be relevant, because few readers will ever filter the first results they get. It can only help your relevancy rankings if the title you input contains the search words. For example, I deliberately included the tagline "An Arthurian Saga" in my title.

By changing the "relevance" filter to "bestselling," the search engine will rank the books returned in your results by whatever calculations Amazon uses to determine bestselling rankings. You can also produce lists that include all books in the Amazon store or just those in the Kindle store. (Barnes and Noble has a similar search, only they use the term "top matches" instead of "relevance.")

So that’s how I manipulated Spoil's way onto 10 of Amazon's bestselling lists. And since anyone can go out and reproduce these lists for themselves, my conscience is clear in touting the book's status on them, with the caveat that these lists change hourly.

With a little planning on the front side and scrolling through search results on the hind end, no reason why you can't also spin the rankings in your favor, as well.

But this only works for books selling hundreds of copies daily, right? YOUR book that's selling only a couple of copies per day doesn't have a snowball's chance of appearing in any impressive-sounding category. *Snort* Smoke and mirrors, folks. Amazon rankings are calculated using historical and current sales. I launched Spoil of War on March 31 and sold 37 copies on the US site, 13 copies on the UK site, and 11 copies through B&N in April. For May, as of May 20, I’d sold 32 copies on Amazon US, just 3 on Amazon UK, and 10 at B&N.

I tracked my rankings from May 18 to 20, and you can see the shift in rankings that only 1 or 2 purchases per day can produce.

Now that I've got the numbers to brag with, I just need to figure out how to reach more readers to let them know that buying Spoil of War is a non-risky, community-sanctioned purchase. Everyone must be buying it. It wouldn't be in those top-100 lists otherwise, right?

True or truth? You decide.

In the corporate world, Phoenix Sullivan was a professional writer and editor for 23 years. She blogs at http://phoenixsullivan.blogspot.com, a site to help writers hone their queries and synopses, and a place to show off the beasties on her small farm in North Texas.

Guest Post: Eating the Elephant

2011-06-02T10:00:00.002-04:00

by Lexi George

As a mom with a full-time job, I’ve always had to squeeze time out of my busy schedule for writing. I’ve been writing steadily for more than fifteen years, but for the first few years it was hit and miss, a little writing here, a little writing there. No pressure or time constraints and no real goals, other than to finish the manuscript I was working on... at some point.

In my forties, with the ugly Five-O looming on the horizon like Godzilla with a bad case of hammer toe, I got serious about writing. If I was going to do this, I’d better get cracking, I told myself. I was going to finish the darn book and get published before my fiftieth birthday.

Good grief, fifty! Where did all the time go? If I didn’t do this thing by then, it was all over but the crying. Of course, I knew my odds of getting published were slim—my husband is a numbers guy—but I didn’t dwell on them. I had a goal.

With Doomsday looming ahead, most days I managed to carve out some writing time. I had a self-imposed deadline to meet, with dead being the operative word. Fifty, sheesh. D-Day crept closer and closer, and Godzilla eschewed orthotics.

As writing became a more regular habit, I began to get anxious if I didn’t get my daily dose of prose. There were still plenty of times when life intruded upon my creative efforts, so I cut myself a little slack. I set a goal of writing a chapter a week, which for me averages anywhere from 2500 to 3700 words. That way, if I missed a day because of work or the kids, I could make it up the next day without feeling guilty or anxious.

Did I mention that guilt is a motivating factor for me? Guilt is my friend and my enemy. It keeps me on the straight and narrow, but it also makes me crazy as a June bug.

I finished the manuscript I was working on before Doomsday, but I didn’t get published. I have the pile of rejection letters to prove it. A quite impressive pile of rejection letters, I must say. Enough to wallpaper several bathrooms.

Fifty came and went and I kept writing. I decided to try my hand at something else, a romance about Addy, a small town Southern florist and a hunky immortal demon slayer named Brand. Lo and behold, thanks to luck, prayer and a lot of help from friends, Demon Hunting in Dixie sold to Kensington in a three-book deal! Holy smokes! Great jumping Jehoshaphat, I’m a published writer. Whoo hoo!

Then I got a reality check. I was given my first deadline, a deadline set by the publisher and not my inner nag. I had to complete a 30,000 word novella in three months. Having learned a little about time management and goal setting over the years, I gave myself a goal of 10,000 words a month, highly doable, given the fact I haven’t quit my day job or turned in my mom card. I am happy to say I met my first deadline. The novella, The Bride Wore Demon Dust, comes out this August as part of a Halloween anthology from Kensington entitled So I Married A Demon Slayer. The icing on my cake of happiness is the fact that I’m in the anthology with paranormal romance writers extraordinaire Angie Fox and Kathy Love. Somebody pinch me!

Then my second reality check came: the deadline for book two of the demon hunter series. I’m hard at work on it, but I will admit it has been challenging. I am a slow writer (I revise as I go) and I haven’t given up my day job or put up my teenager for adoption. But I will get there!

So, my advice is to set goals, whether they be daily, weekly, or month. Whatever it takes to get your butt in the chair.

When you set out to eat an elephant, take small bites. That’s my philosophy and it works for me.

Oh, and by the way, I’m fifty-four. Life didn’t end at fifty and neither did my passion for writing.

Or my ability to dream and reach for that big, brass ring.

Hmm, wonder what I should shoot for next?

Lexi George is an appellate lawyer by day and a romance writer by night. She started her writing career in the third grade penning bad poetry about hydrangea bushes and Erik the Red. Ironically, she ended up marrying a Viking, a Northern boy who came to Alabama with the Air Force and stayed. She wrote poetry all through high school and college. And then she decided to go to law school and the muse left in a huff. The muse hated law school.

The muse returned when Lexi’s oldest child was a toddler and Lexi has been writing ever since. After piling up an impressive number of rejections on her first book, a fantasy romance that she worked on for more than ten years, Lexi decided to try her hand at something else. The result was Demon Hunting in Dixie, a paranormal romance about demon hunters in the Deep South. The muse is very happy, and so is Lexi.

Visit Lexi on Facebook and Twitter (lexigeorge12) and check out her website at www.lexigeorge.com.

Demon Hunting in Dixie is available from: Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksaMillion.com, indieBound.org, Borders.com, or your favorite retailer.

Guest Post: Book Trailers, Batman, and Short-Form Promotion

2011-06-01T10:00:00.005-04:00

by Brendan Gannon

In March, author Rye Barcott posted about his experience producing a trailer for his book. He expresses a healthy skepticism regarding the value of the trailer. Great: it is indeed hard to judge the extent to which a trailer actually boosts sales. (For the record, by the end of the post he is optimistic about the value of trailers, as am I.) His skepticism, however, is due at least in part to his doubt that the trailer can convey the essence of his book: "Can a few minutes on a screen really do justice to such a rich experience? I don't think so."

Well, that got me to thinking. A trailer that doesn't effectively capture the spirit of the work would be a lousy trailer. Right? If the trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed Harry sitting in a tent for two minutes and forty seconds, we would not be impressed. Only two things separate a good trailer from a bad one:

• It conveys the essence of the work it represents.
• It's exciting enough to make the viewer want to learn more about, and ultimately pay for, the work it represents.

The general public would probably agree that some trailers make the grade. But we aren't the general public, we are authors! We labor for years on our personal masterpieces, weaving subtlety and meaning into a compelling narrative. How could a short flashy video possibly capture our books? This sentiment is similar to the complaint many would-be authors raise about query letters and synopses. Same idea, right? I created a sophisticated, many-layered narrative. How am I supposed to get that across in 250 words?

Why book trailers are awesome

The great strengths of a book trailer are the qualities that people doubt most. It's short. It's an audio/video representation of a printed work. It's for people with short attention spans. You wouldn't want it any other way.

These qualities mean your trailer can do things your book can't do, go places your book can't go. A trailer, like a haiku, captures big ideas through effective use of imagery and metaphor. A trailer conveys theme, mood, and motifs through use of color, light, and sound. A trailer vividly paints the world, the characters, and the stakes of your work. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words, and you've got a minute or so of video.

Let's look at Batman as an example of effective short-form promotion. (Doesn't everyone?) When the movie The Dark Knight was about to come out, the studio knew they had a bundle of Hollywood hotness on their hands, and even before the trailers they had to get that across in the simplest of teasers: still images on posters, in print, and on the web. Hence the "Why so serious?" campaign.

This poster doesn't tell you much about the movie per se, but it does tell you what the movie is like. The blood suggests that Batman is a target, and that he is vulnerable. The lighting, the brick and the scrawls tell us the film will be gritty and hint at the Joker's low-tech methods. The tagline hints at the jarring contrast of the Joker's character: his drive to mock mainstream society and the disturbing, violent tactics he uses. It says if you like provocative, gritty and gothic you will like this movie. If you like campy comic book villains, you won't. Accurate and exciting. Done.

So how are you supposed to condense 60-80,000 words into a short video clip, or a one page query letter? By being authors. It's in the job description.

Yes, you can

Put another way: if you were an employee of the publisher, it would be unfair of them to expect you to write the book and market it. But you're not. You're a sole proprietor. You're ultimately responsible for your book, and everything about it; everyone involved in its journey to publication is effectively a contractor providing their services to you. The publisher is like a consultant. If they say make a trailer, you'd be wise to listen to them. That's how they earn their cut.

Another common sentiment is "it's not fair. I don't know anything about video/marketing/queries/etc." Sure it's fair. If you were expected to design a bridge or rebuild a carburetor as part of the publishing process, that would be unfair. You're a creative. If you can learn to write a book, you can learn to make a trailer, or at least learn to get a trailer made. The good news is no one expects you to change their lives in sixty seconds or 250 words. Refer to the above: convey the essence of your work. Be exciting. That's it!

Granted, plenty of book trailers we see out there are not very effective. Distilling a book's essence and capturing said essence in short form represents a challenge, and naturally some efforts fall short. Your job as a creative is not to fall short. Polish that query letter 'til it gleams and savagely trim that synopsis. Your job as a business person is to make sure your contractors don't fall short. If they're not capturing the essence of your work (in your trailer, in your website, in your promotional bookmarks) you're either not communicating effectively or you're working with the wrong person.

What say you, readers? Do I presume too much? Or should us writer-types apply our nose to the grindstone and broaden our horizons?

Brendan Gannon is a web developer and multimedia producer based in Boston. He writes YA/MG fiction and blogs at http://brendangannon.net. He thinks digital publishing and mobile apps are the bee's knees, but he's also very fond of paper.

Guest Post: Making A Commercial Novel More Upmarket Using Setting

2011-05-31T10:00:00.004-04:00

by Stella Notecor

Upmarketing Your Novel!

Have you ever heard of an upmarket novel? Many commercial books with literary elements are now being called "upmarket novels." Nowadays, commercial fiction tends to be a bit... commercialized. Adding touches of literary elements to your novel can help your fiction transcend genre, resonate with readers, and become timeless. (All of which translates to bigger sales and more money in your pocket!) That doesn't mean your fiction needs to be that dry and boring stuff your high school teachers made you read. Upmarket fiction can be as entertaining as commercial fiction!

Often the literary elements that suffer the most in a commercial novel are the setting details. We don't want to bog down our readers by providing too many setting details that pull them away from the plot. The following three tips will help you give your commercial fiction more oomph without detracting from the plot.

Tip #1 - Make the description relate to the character.

Descriptions should come from your character's point-of-view. Consider an old woman observing the house her granddaughter is begging her to sell so she can move into a retirement home.

"I stared up at the house that had been my life. The porch swing swayed in the breeze coming off the lake, much more gently than it ever had when my two sons were the ones swinging it. Wildflowers filled the window boxes. I always picked a plant or two when we went away on family vacations, bringing them back much as we brought back memories. The steps sagged a little, testament to the many little feet that ran up and down them over the years, but all in all, the house looked just as it had when Henry and I bought it fifty-five years ago."

Now, consider her granddaughter's point of view.

"This house would be the death of Gram. The old porch swing shuddered at the slightest breeze, threatening to fall from its rusty chain the next time Gram took a seat. Wildflowers in window boxes required Gram to water them every day. Elise had watched her totter around the house once, carrying a heavy watering can, as she attempted to water all the flowers. She'd nearly tripped coming down those old, rickety steps and the uneven walk had practically begged her to fall and break a bone or two. She had no idea why Gram wanted to stay in this death-trap."

Descriptions become more powerful when we see them through our characters' eyes.

Tip #2 - Use bits of culture to give your story realism.

Using small cultural references can help your readers identify a character's age, race, personality, and socioeconomic background while adding only a few words to your word count. Consider the following descriptions.

"Jane grabbed a soda from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into the car, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite song came blasting out of the radio."

"Madison grabbed a strawberry Fanta from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into her Scion, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite Katy Perry song came blasting out of the radio."

"Stacy grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge, then headed out the front door. Sliding into her Cadillac, she turned on the ignition and grinned as her favorite song by The Monkees came blasting out of the radio."

Which descriptions were more engaging? Madison and Stacy's, right? And I'm sure you can guess which girl was born in the fifties and which girl was born in the nineties!

(A caution... pop culture snippets can also date your story. If used in a modern book, editors may ask you to remove or limit them so that you don't render the book unsellable after a certain length of time. A teenager who mentions "Bennifer" isn't going work as well now as it did when Ben and Jennifer were still dating!)

Tip #3 - Make your setting a character.

By this, I mean that your setting should influence the story as much as a character does. Reading about the barren desert is all well and good, but the desert can become truly interesting if you make it out to be a savage beast, tearing your character's life away from them.

"The sand crept into everything. It got into our shoes and wore away at our socks, filling them with holes. Then it attacked our feet, wearing away the skin and leaving behind raw wounds that ached with every step we took.

The sun beat down on us, burning our skin and evaporating what little water we collected. If it weren't for the sun's heat, we could have walked twenty miles a day. Instead, we barely managed five."

Now, isn't that description a lot more interesting than "The hot and sandy desert made traveling difficult"?

Obviously, making your setting more interesting can make your novel a lot more interesting too. And there are ways to do it without adding to your word count. So, I have a question for you. Do you think you will use literary elements in your stories now? Which ones? Why? Why not?

Stella Notecor believes that love knows no boundaries. She writes erotic fiction that reflects that, choosing to focus on her characters' stories, not their genders. Her first self-pubbed novella, The Broken, was released May 29th in formats for all major e-readers. Visit her website at http://tiny.cc/stellanotecor for more information and to read an excerpt.

Guest Post: 5 Tools to Carry in a Conspiring Universe

2011-05-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

by Sarah Allen

Is it just me, or do you feel like every time you start a new project, the universe conspires against you to take away all the time you thought you had to work on it? You finally get started, and then you look at your calendar and realize that the next several days are a string of doctors' appointments, meetings, helping your friend move, the Hare Krishna Festival of Colors, and you wonder where your time went.

So what do you do? Being busy doesn't just happen at the beginning of projects, it happens all the time. Many of us are balancing jobs, parenting, school, and all the other things going on in our lives with our writing and writing careers. How do we balance it all?

1) Carry a notebook. That way, when you're sitting at your kid's kindergarten waiting for school to get out, you can pull out the notebook and jot down a few sentences. You can outline the next chapter of your novel while sitting in the lobby of the doctor's office.

2) Carry a book. You could fit in a good page or so while filling up the car at the gas station. To be a good writer you must be a good reader, and I imagine that sneaking bits of writing time helps your brain keep at high functionality throughout the day, just like sneaking crackers or apple slices helps move things efficiently through your digestive system. Poetry and short story collections as well as literary magazines are particularly suited for this.

3) Carry business cards. Take the time for some guerilla marketing. Sneak a card into one of the magazines on the coffee table at the doctors office. Give your card or even a copy of your book to your kid's teacher or school librarian. Whatever you think might work.

4) Carry a planner. With writing time tightly squeezed, its useful to plan ahead and know exactly when you will be able to actually sit down and write, even if it's just in ten minute chunks. And then, once you know when you'll be at your computer, while you are out and about, plan ahead and know where and how you're going to start up again when you get back. That way you will minimize the unproductive staring-at-the-screen time.

5) Carry an iPhone. Or something like it, if possible. That way you can update your blog or Facebook fan page while sitting at the lecture you didn't want to go to in the first place. Get your e-mailing and social networking done while you're on lunch break, and then when you get home and finally have your own time, you can use it for the actual writing instead of having to catch up on all the businessy-type things.

Life will still be crazy and busy, no doubt, but carrying and efficiently using these tools can help maximize your writing productivity. Are there any other tools you think might be useful?

Sarah is a 22-year-old aspiring writer working on her first novel who recently graduated as an English major from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She has been published in a handful of lit magazines and blogs about her adventures and misadventures on the road to future publication. She loves Cavalier King Charles spaniels, jazz, white chocolate, and owns all 11 seasons of Frasier.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

2011-05-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

No post this Friday, mes auteurs. Stay tuned for our week of guest posts starting Monday, May 30th!

And The Winners Are...

2011-05-25T10:00:00.001-04:00

Sarah Allen, "5 Tools to Carry in a Conspiring Universe," to air Monday, May 30th.

Stella Notecor, "Making a Commercial Novel More Upmarket Using Setting," to air Tuesday, May 31st.

Brendan Gannon, "Book Trailers, Batman, and Short-Form Promotion," to air Wednesday, June 1st.

Lexi George, "Eating the Elephant," to air Thursday, June 2nd.

Phoenix Sullivan, "My Novel Cracked 10 Amazon Top-100 Lists—YOURS Can Too!" to air Friday, June 3rd.

Congratulations to all the winners, and many, many thanks to all of you who submitted. I'll be needing additional guest posts throughout the summer, so there'll be many more opportunities for y'all to submit—and keep in mind that I'm always looking for timely guest posts to run on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

A Song of Ice and Late Round Ups

2011-05-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

Monday round up, with Laura:

I am seriously sucking at writing these on time, friends and foes. Apologies! Please accept as a sign of atonement this interview with David Letterman, in which Jennifer Lawrence explains The Hunger Games, and this "where are they now," Wonka edition. I've also got close to 100 pieces of fantastic journalism (that is, journalism that is fantastic, not fantasy journalism), and the top 10 bestsellers from Oprah's Book Club. We can all buy them on our Kindles, since Amazon sells more Kindle books than physical books. The future is now!

Also in the future (and also now) is a gaming company retaliating against a bad review by encouraging people to give bad reviews to the reviewer's book. You stay classy, video game guys. They will not be getting a million dollar grant like teen writing community Figment. Suck on that, sirs. Maybe they should take a good vacation, courtesy of the Tao of Travel, or work on being experts at something or other (even though Wikipedia heralds the death of the expert). I'm an expert on fiction that actually sells, and will pass along the expertise at the low low rate of $1 million per minute. Richard Dawkins will pass along his opinions for significantly less in his new science book for kiddies. The real question is: will it be more or less controversial than Philip Roth's latest book award?

Hope you had a good weekend, and see you next week, hopefully on time!

Prithee, Inform Me: Summer Reading

2011-05-18T10:00:00.001-04:00

A reminder: don't forget to submit your guest posts before midnight on Monday, May 23rd!

I know it seems like spring has only just begun, but the fact is, mes auteurs, that in a month it will officially be summer. And you know what that means: summer reading!

What are you planning to read this summer? What have you recently read that you loved? Favorite/least favorite books of 2011? Books we might have missed in 2010? Go nuts in the comments, and as the summer unfolds I'll be posting short reviews of my own summer reading selections.

Six books I'm definitely going to be reading this summer:

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. The hbo miniseries has me hooked. I've got to go back and read this.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I'm a sucker for a Pulitzer Prize winner, especially since hbo has the rights to this, as well!

The Cloud Corporation by Timothy Donnelly. My list wouldn't be complete without some poetry. Speaking of:

The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer. I re-read these every summer. If you haven't read 'em, you should. The Fitzgerald translations are the best.

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. I've had my eye on this one for awhile, actually, and I think a science title will round out my summer really well.

This isn't going to be enough to fill twelve+ weeks of summer, however, so be on the lookout for additions over the next several weeks. And don't be shy about sharing your favorites in the comments!

Call For Guest Posts!

2011-05-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

gentle readers!

I will be taking vacation time the week of Memorial Day, so I'm going to need five—count 'em, five—guest posts to go up from Monday, May 30th to Friday, June 3rd. And one of them could be yours!

Who: You!

What: One (1) guest post per customer. Please try to keep them in the neighborhood of 300 to 1,000 words. Be creative! Feel free to include a brief bio (50 or so words) and a link to your blog/website, if you have one. Reposts of material from your own blog are 100% fine.

When: You have until 11:59 pm on Monday, May 23rd. I'll announce the five winning posts on Wednesday, May 25th, and they'll be posted Monday, May 30th through Friday, June 3rd.

Where: Right here, on pmn!

Why: I'll be out of town and 100% incommunicado. The show, however, must go on, and I need your help to ensure that happens.

How: Please paste your post into the body of an e-mail and send it along to pimpmynovel [åt] gmail [døt] com (see link at right).

On your mark—get set—go!

The Astounding Round Up

2011-05-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Happy Friday, readers and readerettes. Have you, like T. Rex, invented genres lately? Or have you been too busy fixing grammar in online reviews? Personally, I've been using a new Audible service to record all of my diaries as audiobooks. Self-publishing goes audio, friends. I expect to sell a million downloads, à la Charlaine Harris and ebooks, so I can afford to buy every Star Wars ebook when they come out.

In other news, did you know that Eeyore is the archetypal outsider in literature, and that fantasy maps have some sort of significance? This falls under one of my favorite headings, "Intellectualizing pop culture." Which is exactly what we should all do in our analysis of Levi Johnston's book cover, and the self-identification from reading Harry Potter. I'd rather read about Danielle Steel talking about Danielle Steel, and then pay $25,000 for a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

That's all I've got for today—until next week!

This Is My Shocked Face

2011-05-11T10:00:00.002-04:00

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about the greater e-book market, word has it that HarperCollins is attributing their drop in paperback sales to sales of e-book editions, reporting that "the mass-market paperback is the thing we're going to cannibalise most."

British spellings of "cannibalize" notwithstanding, let me just say: I'm 0% surprised by this.

I feel for you, J.E. Medrick (see yesterday's comments), but as I've said before, I just don't see how the mass market format can survive over the next five or so years.

The mass market paperback offers the following:

· Low price point;
· Relative portability;
· Higher disposability (readers are more willing to chuck a mass market paperback than a trade paperback or hardcover);
· Wide availability (book stores, grocery stores, department stores, drug stores, &c).

The e-book offers the following:

· Low (on average) price point (and getting lower);
· High portability;
· High disposability (though you wouldn't need to, since e-book files occupy no physical and very little digital space);
· Wide availability (at least in the United States).

Additionally, both formats are dominated by adult (as opposed to children's) fiction and cater to similar audiences (middle-aged women).

I think once the price of e-readers (specifically the Kindle) consistently drops below the $100 mark, mass market paperback sales will start taking a real beating. To my mind, the only barrier to the complete cannibalization of mass market paperback sales by electronic books—in the United States, anyway—is the price of the e-reading device; remove that, and there's no reason to keep the mass market around. Print runs of any real quantity will rapidly become a waste of money, and I don't think anyone would really want a POD mass market paperback when they could just as easily get a POD trade paperback.

While I do think the mass market will physically exist for longer than five years, I think that existence will be limited to personal libraries and used book stores.

What do you think, ladies and gentlebros?

The Final Frontier

2011-05-09T10:00:00.002-04:00

There's been talk—a lot of talk, mes auteurs—about the shift from print to digital media in the book publishing industry, both in a general sense and on this blog in particular. E-readers are becoming more ubiquitous every year; more and more books are consumed electronically; physical print runs are getting smaller and smaller.

However! It's important to remember that simply because something is the case in the United States doesn't mean it's necessarily true for the rest of the world. (I happen to believe civilization ends at the Hudson, but that's another story.)

The shift toward e-books isn't as pronounced in other English-speaking countries as it is in the United States, which is probably as much a function of platform/device availability/e-book rights as it is purely one of population size. For instance, e-book sales in the UK in 2010 were £180MM, or about $294MM; compare that to US 2010 e-book sales of $441.3MM.

US e-book sales were up $165% over the previous year, pushing their sales to 8% of the overall market (up from 3%); in the UK, the increase over 2009 sales was a much more modest 20%.

There is a word for this, folks, and it's spelled B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Now, I have some theories about how e-books will come to parity with physical media in markets across different continents—and I can post about those eventually, if folks are interested—but the main point is that physical books aren't losing ground to electronic media as quickly or in the same ways as is occurring here in the United States. Even after we hit e-parity in the United States (my guess is 2013), there will still be a sizeable demand for English-language physical books overseas.

I do expect that, eventually, physical books will be left more or less to the bibliophiles. The fact that this may happen in a matter of years in the US, however, is no reason to believe it will happen as quickly or to the same extent elsewhere.

The Dog Ate My Round Up

2011-05-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Hello, round up readers I may have abandoned previously! I missed last week for good reasons though. I was busy clarifying Cary Grant's sexuality, correcting gender bias in children's books, plus opening a book store that only sells my book, and also writing every type of awful dating advice book.

No? Don't believe me? Well, maybe I was casting Bradley Cooper as the devil in a Paradise Lost movie, and voting on Max Barry's book cover, and also potentially advising Neil Gaiman on dealing with bullies. Still don't believe me? Ok, well, maybe I just didn't get my shit together. So... snaps to me?

Listen, my life is super hard. I have to deal with classic book mistakes and 3D sci-fi book covers. And I friggin' hate 3D. Also, I was busy watching Oscar Wilde style Jersey Shore videos and patting zombies and checking out this typography timeline.

There were also actually good book trailers, which is such a rarity that they had to be watched. I also had to read about the 75-year anniversary of Gone With the Wind (not that I really gave a damn), about the problems with American novels about terrorism, and about why everyone is so excited about the kids' book Go the Fuck to Sleep.

So, friends and foes, the long and short of it is: I'm full of excuses to explain away poor planning. And I hope you all accept the excuses of an anonymous blogger who doesn't get paid to troll the Internet and spew stuff about books into the endless void of interwebs. Wait, that was sad. Quick, smell some Karl Lagerfeld paper perfume and read up on writing rules for beginners. See you next week! You know, unless I flake out. Again.

In Blackest Night

2011-05-04T10:00:00.002-04:00

It's raining in New York City, mes auteurs, which (to me) means: movie day!

Now, I know not everyone is as big a nerd as I am, so I understand if you only have a vague familiarity with (or have never even heard of) the Green Lantern. But he's been my favorite superhero since I was a kid (occasionally taking second place to Batman), and I am really, really excited that this movie is coming out.

June 17th!

5.1.2011

2011-05-02T10:00:00.003-04:00

First, apologies for the lack of round-up on Friday! I promise this week's round-up will be ultra mega awesome to make up for it. Should I be raising expectations that Laura will have to fulfill? Probably not!

Today's post is not book-related (or it is, sort of, in a very tangential way). If you haven't seen the news yet—and I can't imagine you haven't—Osama bin Laden is dead.

I'm not comfortable celebrating anyone's death, though I won't pretend to be upset by the news. I'm glad he's no longer a threat, regardless of the fact that it took us nearly a decade to catch him and he was operationally hindered by his constant flight from U.S. forces over the past several years.

Would I rather have seen him tried for his crimes? Of course. I don't think he would have permitted himself to be captured, however, and if this is the way it had to end, that's fine with me. Again: I'm glad he's gone.

I became a New Yorker only recently; I wasn't in the city (and in fact had never visited it) when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed. I watched on the news and had no firm grasp of what was going on. Maybe if I had been there ten years ago, I would have joined the crowds celebrating bin Laden's death last night, regardless of the fact that I didn't support the war in Iraq and am deeply conflicted about the war in Afghanistan. I certainly don't think this spells the end of the "War on Terror," as Peter Bergen unctuously insisted on cnn last night.

There are going to be books about this: biographies of bin Laden, coffee table books detailing the 9/11 attacks, compendiums on Al Qaeda, maybe even first-person accounts by members of the military directly responsible for bin Laden's death. I can promise you that this minute, any publisher with bin Laden-related titles in his backlist is going back to print; anyone under contract to write a non-fiction book about the man is probably being rushed to finish it.

The story goes back years. People will want to buy and read it. Time is of the essence with news-related titles like these, though I imagine the tenth anniversary of the attacks next September will widen the window of opportunity.

Osama bin Laden was buried at sea to prevent his tomb from becoming a shrine for radicals and radicalism—there can be no locus around which his followers might congregate. At the same time, however, it is important to write and to read books about these events to preserve them in our cultural memory. As the philosopher George Santayana wrote over one hundred years ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We've witnessed tremendous violence these past ten years. If we can't learn from these events, we've got no hope of transcending them.

I hope that bin Laden's death signals a turning point in the war in Afghanistan rather than an event to galvanize his supporters. I hope that someone even worse than him doesn't emerge as a replacement. I hope that the Al Qaeda terrorist network suffers a loss of morale and organization with his death (again, operationally speaking, I don't think there will make much of an impact). And I hope that among all the polarizing, attention-grabbing, and politically motivated books on his life and death that arise over the next year or so, that there's at least one that invites us to think rather than emote, to reflect rather than react.

Santayana had another quote, too: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." I also hope he was wrong about that.

Better Know A Conference: BEA

2011-04-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

Overview

This week in Better Know a Conference: BEA, or Book Expo America.

BEA is the premier American trade show for commercial book publishers. I've been to the last four conferences, and honestly, it's overwhelming: thousands of industry professionals, publishers, librarians, and members of the media congregate to network, meet authors, sign books/have books signed, attend panels, buy/trade finshed books/advance copies, and get a look at the forthcoming titles from trade publishers all across the spectrum (and country).

Everyone from the Big Six publishers to small literary houses to academic presses will be present, so there's quite literally something for everyone. This year's conference is taking place from Monday, May 23rd to Thursday, May 26th at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

The Pros

· BEA is the event for trade publishers in the United States, so everyone who's anyone is usually there. (Think of it as our version of the London or Frankfurt Book Fairs.) Fancy publishers, famous authors, and members of the media (now including bloggers—see below!) will be milling about, so the opportunities to meet celebrities and/or network are pretty much endless.

· This year the BlogWorld and New Media Expo will be co-locating with BEA, so attendees will be able to learn about everything from monetization to social media marketing techniques. Welcome to the publishing world of tomorrow!

· A number of concurrent events—including a day-long "DIY" panel on publishing and self-publishing for aspiring authors on Saturday, May 21st and a book blogger convention on Friday, May 27th—will round out the Expo. Will I be at said book blogger convention? You'll have to go to find out!

· For those of you writing children's books, BEA will be featuring programming by children's book professionals, including the ABA's ABC Children's Book Group and the Children's Book Council.

The Cons

· The major con: you have to have some connection to the industry to attend. BEA uses a system of badge categories—ranging in price from $80 to $310 for three-day passes—for everyone from authors to retailers. If you don't have a direct connection to the industry, you can register as a friend or family member of an attendee, so long as they've already registered and you accompany them to the conference.

· Unlike other conferences I've profiled, BEA isn't focused on up-and-coming authors or the public, but is more centered around established authors and industry insiders. This means that there are no one-on-ones with agents, no conferences with editors, and virtually no chance of showcasing your work. You might get lucky and meet an agent or editor willing to look at your mss, but the chances are pretty much zero. Leave your most recent book at home.

· As is the case with all conferences (and New York City conferences in particular), BEA is expensive. Travel, lodging, conference fees, and souvenirs could easily set you back over $1,000, even if you only stick around for the three main days of the conference (Tuesday, May 24th; Wednesday, May 25th; and Thursday, May 26th).

· BEA is enormous, extraordinarily busy, and can easily overwhelm even the stoutest heart. This is definitely not a conference for rookies (as I quickly learned at my first BEA, which was also my first book conference ever).

Some DOs and DON'Ts

· DO wear comfortable clothes, including shoes. The Javits Center is enormous (which means a lot of walking) and is relatively far from subway stations (which means a lot of walking). For a break from walking, try the author signing pavilion for a lot of standing.

Also, the end of May in New York City is usually hot and humid. Pack accordingly!

· DON'T bring manuscripts to the conference. Don't even do this at conferences that are aimed at connecting writers with agents and editors. Which BEA is not. So don't do it.

PS: Really.

· DO bring a couple of canvas or collapsible nylon bags. They'll have them at the conference, but you're going to be taking home a lot of books (even as we progress further and further into the Digital Future of Publishing). Also buttons. Oh, and bookmarks. And pens. You get the idea.

· DON'T be intimidated. Sure, there are a lot of people. Sure, none of them are going to be interested in your writing right off the bat. So what? Chat up people manning the publisher booths, befriend librarians, make small talk with a couple of authors. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you never know when a connection might come in handy.

· Lastly, DO have a game plan. There's way too much to see and do for you to see and do it all, so make sure you review the schedule of events. You don't want to miss getting a book signed by Your Favorite Author or hearing a panel presentation on That Topic You've Had Questions About Forever.

That's it for this installment, folks. Questions and suggestions in the comments!

How to Book a Reading

2011-04-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

A few of you have asked me about this, mes auteurs, and since I recognize many of you are working with reduced marketing dollars/publicity attention (or are perhaps even tackling the publication process solo), I thought I'd offer a few pointers.

First of all, make sure you're really ready to read your work in front of friends, family, and strangers, and be sure you've got something to offer that will encourage various venues to host you as a reader. I think it goes without saying, but the more of an "in" you have with the owner, staff, reading organizer, &c, the less well-published or well-known you really need to be.

If, on the other hand, you want to read at Fancy New York City Lounge and you don't know any of the staff there, you'll need an impressive publishing credit or two (or a well-connected friend) to help get your foot in the door.

Next, I'd make a list of the following three types of venues:

1. Places that host readers/reading series where you have a connection with the owner(s) or staff;
2. Places that don't necessarily host readers/reading series but where you have a connection with the owner(s) or staff;
3. Places that host readers/reading series that you admire (but you have no connection with the staff).

In that order! As I've said before: after a certain point, who you know becomes much more important than what you know.

Don't limit yourself to bookstores, either (though they're a great option); cafés, bars, and community centers (your local YMCA, synagogue, community college, library, school auditorium, you name it) are also excellent options.

Once you have your list of potential venues, get in touch with them about a possible reading. A few tips on this:

· If you know the person who runs the readings/venue, give them a call! No-brainer.

· If the venue has a dedicated person who arranges these kinds of events and you're not already best bros with them, call or send a Very Professional E-mail to that person. Call during business hours; shoot an e-mail if it's very early or very late.

· If there's no dedicated contact person, call or e-mail the venue's general number/e-mail address. If you call, be prepared to be handed off to a couple of different people, especially if the place you're calling doesn't usually do readings. Don't lose heart! Or your patience.

· Be professional! If you call, be prepared to talk a little bit about yourself (assuming they ask). If you e-mail, feel free to include a short bio or a link to your website. Remember: the less well you know the venue and its staff, the more established you'll need to be to get a positive response.

· I wouldn't include any kind of sample material with the initial e-mail; most places that are interested in hosting you will ask for it, either as an electronic file (poems, short stories) or in the form of your most recent book.

And that's pretty much it! Once you've cast your net, all you need to do is wait for a response. If you don't receive one, I think it's fair to follow up in a week or two to check in.

If they say no: try again elsewhere.

If they say yes: congratulations! You're doing a reading! Here are some tips for that, courtesy of Brad Phillips.

April Showers Bring May Round Ups

2011-04-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Most important things first, friends and foes: HBO has already renewed Game of Thrones. After one episode. Nice work there, HBO. I thought it looked amazing, and I love the cast, but I just wasn't very involved in the story. Maybe because I know how it ends up? Probably because I don't think they can do it justice in a ten episode season. Speaking of not doing justice, did anyone else not like the trailer for The Help? I'm a big Emma Stone fan and I still didn't like it. It just seemed like a rom-com trailer for a decided not rom-com book. But that's just me? Either way, it's got to be better than these terrible literary adaptations.

Abrupt subject change: did you know that, statistically, you're never going to read all the stuff you should? This is a response to Roger Ebert's plea for more well-read folks, and I think it's a fair point. Instead of trying to read boring things we should all spend more time doing all things Laura Ingalls Wilder, and living the Wilder life. Or watching more TV, because James Frey is going back to Oprah, which I think is just to keep him from being sad that he's not one of the six authors on Time's 100 most influential list, and he doesn't have a new HBO series like Jennifer Egan (or, while we're at it, a Pulitzer like Jennifer Egan). He doesn't even have a play like The Shack. Sad face!

I'm off to do Friday things—have a holly, jolly weekend, and see you next week.

Now You Can a Borrower and a Lender Be

2011-04-20T10:00:00.001-04:00

In case you haven't yet heard, dear readers, the Kindle has caught up with the Nook in one important regard: later this year, you'll be able to borrow Amazon's e-books from public libraries. Odds of me getting a Kindle: slightly improved.

Amazon will be teaming up with OverDrive, a leading provider of digital content for thousands of libraries across the country, to enable a borrowing system analogous to that available with Barnes & Noble's Nook. As far as I know, there are no details yet on exactly when this feature will be ready, but I expect it will be well in advance of the holiday season (to help persuade yours truly, among others, to buy one).

So! This leads me to a two-part Prithee, Inform Me:

1. If you own a Nook, how often do you use the library lending feature? Do you enjoy it?

2. Does Amazon's announcement impact your desire to own a Kindle in any significant way? If you don't yet own an e-reader (but would like one), would this cause you to purchase a Kindle over a Nook?

I realize the devices differ in a number of ways apart from the question of lendability (I've played with a lot of e-readers for "work"), but I think the question is interesting and useful regardless, especially as libraries scramble to figure out what role they'll play in the publishing world of tomorrow.

Thoughts? Theories? Tholiloquies?

Three Cups of Baloney

2011-04-18T10:00:00.004-04:00

That title actually grossed me out a little more than I expected. My apologies.

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, it's looking like Greg Mortenson may have made up a lot of stuff in his books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, and now Jon Krakauer is calling him out on it. (You can download Krakauer's .pdf book, Three Cups of Deceit, for free for a limited time.)

The problem of partially fabricated memoirs isn't new to the industry; you probably remember Margaret B. Jones' Love and Consequences, which was found to be totally fraudulent not long after it was published, as well as the much more infamous "memoir" by James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, which was also (much) less than honest (the Daily Beast mentions both here).

Now, the allegations of fiscal misappropriation against Mortenson aside—as I think that's a very different, and far more serious, question—do you think it matters if the/a story is true or not? Does "memoir" mean "fact," or does it mean "how I remember it, which may or may not be super true"?

If this seriously offends/bothers you (it seriously offends/bothers me), what do you think publishers can do to remedy the situation (besides the easy and vague answer of "do a better job of fact-checking")? What actions should be taken against house and author, and should/how can we differentiate between memoirs that are "mostly true," "somewhat true," "fraudulent," &c &c?

Theories, questions, and diatribes in the comments!

Rounding Up is Half the Battle

2011-04-15T10:00:00.002-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Today is a day of learning, friends and foes. Perhaps we should all read up on some Shakespeare first, so we can be smarter for all the learnings we're going to do. Or we can listen to Shakespeare with Audible's half off sale (why yes, I am a sucker for discounts, thank you for noticing). First we're going to learn about the secret history of ads in books from this New York Times link, which I think is a response to Amazon's discounted, ad supported Kindle. As a side note, I'm trying to wean myself off of NYTimes articles, because there is no way I'm paying my money to read something Gawker is just going to digest and spit back up for me later. So apologies in advance to those of you who have, like me, hit your free article limit from home, your phone, and your office, and refuse to pay. As another side note, Amazon: drop the Kindle to $85 and I'll take as many ads as you want to dish out.

Anywho. We can also learn how a book makes history, and also how publishing has changed since 1984 (the answer is "computers and smaller expense accounts"). We can learn even more about Twilight from the Twilight official illustrated guide. Yes, such a thing exists. And it's educational. Also educational is this treatise on why writers should embrace social media, as well as addiction. It turns out that Borders employees are hilarious, you can win a speaking role in the audiobook of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and puns, like Alf, are back.

In Laura-related news, the most important of news, I found out I've been using nonplussed incorrectly forever, and that my favorite kid's book proves that I am a boyfriend stealer. Shame on you, Little Women, and your loose morals. I should have stuck with Green Eggs and Ham, read by President Obama, or with the bit of Roald Dahl I can read on a cereal box.

We'll, I'm off to take a nap in a giant book. Until next week!

The New Bibliophiles

2011-04-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

Many people describe themselves as bibliophiles—book lovers—and I think many of you would count yourselves among them. Why would you be here if you didn't love books? Books: the bomb diggity. I think we all agree.

However! I ask myself (and, by extension, you): will the meaning of the word change over the next couple of years? That is, I wonder whether bibliophiles will become analogous to and as niche as, say, audiophiles.

Everyone listens to music; not everyone is an audiophile. And not everyone who loves music is an audiophile! These are the people who invest a lot in speaker equipment, often prefer analog to digital music, and spend time in small communities of like-minded individuals. They own a lot of stuff on vinyl. They know a lot of jargon that no one outside their subculture understands.

Just as audiophiles comprise their own niche community/market, I wonder whether tomorrow's bibliophiles will read and buy books similarly, what with their "eccentric" attachment to print and the experience of reading a physical book, their willingness to spend a lot of disposable income on rare books, and their predisposition toward (irony of ironies!) spending time on-line talking to people who also prefer to read physical books rather than electronic ones.

Record companies recognize the existence of the audiophile/enthusiast market and continue to release a small number of vinyl albums, regardless of the fact that most people listen to music electronically. Which is exactly the point! Vinyl is not aimed at most people, while electronic music is. I think that over the next couple of years, we'll see the same change in the book market. Most people will read electronically, and bibliophiles will read and supply the niche market for paper books.

This isn't to say that bibliophiles won't read electronically—I expect many will. The distinction I'm trying to get at is that consumers will do what they do best—consume—in the least expensive and least inconvenient way possible, which is to say, electronically. Enthusiasts, aficionados, collectors, connoisseurs—bibliophiles—will buy and read physical books and will maintain physical libraries.

For this reason, mes auteurs, I think there will always be a market for physical books—particularly coffee table books or collector's editions, which don't translate as well to the electronic medium—but that market will surely become much smaller, while the overall market for books will increase. The e-book is the future of publishing; the book buff is the future of the physical book.

What do you think?

Schedule, Schedule, Schedule

2011-04-11T10:00:00.003-04:00

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, mes auteurs, then you're familiar with my opinion that, even beyond talent and luck, a writer needs discipline in order to succeed. John Gardner once wrote: "Most of the people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers" (bold emphasis mine). So: what does it mean to be a writer?

· You need to create and keep a schedule. If you can only write from 6:00 am to 6:45 am on Tuesdays, guess when you're writing? Bingo: 6:00 am to 6:45 am, every Tuesday.

It can be difficult to dedicate time to writing when you feel you have very little of it, since the payoff takes so long to realize. Even writing forty-five minutes a day, however, will get you a first draft of a short novel in about a year (assuming a modest 250 words in 45 minutes x five days per week x 52 weeks per year = 65,000 words).

· You need to be disciplined. Not only do you have to carve out the time to put your butt in the chair, you have to use that time wisely. No checking e-mail, no reading webcomics, no on-line shopping. Write longhand, go somewhere without wi-fi, turn off your router if you have to. When you're writing, you're writing. Period.

This can be difficult if you work long hours or have kids to take care of, but remember: there must be some time in the day, if even only a few minutes, during which you can write. Find it, set it aside, and use it regularly.

· You need to be willing to revise. Virtually nothing comes out perfectly the first time. While it can be frustrating to write that final sentence of a first draft and realize you're not even remotely done, you can't quit and decide your first effort will have to be good enough. Find some trusted readers and get busy cutting, recasting, and expanding.

· You can't give up easily. Every writer's life is full of rejection; I don't need to bust out the tired clichés and examples for you. Your short stories will get rejected, your novels will get rejected, you may have to try a dozen times to find an agent. If you're self-publishing, you may find your first half-dozen attempts sell as many copies before settling to the bottom of Amazon's title list. If you're thin-skinned, build some calluses. If you're prone to giving up easily, this isn't the business for you.

· Maintain your relationships with other writers. If people you know are writing, submitting, and publishing, it'll keep the pressure on you to stay on top of your game. Ultimately, your own expectations and motivations will determine your success, but it helps to have other people pushing you forward, intentionally or not. Plus, as I've said, it never hurts to network. Recommendations and referrals jump-start literary careers all the time.

But! You tell me, folks: what do you do to keep yourselves motivated?

Saturday is the New Friday

2011-04-09T10:00:00.003-04:00

Saturday round up with Laura:

So, yea, it's a little late. My bad, friends and foes. But, as a consolation, the first twelves minutes of HBO's A Game of Thrones is online. Please feel free to ignore the rest of this round up and watch, because it's way worth it. Winter is coming, folks. Winter is coming!

If you can't really justify a quarter hour of watching awesomeness, you can check out this New Yorker profile of George R.R. Martin. If you have a subscription. Which I don't. But it could be great? Martin sure makes it hard to read his stuff, although he's not the worst offender. There's also this new J.J. Abrams book deal, which should be awesome, some wonderful Tina Fey on her book, and, oh hey, a Harry Potter exhibition in NY.

But seriously. Watch the Game of Thrones clip. All I have left is the probation of the pedophile guide writer, the profane version of From Here to Eternity, and instructions for disposing of holy books without pissing anyone off. Oh, and of course, the Stephen King and John Mellencamp musical. It makes sense if you don't think too hard.

So enjoy your weekend—maybe find love in a book store, or have a literary smackdown. Until next week!

Better Know A Conference: SCBWI

2011-04-06T10:00:00.004-04:00

Overview

This week in Better Know a Conference: the SCBWI (the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators).

The 2011 winter conference just occurred in New York City (January 28th through 30th), but never fear! There's a summer conference being held in Los Angeles August 5th through 8th of this year, and it's never too early to gear up for SCBWI Winter 2012 (to be held January 27th through 29th in New York City).

The Pros

· As mentioned above, there are two SCBWI national conferences per year, which means twice the number of opportunities to attend—regardless of your preferred season or coastal affiliation! (Unless you love fall and are from Kansas, in which case you can pick either one.)

While I think it's probably overkill to attend both conferences in a given year, I think it's a really good idea to switch up your choice from year to year (if you can). You'll likely meet different folks and form a more comprehensive view of the children's book market, which will help you both in terms of networking and developing new projects.

· This conference has an additional audience! Not only do you get to hang out with writers, authors, agents, editors, publishing professionals, &c, but you also get to meet and network with illustrators.

Now: I'm no expert on children's books, but from what I understand, it's the editor—not the author—who ultimately selects the illustrator(s) who will work on any given children's book project. Keep in mind, then, that you're not going to this conference to "pick" an illustrator, but it never hurts to network with them. Not only can you make some new friends, but it can help you immensely to have connections in your field (think recommendations, referrals, opportunities for collaboration, &c &c).

· There are a variety of regional events throughout the year in case you missed the last national conference or can't afford to go to the next one. With dozens of events being held in April alone and over 70 chapters in the United States (there are also international chapters!), there's bound to be something to interest you that's 1.) close to home and 2.) coming up soon.

The Cons

· As is virtually universally the case, national conferences cost a pretty penny. Registration for the winter 2011 conference ranged from $350 – $415 (depending on whether you were a member and whether you registered early), with optional pre-conference programming running an additional $200 – $225. Add to that the cost of travel and three nights' stay in New York City (over $200 per night, even with the SCBWI discounted room rate) and the whole shebang could easily set you back over $1,000.

· As mentioned above, the conference provides a great forum for authors and illustrators to meet and network. As also mentioned above, since editors generally pair authors and illustrators, it's unlikely you'll be able to use the conference as a way to find yourself an illustrator. By all means, if you really hit it off with an author/illustrator and want to pursue a side collaboration, go nuts, but don't expect to be able to sell the project to an agent or editor unless the two of you are already pretty well-known.

While I'm on the topic: for those of you who have experiences in this area, please post in the comments! I don't know as much about children's book publishing as I do about the adult side of the business.

· Because there are two conferences per year, most people will only attend one of them. Moreover, information about the subsequent conference (attending agents/editors, keynote speakers, and so on) probably won't be available while you're planning for the current one, so you'll invariably miss out on some events you'd like to attend/folks you'd like to meet. Again, switching up your venue (East Coast/West Coast) from year to year might be your best option (unless, of course, you've got the time and the cash to attend both each year).

Some DOs and DON'Ts

· DO network. It's why you're there! Don't be afraid to exchange contact information with other authors/illustrators, interested industry professionals, &c, &c.

· DON'T interrupt. Again, if you have a clear shot to briefly chat up an agent or editor, do go ahead, but don't interrupt them while they're engaged with someone else or while they're eating/otherwise occupied. It feels like a missed opportunity, I know, but trust me: it's much better to remain (temporarily) unknown than to make a bad impression.

· DO your homework. Read the SCBWI "Just Getting Started?" page, including their FAQ, as well as their official conference blog, which has invaluable information about past conferences. You can also look up the #NY11SCBWI hashtag on Twitter to review all the comments people made while they were actually in attendance.

· Finally, DON'T worry if you can't make/afford the national conference this year or next—as mentioned above, there are literally hundreds of regional events offered by the SCBWI year-round that you can take advantage of until you can go to nationals.

That's it for this installment, folks—questions and suggestions in the comments!

Prithee, Inform Me: E-Self-Publishing

2011-04-04T10:00:00.001-04:00

Following hot on the heels of Nathan's Author Monetization Week—and if you haven't read these posts, go read them right now—is yet another poll (o joy! O rapture!) to gauge just how many of you are considering electronically self-publishing your titles over taking the traditional route to publication.

Lo!

And on Wednesday: Better Know A(nother) Conference!

April Fools' Day Round Up

2011-04-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

Yet another Friday round up with Laura:

Today's round up is going to be a drive-by, boys and girls—quick, violent, and super lame. If you're into long, drawn-out things, there's a Game of Thrones book club to prep for both the HBO series and the new book coming out. Be excited, folks! And join in if you haven't already read these. You can make your own Etsy book cover, if that makes you happier. Or you can make a dress from the book! Or from Golden Books, if you prefer. Maybe use these fifty books you can live without reading. I would add to that list Perez Hilton's book for kiddies, since it'll probably suck, he's a terrible role model for not bullying people, and also, what year is this? Does anyone read his blog anymore?

Also terrible looking: the 3D trailer for The Three Musketeers. And if you're looking for depressing, please see the change, or lack thereof, in bestseller lists over a decade. And as long as we're going back in time, yes, typewriters, the girls from Sweet Valley, and David Foster Wallace are all back.

That's it for today, folks—see you next week, with more shenanigans.

Getting Your Name Out There

2011-03-30T10:00:00.001-04:00

As I've mentioned a few times, gentle readers, an author's name is a brand, a social currency, a form of capital: it can signal cultural awareness ("Have you read the new book by so-and-so?"), serves as synecdoche for a book's actual content ("Have you read the new Suzanne Collins? Well, she wrote it, it must be good,"), and even acts as a seal of approval (e.g. reviews and blurbs).

So how do you get yours out there?

Well, the most obvious answer is to write a fantastic book that people love. Until then, however, there are a few things you can do to get your name and your writing on readers' radars.

Attend events. There's no substitute for face time, mes auteurs. Attending readings, book signings, panel discussions, conferences, conventions, and other literary events in your genre of interest will not only help you fill out your mental Who's Who, but will help raise your profile among other readers and writers interested in the sorts of books you are.

Write reviews. Just behind talking about themselves, people love reading about themselves. Write reviews of books you love by authors you admire, link to them, and spread a little good karma. The worst that'll happen is your name will be in print or on-line in one more place than it was previously; the best that'll happen is that the author will repost, retweet, link to, or otherwise call out your stellar review, and that can help raise awareness of your name significantly.

Participate in social media. You won't have the time or money to attend every in-person event you'd like, but that doesn't mean you're in any way cut off from the writing community of your choice. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to communicate with people you might never otherwise meet, and maintaining a web presence (website and/or blog) provides you a sort of digital storefront for you and your work. Networking has never been easier than with the biggest network (of networks) on the planet: the Internet.

Publish your short fiction. If you write short stories, submit 'em for publication. A nice array of publication credits in print and/or on-line will not only help build awareness of your brand, but may attract attention from agents and editors. Should you decide to go it alone and self-publish your work electronically, you can sell your short stories on the cheap to attract consumers for your novel. Again: worst case scenario, your name comes up more often in print, in conversation, and/or on-line.

Ideas? Theories? Tried-and-true methods? To the comments with you!

Better Know A Conference: RWA National

2011-03-28T10:00:00.002-04:00

I've been reading your comments on last Wednesday's post, mes auteurs, and I'd like to kick off Better Know a Conference with a discussion of the RWA (Romance Writers of America) National Conference. (Don't worry—future installments will cover other genres, conventions/conferences of different sizes, &c, &c.)

Overview

Every summer, the Romance Writers of America host a conference in a major city for authors, fans, and industry professionals to participate in workshops, attend panel discussions, and listen to featured speakers discuss everything from their most recent novels to the state of the romance novel in today's publishing environment. The last few conferences have been held in Orlando, Washington, D.C., and San Fransisco; this year's conference is June 28th – July 1st in New York City.

The Pros

· You don't have to be a romance writer to attend, or even be a member of the RWA! (Membership dues run around $110/year.) Anyone with the cash for the registration fee can attend the conference (see below).

· Writers (published and un-) can make appointments to meet with agents and editors whose bread and butter is buying and selling romance titles. How cool is that?

· There are special events for non-authors (read: book signings), librarians, industry professionals, and so on, so even if you don't write romance novels, there will be something interesting for you to do. If you do write romance novels: you're in luck! There are workshops, receptions, and awards ceremonies galore.

· The networking opportunities are virtually endless. You'll get to meet unpublished writers, début authors, established authors, agents, editors, publicists, and more. There's no reason you should go home without having made at least one new connection.

· The RWA National Conference is HUGE. Take the time to explore as much as possible.

The Cons

· You do have to pay registration fees to attend, and non-members pay higher fees (though if you only want to go to meet authors, and not to network as an author yourself, the "Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing is free and open to the public).

As for those fees: the early member fee is $525, and non-members will have to shell out $600. After the "early" period ends in mid-May, registration fees go up.

· As you might imagine, those one-on-one sessions are hard to come by (priority goes to Golden Heart and RITA finalists), so while the networking opportunites at the conference are significant, don't expect to hang out with your dream agent/editor. My advice? Network with your fellow writers. You never know when a recommendation from a new friend might land you a contract.

· The networking opportunities are enormous because the sheer volume of people there is enormous—that is, it can be overwhelming for first-time attendees. This may not be the best romance convention for rookies to attend, and I'd recommend cutting your teeth on smaller, regional conferences before attempting this one.

· The RWA National Conference is HUGE. You can't explore all of it, so you'll have to prioritize when it comes to attending the various sessions. You'll inevitably want to attend two events that occur simultaneously, so be prepared to make some tough decisions.

Some DOs and DON'Ts

· DO be professional. Wear business casual attire (except for appointments, which are business attire, and the awards night, which is formal). That old adage of "be friendly, but not familiar" is probably not a bad idea, especially when speaking with editors or agents. That said: don't be afraid to make friends, especially with other authors/attendees! Network, network, network.

· DON'T bring your manuscript to the conference. Do you hear me? DO NOT do this. There is no chance an editor or agent will accept it at this venue. Best case scenario: you'll exchange contact information and that agent/editor will follow up with you. Most likely scenario: you send them a query after the conference and mention how great it was meeting them.

· DO have a game plan. If you don't have a semblance of an itinerary when you arrive, you'll probably miss out on a bunch of stuff you would have liked to see. Figure out what kinds of workshops, readings, panel discussions, &c you want to attend ahead of time.

· DON'T be too aggressive. It's sometimes very hard not to jump on an opportunity to network when Fancy McDreamAgent or Awesome CoolAuthorson is standing ahead of you in line for the restroom or lunch, but remember: authors, agents, and industry insiders attend these conferences chiefly to interact with each other, and they will not take kindly to being harangued or interrupted. If they're not busy and you just want to chat them up, feel free, but don't take the opportunity to pitch your book.

· DO your homework. Take the time to learn a bit about the authors who are signing, the editors making keynote addresses, &c &c. After all, you want people at this conference to take an interest in you and your work, don't you?

· DON'T forget to go sight-seeing. Yes, the conference is about romance novels and the people who write them, but it's also about getting to experience a new city. If there's a night with fewer events or an afternoon when you're relatively free, take the time to be a tourist for awhile.

· Finally, DO follow up with people you meet/exchange contact information with. Again: you never know when a connection will come in handy.

That's all for now, folks. Questions, &c in the comments!

Round Upocalypse

2011-03-25T10:00:00.001-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

It's the end of the world, boys and girls. Traditionally pubbed authors are self publishing, successful self-pubbers are going traditional, dogs and cats are living together—mass hysteria. Elizabeth Berkeley's book is good! Putting your lady character in a corset doesn't make her a strong character! The Wire is now a Victorian novel! Start hoarding your books and gather up the good aunts, because the apocalypse is a-comin'.

Just because the end is nigh doesn't mean we have to look shoddy, however. These clothing lines are inspired by literature, darlings. Feel free to dress up and read your favorite translated books while the band plays and the Titanic goes down. If you're a teacher you can save 30% at Borders in April, so you can spend more on clothes (if your local Borders is still open, that is). If not, you can get a cross stitch of your favorite literary quote.

I'm off to be productive—a novelty, I know—so play some publishing bingo, read your Elizabeth Taylor books, and I'll see you all next week.

Prithee, Inform Me: Your Favorite Conventions and Conferences

2011-03-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

I'd like to start a semi-regular segment next week, mes auteurs, tentatively titled "Better Know a Conference." To that end, I'd like to ask you: which writers'/authors' conferences/conventions are your favorites? Which do you attend regularly? Which would you like to learn more about? &c, &c.

Here I'm thinking more along the lines of genre conferences/conventions (e.g. Bouchercon, the Romance Writers of America annual conference), though more general events (e.g. ComicCon, Book Expo America) are also fair game.

To the comments!

Here Be Dragons (Rerun)

2011-03-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Meetings abound, mes auteurs, so it's a rerun for you today. Happy spring (it's official!) and see you later this week! — E

Episode: "Here Be Dragons"
Originally aired: Monday, October 11th, 2010

I wrote a post last April about myths and misconceptions in the industry, mes auteurs, and I think it's once again time to put a few rumours and unfounded fears to bed.

Onward! (Again!)

· You have to spend money to make money. Aside from incidental costs like paper, printer ink, and postage (and that's only for agents who still don't accept e-MSS), you shouldn't have to pay to submit your work. Let me say that again: no legitimate agent will charge you to read your manuscript or to represent you. Period.

· You have to know someone to get published. This one is sort of true, but let me re-emphasize: if your writing isn't good enough and you're not Justin Bieber or Lindsay Lohan or Kanye West, it doesn't matter who/how many people you know—you're not getting a book deal. Knowing someone greases the wheels; it doesn't build the machine.

· You don't have to promote your book; publishing houses have publicity and marketing teams for a reason. Unless yours is one of the publisher's lead titles, you're going to have to do some of your own legwork. Midlist authors at large houses and most authors at smaller houses have to be willing to do at least some self-promotion in order to give their books the best possible chance in the market. If you're asked to do podcasts, blog tours, physical book tours, readings, signings, or bookstore events, it's in your best interest to do as many as possible.

· E-books and self-publishing are going to make publishers, agents, and editors obsolete. It's true that the industry is changing rapidly and that, à mon avis, the Publishing World of Tomorrow will require fewer employees and companies. Roles will unquestionably change. But as long as people are willing to pay to read books, you're going to have people to sell them, manage their brands (i.e. you), market them, and make sure they're as strong as possible before publication. The future is not a bunch of people uploading their just-finished MSS to Amazon for immediate review and sale.

· Amazon is going to kill the independent/second-hand book store. While I can't say for sure this is 100% false, I'm very confident that Amazon will not kill independent, local, and second-hand book stores; there's no substitute for their ambience, knowledgeable staff, and propensity to stock hard-to-find titles. In fact, should Amazon manage to kill brick-and-mortar chains (which I think is the likelier scenario), indepedents might undergo a resurgence/renaissance of sorts. Think of it this way: chains are the dinosaurs, indies are the scrappy mammals, and Amazon is the asteroid.

That's all for today, meine Bros und She-Bros. Questions in the comments!

Round Up: The Ideas of March

2011-03-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

Friday round up with Laura:

Happy St. Patty's Hangover day, folks (or, for the true drinkers, happy regular Friday, I guess). Last week we discussed the state of American iconic fantasy characters and, while depressing, it turns out discussions are fun! So this week: it turns out The Very Hungry Caterpillar is being used to fight obesity. But what books are we using to fight childhood drug use? I vote for The Little Engine That Could (But Chose Not To). Suggestions in the comments, por favor.

In other news, James Frey is self-publishing a book about hipster Jesus. My note about this was "yawn," but I think I'll elaborate. One: a disruptive take on a religious figure? Won't somebody think of the children? Two: James Frey, aren't you running a writer sweatshop? I'd really prefer you stick to that, please, instead of trying to be controversial. And three: yawn. I'd rather go with this Ides of March reading list, or watch movies from the most adapted authors, or stare into space and imagine I'm watching this video. While we're on the grump train, WTF was this assisterati thing? Did anyone else vomit in his or her mouth? Repeatedly? Oh, wait, I forgot that everyone who works in publishing is a) an editorial person (except for almost everyone) and b) is working with literary fiction (except for almost everyone). (Zing! — E)

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Let's see...Ice-T and his wife Coco have novel deals. Bomb ass awesome, folks. There's also this great interview with the guys adapting A Game of Thrones, and Stephen King is both taking on time travel and supporting unions. What a guy, that Steve. I bet he watched these ten videos about creativity.

That's it from me folks. Check out these exciting April fiction events, think about your way of writing, and I'll see you next week.

In Case You Were Curious

2011-03-16T16:28:00.002-04:00

Just a quick reminder that PMN is always open to guest post submissions—just e-mail me your posts for consideration!

Lately, a few of you have asked what I actually do at work all day. Here's a rough breakdown by percentage:

Attending meetings: 20%
Collating things: 20%
Photocopying things: 10%
Fixing other people's copier jams: 15%
Fixing my own copier jams: 5%
Repeatedly requesting materials: 10%
Answering computer-related questions: 10%
Printing things that don't need to be printed: 5%
Printing things that do need to be printed: 4%
Directly helping sell books: 1%

Such is the life of the English major a few years after graduation. Sure, it's all cheap beer and pretentious Proust discussions while you're taking classes, but afterward it's... well, cheap beer and pretentious Proust discussions, but you also have to make PowerPoint presentations and Excel pivot tables.

What about you, mes auteurs? What do you do to pay the bills?

Nine Ways to Give a Better Reading

2011-03-15T10:00:00.003-04:00

by Brad Phillips

We've all been to that book reading—the one where the book's author is so dull that you decide to return the book to the store shelf and buy something else instead.

I've been to many book readings through the years, and only a couple stand out as exceptional (Dave Eggers’ reading for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a rare gem).

The good news is that it's not hard for authors to improve their readings. In this article, I’ll offer nine tips writers can implement immediately to inspire audience members to buy at least one copy at the store—and sell many more through word of mouth.

1. Test The Microphone and Logistics in Advance: This is an easy one, but too many authors approach the lectern for the first time when they're about to begin their reading. Inevitably, they have to adjust the microphone, figure out where to place their water, and arrange their papers. Avoid that lousy first impression by arriving early, taking in your surroundings, and testing the microphone before the first person arrives.

2. Don't Begin With Thank You: Book readings represent the culmination of a years-long writing and publishing process, and authors are understandably grateful to those who have helped them reach that moment. But authors who begin by thanking their publisher, editor, cover artist, publicity staff, and spouse risk putting their audiences to sleep.

Remember—a book reading is an opportunity to sell your book. If you begin your speech with a soporific or redundant opening, you're less likely to achieve your goal. Begin with something that grabs the audience's attention first—then go back, if necessary, and deliver your thank yous.

3. Don't Read The Book to The Audience: Your audience can read your book themselves. Little is more monotonous than hearing someone else reading words aloud. Great authors elevate the text by using a compelling vocal delivery to emphasize key phrases, increasing the tempo to build suspense, and modulating their volume to match the content. Listen to a bestselling book on tape to get a sense of how the pros do it.

4. Match the Talk to Your Strengths: Are you a great extemporaneous storyteller? Why kill that part of your personality by merely reading from your book? Instead, consider reading a small excerpt of the book, then telling an extemporaneous story (you can alternate between the two throughout your talk).

5. Err on the Side of Too Little: How long should your talk be? Just long enough to sell your book, and not a moment longer. That’s a hard balance to strike, but my bias is to be on the slightly too short side (perhaps that's because I'm 5'5". But I digress). It's better to leave your audience wanting more than to wear them down—so keep the reading to about half an hour (experienced speakers can go a bit longer), plus 15-20 minutes for questions. Stick around afterwards to answer remaining questions from audience members who approach you.

6. Set Up the Questions and Answers: Before you begin taking questions, tell the audience how long you plan to answer questions. Twenty minutes might feel like an eternity if they have no clue how long you're planning on going, but it's fine if they can anticipate when the ending point will arrive. Keep your answers short—five-minute answers tend to bog down the question and answer portion of the talk.

7. Prepare for the Obvious Questions: A surprising number of writers fumble through their answers to basic questions. Think through the answers to the most obvious questions in advance, such as:

"What does the title mean?"
"What did you learn when writing the book?"
"What was the biggest surprise along the way?"
"What did the subject(s) of the book think of it?"
"What are the subject(s) doing now?"
"Was the character inspired by a real person?"

8. Repeat Questions for the Audience: Since many book readings are recorded, this is important even in small groups when everybody can hear the question.

9. Don't Limp to the Finish Line: Great books have a great closing, and so do great book readings. Instead of ending your talk the moment you finish answering your last question, provide a quick wrap-up. Your official closing doesn't have to last long—30 – 60 seconds is fine—but even those few seconds allow you to leave the audience remembering exactly what you want them to.

If you're stumped, try adding a very short anecdote at the end. Choose one that is emblematic of your book's theme and that helps reinforce one of your book's main takeaway points.

(Check out the original post here.)

Brad Phillips is the author of the Mr. Media Training Blog, where a version of this story first appeared. His firm, Phillips Media Relations, specializes in media and presentation training.

Prithee, Inform Me: The Rules of Writing

2011-03-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and today I'd like to share with you, gentle readers/writers, his eight rules for writing fiction.

They are:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading charcters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(These are from the above link, which in turn borrows them from Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.)

Now, many successful writers have broken some (or nearly all) of these rules on several occasions, and I don't completely agree with all of them (my biggest quarrel is with #8). I do, however, think they comprise one of the better succinct "how-to" (or "how-not-to") guides to writing fiction, and I think they go a long way toward explaining why even fiction that isn't written that well can sell like hotcakes.

Yes: hotcakes.

Now, it should also come as no surprise to you that I am decidedly not a fan of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books (to use a somewhat dated example). However! I think they sell for many reasons apart from this country's recent obsession with vampires and the perpetual attraction of teenage girls to mysterious, well-coiffed boys. Some of those reasons include: Meyer gives the reader someone to root for; every characer in her books wants something; terrible things happen to her protagonists; &c, &c.

Some of Vonnegut's rules are a bit vague (see #1), but I think they nonetheless provide good benchmarks for whether or not one's fiction is, at the very least, functional. What I like best about them is that they're reader-oriented, not craft-oriented, so the question "What does the reader want? What will engage him/her?" is always paramount.

So I ask you, mes auteurs: what are your favorite writing quote/unquote rules? Which do you follow and which do you break? Which authors/books have proved themselves most useful to you when writing your own fiction?

To the comments!

Fantasy Football Doesn't Count

2011-03-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

Time for the Friday round up with Laura:

Before we do the official round up, Eric and have been having a "discussion" that has gotten "heated" and may start a "feud," that is entirely the fault of the British mail system. The Royal Mail is putting out fantasy stamps. Dumbledore, Aslan, Merlin—lots of folks. I tried to come up with a list of iconic fantasy characters from the US to start my own stamp system, but my suggestions of Spiderman and Crash Bandicoot and Darth Vader were rejected. So: thoughts? All of my ideas have been callously rejected, and shit's going to get serious soon. This is a cry for help. Please help.

So while you're thinking about that, think about this: Funny or Die has a new book imprint, but they're not publishing Bill Cosby's new book, or the new Shel Silverstein collection. Which, you know, sad. But I'm sure they'll do something good. I'm considering getting an Amazon Prime membership to get all of their new books, either with free shipping or downloaded on the Kindles Amazon might give to Prime members. I can read through all of the untrustworthy online book reviews before I read Archie babies or Goodnight Dune. Although those might be more iPad-y books. Either way, I can use my letterpress app to really fake that old timey paper book feeling, while I watch second hand bookshops go out of business.

I'm going to keep my old timey TV so I can watch this Michael Chabon magician versus Nazis HBO series. What, is that too much awesome in one sentence for you? Then you might want to cover your eyes, because it turns out Harlan Coben was in a frat with Dan Brown at Amherst. Also, there's this hugely detailed sci-fi map. Overwhelmed? Take a breather with this trailer for Water for Elephants—oh wait, Christoph Waltz, the most creepy adorable man in the world, is in this movie. You know what, maybe think about investing in a place to write that's nice and quiet and doesn't have exciting Christoph Waltz news.

So I'm out, readers. Please list great American fantasy characters I can put on stamps in the comments—this is very important for my emotional well being, and also because I need to one up Eric. Until next week!

Five Things to Know About the eRevolution

2011-03-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

Following up on Nathan Bransford's two posts on the subject, I'd like to throw in my own $0.02 on the theory of making bajillions of dollars self/e-publishing.

Actually, since this is a Top Five List™, make that $0.10.

1. Self/e-publishing is no more a get-rich-quick scheme than traditional publishing. The only difference is that rather than ending up in a drawer or as a doorstop or in the trash bin, a sub-par manuscript can now be made available to millions of people on the Internet in short order. However! Consider this:

Traditional publishing: your book isn't very good or is unsalable. You pay no/few up-front costs, get rejected by agents, and make no money.

Self-publishing electronically: your book might not be very good or salable, but you still might make a few sales. You pay no up-front costs and possibly make a few bucks.

Something is better than nothing, but after awhile you have to ask yourself whether the opportunity cost of spending months writing a novel and then only getting $50 through Amazon is worth it.

2. Think of e-books like apps. A beautifully written app that doesn't fill a niche may sell, but probably not well. A shoddily written app that fills a niche will probably sell better, but probably not well, and the next app that does the same thing better will quickly overshadow it. A beautifully written app that fills a niche will sell well, and through the Mysteries of the Internet, some become phenomenal bestsellers that earn their creators bajillions of dollars.

Ditto e-books.

3. Think about the advance in advance. The advance you can earn through traditional publishing may or may not end up being more than you'd make electronically (odds are it'll be more), but the beauty of the advance is in the word itself: you get it before you sell a single copy. Many midlist authors use money from their advances to finance author events, tours, &c that the publisher may not cover. Since you won't have that benefit with self-publishing electronically, most of you will have to rely on cheaper (or free!) methods of selling yourselves and your work.

4. Consider getting outside help. Even assuming you're a great writer, that doesn't necessarily mean you're a great editor, marketing manager, sales(wo)man, or graphic/web designer. If you know people who are, hire them! (Or, if you're best bros with said people but can't afford to hire them, ask for favors.) This is where that advance (see above) would come in handy. Maybe offer to cut them in on your profits.

5. Learn everything you can about the tools you're using. If you're selling through Amazon, learn as much as you can about how their search systems, recommendation systems, &c &c work. Read everything you can on search engine optimization (SEO), on-line advertising, and keywords in order to make sure your work is readily available when its title or your name is entered into search engines like Google or Bing. If you don't have time to do this, maybe ask that best bro of yours to do it for you (see above). If your best bro is already pretty knowledgeable about these things, so much the better.

As I've said before, mes auteurs, self-publishing is not a ticket to easy street and most self-published novels, electronic or physical, don't sell many copies. If you write a great book and do your research, however, it's possible to do pretty well for yourself.

Panic! at the Library

2011-03-07T10:00:00.004-05:00

As part of my ongoing coverage of the astounding (and often strange) turns the publishing industry is taking as it shifts from paper-based to electronic media, I bring you this, mes auteurs: The Consumerist's report that HarperCollins is capping e-book loans at 26 check-outs. If a library purchases a HarperCollins e-book, they can only lend it 26 times before it "expires" and the library must purchase a new license from the publisher.

This is, à mon avis, completely nuts for several reasons.

First, the idea of forced obsolescence is probably so repugnant to most librarians that, rather than buy and re-buy the same e-book over and over, they're probably just not going to purchase HarperCollins e-books.

The publisher seems to be betting on librarians' collective fear that if they don't stock their e-books, patrons will simply buy e-books on-line and the libraries won't be able to justify their continued existence. If there's a way to breed ill will among your customers (that is, the librarians actually purchasing books for their libraries), this is it.

Second, the number 26 seems completely arbitrary to me. I'm not privy to any of the logistical tinkering or number-crunching the folks at HarperCollins did in order to arrive at this figure, but it seems to me (and you can see from the video in the article) that physical books last much longer than 26 check-outs (and I can tell you from experience that they consistently survive many more).

It's possible that this is an average number that takes into account all the books that go on shelves and are never or rarely checked out, left to rot over a fifty-year period with only a couple of loans. If that's the case, though, libraries would chuck the book when it became unusable and would probably not buy a new one, since no one wanted the original to begin with.

If a publisher is going to enforce a loan cap, I think it 1.) needs to be much higher than 26 (based entirely on my uninformed opinion), and 2.) should vary depending on the work in question. Harry Potter and the Seven Figure Advance is going to be borrowed a lot more often than Actuarial Mathematics for Dummies, and the loan cap should reflect this.

Finally, the whole reason the loan cap exists is as an analogue to the wear and tear suffered by physical books that eventually need replacing. I think one of the most destructive tendencies inherent to the publishing industry is not its resistance to electronic media, but its slavish insistence on making them exactly like physical media.

Instead of panicking over a perceived loss in revenues caused by books that no longer need to be replaced, publishers should be touting the non-physical nature of e-books as a tremendous boon: "You'll never need to replace this e-book! That means that rather than buy a new copy of the same book, you can spend the money you'll save on more of our e-books."

E-books don't take up physical shelf space, so the limiting factor that once forced a librarian to choose between replacing a popular title that's worn out and purchasing a different title—that is, space—no longer exists. More titles sold is good for everyone.

My rant is over for today, meine Autoren, but what do you think? Should publishers be able to cap library loans, and if so, is 26 a reasonable number?

The Late Great Round Up

2011-03-05T10:00:00.002-05:00

~~Friday~~ Saturday round up time, with Laura:

Happy late round up, friends and foes. I'd promise it's going to be a good one, but you never know. You just don't. What I do know is that there's an on sale date for the next George R.R. Martin book. Does that actually mean anything? No one knows! If you need to practice reading huge amounts of text, maybe you should do a Bible readathon, even if all of the booty has been removed. If you're not interested, or you're like 30% of teens (and so only read one to two books a year), you might want to start with something less taxing, like selected Charlie Sheen poetry. It exists, I swear.

Are your books sick? Maybe they need to see a book surgeon. (And if anyone is in the market for a present for me, I'd take one of those surgered books.) Once the books feel better they can go visit matchstick Minas Tirith. While the paper books are gone, you can get a free Kindle with a new bank account, which I am actively considering. You could download some books by the self-pubbed Amazon best seller, or you can drop books altogether in favor of the Twilight convention, but only if you already have a ticket. Because it is sold. Out.

Are you excited for Bristol Palin's memoir? If so, you could probably use one of these non-judgmental reading dogs, because I am judging you so hard right now. While you're reading that I'll be participating in the presidential biography project, reading a biography of every US president. In order. Hello, Millard Filmore, you devil you.

That's it for me, tigers. See you next week!

The Agency Six

2011-03-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, the last Big Six holdout on the agency model—Random House—has capitulated. Effective this month, their e-books are now being sold under the new pricing system.

What does this mean for you, gentle readers?

As Consumers

It means two major things: one, you'll likely be able to purchase Random House's titles directly from the iBookstore, and not exclusively through a third-party app like the one Amazon has for the Kindle; and two, you may be paying slightly more for your e-books.

As you may recall from my earlier post on the subject, the agency model treats the retailer as a middleman making a commission, not as a vendor setting his or her own price after purchasing goods wholesale. This means that rather than buying an e-book from the publisher at a predetermined discount and selling it to you at however low a price they want, retailers must now sell Random House's e-books at the publisher's price, keeping a 30% cut for themselves and sending the remainder to the publisher.

Many have speculated that this move is likely fueled by Apple's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad 2 (you can follow the event live here). If this is the case (and I don't know if it is, since the involved parties aren't commenting to the media), it would seem to betoken a certain amount of faith in Apple's business model.

As Authors

Again, this is pure speculation, but I imagine e-book royalties may be affected by this move. And not just for those of you with Random House book deals: now that the world's largest trade book publisher has signed off on the agency model, I imagine a slew of smaller publishers will follow suit. If any of you, gentle readers, know more about this than I do, please feel free to educate me/your fellow readers in the comments.

I'm also curious to see how this vote of confidence in the Apple program influences iBookstore sales. Should Apple eventually sport e-sales figures on par with those of Amazon, I think the increased competition could speed up the shift toward market parity (that is, equal dollar sales of physical and electronic books). My current guess is that 2011 will see e-books top 10% of the overall market, and that 50% of the market will comprise electronic books by the middle of 2014.

Finally, I imagine Amazon is unhappy about this, since it seriously undercuts their ability to set prices in the industry. However, they, too have not officially commented (as far as I know).

What do you think, mes auteurs? And more importantly—are you getting a second generation iPad?

More Terms to Know

2011-02-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

In the world of publishing, mes auteurs, there are a lot of terms to know. As our digital overlords begin to claim more and more of this territory for themselves, I think an e-update of sorts is in order.

Therefore! I've put together a list of indispensable e-book/Internet-related terms I think you should know. If you think of any more (and I'm sure you will), please don't hesitate to post them in the comments.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). A system for separating a web page's or e-book's style/formatting from its content. For example: rather than putting a tag around every block of text that specifies the font as Garamond, you can just have CSS declare that all text should be in Garamond from the outset.

Think of it as like giving directions from the passenger seat of the car: you can just tell the driver, "go straight until I say otherwise" from the outset, rather than saying, "keep going straight" at each intersection.

E-book (also ebook, eBook). An electronic book available in a wide variety of formats (e.g. AZW, EPUB, MOBI, PDF) on a variety of devices (e.g. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook).

EPUB (also ePub, ePUB, EPub, epub). The industry standard e-book format. It's basically a zipped-up website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The language used to write websites and e-books. It's currently on version five (HTML5).

PDF (also .pdf). Standing for "Portable Document Format," a .pdf is a file format readable by many (but not all) e-reading devices. Its primary selling point is that it represents documents independent of the machine it runs on, so a .pdf e-book looks the same no matter what devices is used to read it. For this reason, however, .pdf files are not reflowable (see below).

Reflowable content. Content (words, diagrams, illustrations, &c) that can change or "reflow" depending on the device designed to read it. Text "reflows" when you change the font size on your Kindle or when you switch back and forth between devices with different display sizes.

This is one reason e-versions of the same title look different on different devices; another is that different e-tailers do different things to the source files they receive from publishers before making the book available to the consumer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, this is the idea of improving your visibility via search engines on the Internet. For example: if you Google "[your name] author," you want your personal website to be one of the first few hits. Taking into account how search engines work and what search terms people use, it's possible to move up the list of results (often dramatically).

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language). A family of XML languages (see below) that serves as an alternative to HTML (above).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Wikipedia says it best: "A set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form." If you're using Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you're already familiar with one of XML's many uses (it's the "x" in ".docx," ".xlsx," &c).

Round Up of Champions, or Goodbye Blue February

2011-02-25T10:00:00.003-05:00

Time for the Friday round up with Laura:

It's almost March, folks, which means one thing: February, the worst month of the year, will be dead to us for 11 months. We've had to use a lot of snow-perbole to explain why the weather was so crappy, but the real answer has been right in front of us. That's right: Jesse James' memoir is causing the end of times. I really hope bad publicity doesn't help sales, because if it does that man is going to be a bestseller faster than Snooki. Who is also a bestseller. Diagnosis: genius. It must be genius hard at work, in the Snook's brain and in Jesse James' Nazi-loving skull—why else would people shell out hard-earned recession dollars for this stuff? Blech, I think I need some book therapy.

I might just wander away from books and play the Waiting for Godot video game, or scroll through Rashkolnikov's inbox, or take a listen to Hamlet's iPod (spoiler: it's not all Dashboard Confessional and The New Pornographers). I might even play Charlaine Harris' video game. Why aren't more novelists writing video games, anyway? It must be because all of the hot girls are in publishing.

Speaking of hot things, have you checked out the hot deals at Borders' liquidation sales? (Great segue, Laura!) They're almost as hot as this description of Henry Miller's last marriage. Which is to say, not hot at all. 20% is not a steep discount, folks. Although you could pick up these essential writings about writing, and take to heart these lessons in teaching writing. Then you too will be prepared to write Vonnegut's bio, or alternately, get rejected as nicely as Tim Burton. Just don't end up one of the top 10 pirated books.

Now that you're all caught up on the super important news of the week, ponder to yourselves if you can write across gender, and see what gender you write like. And for those of you school-goers and paper-writers, remember: always make your phone write your citations. This message has been brought to you by the letter L.

Prithee, Inform Me: Retailing Versus E-Tailing

2011-02-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

Remember, writers and readers, when I said that the decline of brick-and-mortar chains could spark an indie bookstore renaissance? Well, it turns out that Paul Carr over at TechCrunch just said the exact same thing. Great minds! &c, &c.

The point being: while Borders may very well emerge from bankruptcy and go on to survive for years, their current store closings (numbering 200, or a little less than a third) will generate storefront vacancies. Some buildings will turn into something else entirely, but I'm betting a fair number will house independent bookstores.

As Paul mentions (and as I've said), there are a number of functions brick-and-mortar stores serve (specialized knowledge, author events, cafés, the experience of physically browsing, and so on) that can't be duplicated by on-line vendors.

That said, I'm sticking with my long-standing belief that independent booksellers will make something of a comeback this decade. As for you folks: do you agree? And what would draw you away from the convenience of buying books in your living room and out to your local bookstore?

Happy President's Day!

2011-02-21T10:00:00.002-05:00

As you've no doubt by now guessed, mes auteurs, Abe Lincoln and George Washington teamed up to get me the day off of work. (I hope they did the same for you!) Come back on Wednesday for a brand-spanking-new, sweet-baby-Jesus-February-is-almost-over post!

February Thaw Round Up

2011-02-18T10:00:00.003-05:00

Round up time with Laura:

Happy Friday, friends and foes. I am currently torn between frolicking in the heat wave (it's 60 degrees, people!) and digging myself a bunker—New York released its official apocalypse guide. It might be timed to coincide with the new Atlas Shrugged trailer, which signals the end of the world in its own way. Say goodbye to the world, 200 Borders-es. Also say goodbye to novels with Sookie Stackhouse, who remains the most annoying character on television. Anna Paquin, you're fine—Sookie Stackhouse, you are really irritating. Perhaps she should try and get some modern lessons from the Kama Sutra—since it's HBO it's 50% sex, 50% Sookie dialogue, and I'd rather not listen to her talk, thank you very much.

Speaking of oldies but goodies, Disney found out their backlist sells best digitally. Out of the vault for 30 seconds—get your $100 bills ready to buy 2 pages of the novelization of Sleeping Beauty. Oh, Disney, why are you so good at parting me from my money? I would also give my money for the 10 best Roald Dahl books, but not for Stieg Larsson's partner's memoir. I'm sure Vonnegut has a relevant quip for this. Imagine I included it here.

What else is new? Well, gym class helps kids read better, and romance still rules the roost. Barnes & Noble (you know, the big chain that hasn't filed for bankruptcy) is trying to poach Amazon affiliates, and Kathryn Stockett is being sued by her brother's maid for using her image without consent in The Help. Sue for more than $75k, Abilene! That book made a mint!

I'm off to frolick, dear readers—enjoy your 3-day weekend if you've got it, sulk about working on Monday if you have to, and I'll see you next week for more super fun adventure time!

Bankrupt!

2011-02-16T10:00:00.002-05:00

If you haven't yet heard, mes auteurs, Borders Group has filed Chapter 11. While this means a lot of things for the industry, I'd like to follow up on Monday's post and list just a few potential changes/repercussions you might see as authors.

In unimpeachable Bullet-O-Vision™:

· Borders will continue to operate. As I explained on Monday, Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn't necessarily entail liquidation. Although Borders plans to close many individual stores, the chain itself will still do business while under bankruptcy protection. This means you can still buy books there and, just as importantly, your books can still be carried there.

· Borders will likely be even more cautious about investing in midlist authors. While their new loans from GE Capital will allow them to finance, among other things, the purchase of new stock, Borders is not in any position to gamble. They're likely, in my opinion, to skip more midlist titles than usual and to only spend their money on names they know they can sell. This will be exacerbated by the aforementioned store closings.

· Publishers may offer lower advances, especially on midlist titles. The industry has depended on Borders as a major market for new titles. If the publisher can't trust Borders to take a sufficiently large number of copies of a given title, this will factor into their profit and loss statements. As a result, they may advance less money to authors in order to increase the odds that any given acquired title will earn out.

· Electronic titles will probably be largely unaffected. Borders was quite the Johnny-come-lately to the e-book scene, and as a result their sales in that sector are dwarfed by their competitors'. Further, even if their sales were a large subset of the market, brick-and-mortar store closings wouldn't really affect their ability to distribute titles electronically via their on-line storefront.

· Local author events may be canceled. Fewer stores means fewer venues for readings, signings, &c. Towns in which Borders is really the only bookstore will, as you might imagine, be the most affected. You can switch to buying books on-line if your local Borders store closes; not so with author events. At least, not yet.

A lot remains to be seen, however, so I'll post periodic updates on Borders' bankruptcy filing and its impact on the industry as events unfold.

There's Broke and Then There's Broke

2011-02-14T10:00:00.004-05:00

Before we get started today, cats & kittens, I'd like to point you to a rather fantastic interview conducted by Alexia Chamberlynn with yours truly. You can learn more about her on her website, and you can learn more about me right here.

Speaking of learning!

In case you didn't hear and/or do not follow me on the Twitters, Borders Group is set to declare bankruptcy this week. What does that mean for the publishing industry and you, authors/consumers?

It can mean one of two things, depending on what bankruptcy paperwork is filed.

Under Chapter 7, Borders would essentially undergo liquidation. A trustee is appointed to figure out how best to disburse and redistribute assets and property to creditors (the people to whom the business owed all that money). Once the process is over, the business is no more. Kaput. Gone.

Because I have no insider knowledge of the situation (and couldn't share it with you even if I did), I can't really sketch out the details of Borders' case for you, nor can I describe what a potential liquidation for them would look like. All I can tell you is: it's the least desirable option from the industry's perspective.

In the event of Borders' complete dissolution, a lot of their former business would redistribute to other retailers (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, independent bookstores), but a certain fraction would just be lost.

Under Chapter 11, however, no trustee would be appointed on Borders' behalf, and they would continue under their own steam as "debtors in possession." A Chapter 11 filing would enable them to reorganize the company while under the protection (and supervision) of the court, which may include (but is not limited to) securing new financing/lines of credit and shedding underperforming stores or departments.

They would also benefit from what's known as an "automatic stay," meaning that creditors would be unable to collect from Borders during the term of their restructuring.

Borders could potentially continue operations largely unhindered and then emerge from bankruptcy in a few months or years (Kmart did this about ten years ago), and while their current stock would (as in a Chapter 7 filing) basically be rendered valueless, they could begin trading on the NYSE again under a new listing if and when they officially emerge. Sort of like a phoenix emerging from the ashes, only with a major brick-and-mortar chain bookstore instead of a bird and a pile of debt instead of cinders.

In short: bankruptcy isn't necessarily the end of Borders. There still remains a lot to be seen.

Pre-Valentine's Day Round Up

2011-02-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

1. 400th post!
2. Friday round up time, with Laura:

Hello, friends and foes, and welcome to just-about Valentine's Day (the most important of days). Have you bought me a present yet? Have you re-jiggered your diet to account for all of the candy you'll be inhaling? Have you decked out your homes in pink and red? If not, maybe you should spend less time Internet-ing and more time preparing for the third greatest consumer holiday America has to offer (trailing behind Christmas and Halloween, but firmly ahead of Fourth of July and Thanksgiving). Or you could not do any of those things—excepting buying me a present, that's mandatory—and read this round up. Either/or.

Are you in the mood for love? Perhaps you need these V-Day love poems, or this love advice from romance writers. Maybe you love the OED—I know I do—or are waiting to see how Jeffrey Eugenides deals with marriage. As for the kiddies, I hear they heart e-readers, and they can join the Lisa Simpson book club, the greatest of clubs.

Have you stolen someone's heart recently? I'll have you know that piracy is bad for New York, although it may be good for Neil Gaiman. If you are engaging in high seas piracy, you can always put that in your quirky author bio, and hope it doesn't lead to a literary fight.

If you do get in a famous fight, people might ask you to sign their e-readers, or host a BEA breakfast with Mindy Kaling. You might even get to stand next to Bristol Palin, memoirist at a book signing. Oh joyous day! The attention some get over others is baffling, as this discussion of Franzen v. Goodman shows.

So hey folks, go out and buy my presents, raise a glass to Brian Jacques, and remember: all the really sexy stuff is in the Bible.

Anatomy of an E-book

2011-02-09T10:00:00.001-05:00

I've gotten a few questions from the more tech-oriented among you, fair readers, as to what, exactly, an e-book file looks like. So! Allow me to illuminate... the EPUB format.

If you're looking for the short (and somewhat inaccurate) story: The EPUB format is the industry standard, and the file is sort of like a zipped up website. The book itself is written in the same code used to write web pages, and fancier books have extra files zipped into the final package.

If you're not familiar with the idea of "zipping up" a file, just imagine it as packing up all the stuff in your room. Your unpacked room represents all the various files and formats you'd like in the finished product; the single box you end up with that contains everything from your room is the zipped-up file.

For the more involved (and more technically correct) story, a basic EPUB file consists of the following:

· A bunch of pages written in XHTML that contain the written content of the book;
· CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to provide formatting;
· An XML file with the extension .opf that contains the book's metadata (title, the language it's written in, &c);
· An XML file with the extension .ncx that contains the book's hierarchical table of contents.

These last two XML files are what really separate an e-book from a website: they provide a linear structure to the book that require (for the most part) that it be read in a certain order. (Many books do contain hyperlinks and allow you to skip from page to page this way.)

Now, although EPUB is the standard by which the industry operates, not all e-book retailers use it (and those who do generally modify the files they receive from publishers or individuals to suit their particular standards). This is why e-books often look different from device to device.

The most visible example is that of Amazon's Kindle, which pretty much reads anything except EPUB (e.g. MOBI, PRC, AZW, PDF). Because Amazon needs to convert EPUB files before it can sell them to consumers, e-books may not always appear as publishers intended (due to the translation process in general, how the two coding systems handle different objects like tables and captions, and so on). What is possible via EPUB may not be possible in, say, MOBI, and vice-versa.

While I think that formats and devices will consolidate over time, I very much doubt we're going to see a one-format, handful-of-devices scenario for awhile. The good news is that there are ways to convert almost any file type to any other file type and many devices can either cross-read or run apps that are capable of doing so, so your library hopefully won't be (too) fragmented for the time being.

That's it for today, amigos and -as. Friday: the pre-Valentine's Day round-up!

What I Learned at AWP

2011-02-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

For those of you who aren't familiar, AWP is the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and their annual conference was this past weekend in Washington, D.C. I had a great time and met a lot of wonderful people, and in the spirit of reliving the experience and imparting any and all wisdom I may have gleaned in the process, here's what I learned about AWP (and writers/conferences in general):

Check in early or late. I picked up my badge on the second day and completely avoided any and all lines. I hear the folks who arrived on the first day had to battle epic crowds (one of the few things that instantly gets me in a bad mood).

Introduce yourself to people. I thanked/spoke with editors who had published my work in literary magazines, chatted up folks running tables for journals I really admire, and mingled with professors, writers, and publishers who seemed cool. Who knows when a connection you make will turn into a career opportunity?

Exchange business cards. There were way too many names and faces for me to recall even a tenth of the people I met, and I'm sure everyone else felt similarly. Cards help refresh your memory and provide much-needed contact information.

Go to the hotel bar. Everyone worth talking to is there. Everyone not worth talking to is somewhere else. Everyone who doesn't want to talk to anyone is holed up in their hotel rooms.

Budget carefully. Many writing conferences have a lot of awesome books for sale, and the temptation to buy everything is pretty strong. If you're not paying attention, you could end up spending way more money than you intend (and will then have to lug 30 pounds of books home with you). That said—

Make sure you walk the floor on the last day. In this case, many publishers wanted to unload as many copies of books/journals/magazines/t-shirts/&c as possible so they wouldn't have to lug/ship them back. This resulted in a lot of great deals (and even free stuff!) on the last day of the conference.

Were any of y'all at AWP, as well? If so, please feel free to share your stories in the comments!

Round Up Like an Egyptian

2011-02-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

Yet another Friday round up with Laura:

I know you're all keeping up with the protests in Cairo, friends and foes, because you are active and aware citizens of the world. And if you're not, probably Google it. It's kind of important. While you're at it, you can check out translations of Tahrir Square dispatches, or read books about uprisings and revolts. You can't go to the Cairo book fair, as it's canceled, and you'll have to wait for ElBaradei's memoir, but you can read from this reading list for the Egypt crisis and appreciate the Egyptian youths protecting the libraries.

In other and much less world-shaking news, Jimmy Carter is being sued for not being absolutely right all of the time, and Tyler Perry is going to play Alex Cross, because he is absolutely right. All of the time. Jane Lynch is writing a memoir and James Franco is teaching a college course on James Franco. I kind of love him of late, not gonna lie. I also love the joy of indefinite numbers and these Random House staffers with crushes.

Chris McDougall, whose book I loved, gave a TED lecture about running. He did not, alas, contribute to these doodles by famous authors. Perhaps all this doodling is all a way of avoiding using Twitter as a public writing exercise, or Twittering backlist to the top of the lists.

Perhaps most importantly, everyone's talking about their favorite swears, to which I say: WTF (which, as my dad tells me, means "Where's the fries?" The lack of fries explains the emphatic nature of the exclamation, or so I hear). So read your college books, worry about Apple's stance on apps, and start your Kindle singles. Until next week!

Brand Management, Revisited

2011-02-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!

Now that the exchange of greetings pertaining to the World's Stupidest Holiday are complete, I'd like to revisit a topic I brought up last month: publisher branding and brand management.

As Andrew Wheeler brought up in the comments (and later in in his own blog post), it may not be in publishers' best interests to push their overarching corporate structure on consumers, but rather let their individual brands speak for themselves. And I quote:

I'd say your advice is exactly backwards: publishers need to understand the power of specific brands and strengthen the ones they have... This is exactly parallel to the way that SC Johnson isn't a brand, but Glade, Drano, Windex, Ziploc, and Raid are brands.

This is true! However, do we not all know (most likely via some sort of creepy post-hypnotic subliminal messaging) that S.C. Johnson is a family company? (Thanks, television!) Like MomCorp of Futurama fame, should publishers not maintain some hulking, terrifying presence in the consumer's brain? (I kid, but you get the idea.)

Andrew makes a good point, and so let me resolicit your opinions, fair readers. Should consumers not be made aware of the publisher's branding (e.g. Penguin Classics, Ace) as much as the author(s) in question? Granted, authors are the the primary brand because they're the ones attracting followings, producing content, &c, and liking one of their previous titles is generally a better indicator of whether you'll like a new title, but what of the début novelist? The gal or guy whose branding might, for the time being, rely exclusively on the house brand to which (s)he belongs?

Andrew may be right that our awareness of specific brands and imprints belonging to a larger publisher are more important than our consciousness of the publisher itself, but I think it's for precisely this reason that the "flagship" imprints to which Andrew points have lost their steam and vision over the past several years (the eponymous Penguin imprint and "Little Random" being prime examples).

The question, I suppose, is this: should the larger corporation brand itself as, in a sense, a creator of myriad brands (imprints), or should it stick to those specific imprints and not try to brand itself (vis-à-vis the "flagship" model)?

Bordering on Bankruptcy

2011-01-31T10:00:00.005-05:00

And now: another post about Borders.

But first: a quick announcement!

Due to my increasing workload (and as part of the many exciting changes that will be coming to PMN in the coming months), I'll be scaling back my posting schedule to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays instead of the five days a week I've been rocking thus far. A couple of notes:

• Fridays will still feature round-ups from Laura!

• Tuesdays and Thursdays will usually be post-less, but! And here's the exciting part:

• PMN is now open to guest post submissions on a rolling basis! You heard right, cats & kittens. Whenever you happen to have a guest post that you think might be a good fit for the blog, just e-mail it along. Alas, due to predicted volume, I'll only be able to respond if I'm interested, but I should be able to get back to you within a week. And your post could go up on PMN on any given Tuesday or Thursday! Mull that over. Go ahead, mull to your hearts' content.

Okay, good. And now... the post!

If you haven't read today's Publisher's Lunch, here's the deal: in addition to (continuing) delays of payment to vendors, Borders is now delaying payments to landlords as well. That's right: they can't afford to pay rent. This is bad news bears, cats & kittens.

Borders is basically buying time with this maneuver, hoping to convince enough vendors to convert late payements to interest-bearing debt to satisfy GE Capital's new requirements and earn themselves a new line of credit.

Failing this, however, Borders will run out of money, and with landlords, publishers, and other creditors clamoring for money owed, BGP will likely have to seek refuge in the courts—that is, file for bankruptcy.

Borders' stock is now trading below $0.75/share. Financiers and publishers alike haven't been persuaded by Borders' plans to revive their business, and with the amount of exposure publishers are already facing, it's unlikely they'll convert back payments to debt while continuing to ship Borders books. In short—and based entirely on the publicly available data—I think you should think about using up those Borders gift cards. Sooner might be better than later.

Wednesday: brand management! Marketing! Other buzz words!

January Thaw Round Up

2011-01-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

Yet another round up with Laura:

You know what's the future, friends and foes? Children. Especially children who may grow up to be Lisbeth Salander. They may get pushed along that road by having to read YA by Stephenie Meyer's publicist, or, alternately, by being in the Oliver Twist workhouse. Oh, yeah. They discovered that.

Other mysteries have been revealed as well, like the author of O, and how Nicholas Sparks wrote his first novel. Inquiring minds want to know! Inquiring minds will also get the chance to read John Lennon's letters, find out if financial types read, and see how novels come to term with the Internet. A mysterious man also got a book deal based on his academic mercenary past, although what he could have to say beyond his original article is beyond me.

Also beyond me: the future. Luckily, the future is now, as e-books are outselling paperbacks on Amazon. Everybody panic! Especially since agents and publishers have different opinions about e-book royalties. It's like dogs and cats living together (in the future). You can always trade in your used Kindle for print books. Or keep your Kindle, get some Amazon singles, and tremble at the price sensitivity of e-book readers.

So untangle those plots, read your super cool new TED books, and defend Jane Eyre to the death, gentle readers.

Terms to Know: Returns (Rerun)

2011-01-27T10:00:00.003-05:00

A small blast from the recent past, mes auteurs. Round up on Friday and a return to the topic of marketing/brand management on Monday! — E

Episode: "Terms to Know: Returns"
Originally aired: Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

It's been awhile since I've gone back to the basics, mes auteurs, so today's post is on that bête noire of the publishing world: returns.

The book business differs from most other commercial enterprises in that stock sold by the content provider (publisher) to retailers (book stores) is 100% returnable: if a book store can't sell its stock to consumers, it sends it right back to the house.

This is a holdover from Depression-era economics designed to get retailers to take books under circumstances they normally wouldn't (i.e., by drastically reducing, if not totally erasing, their exposure to risk). With the exception of a very small number of select retailers ("special markets" that don't sell books as their primary product), all retailers are allowed to return unsold stock to the publisher.

What does this mean for you, dear authors?

Well, assuming you earn out your advance, it can (partially) explain why it takes publishers awhile to calculate your royalties, as the returns reduce their gross sales (billing, or the money they made by selling stock to retailers) to net sales. If your royalty structure takes this into account, the publisher needs to wait for returns to come back before issuing you a check.

Occasionally, a publisher will even withhold money against future returns in a kind of escrow account, which means that money that is technically yours won't be paid out until returns are calculated several months down the line.

Granted, the problem could be "fixed" by moving the industry en masse back to a firm sale model (that is, no returns), but even if something like that could be done (which seems doubtful—see below), all it would mean would be a sharp reduction in stock for début and midlist authors like yourselves. If you force the stores to take on their own risk in today's bookselling environment, they'll simply cut their orders for anything that isn't a sure thing (read: James Patterson and Sarah Palin).

The good news is, cats & kittens, that it soon won't matter whether physical books are returnable because the market will shift principally to e-books over the next decade. Problems pertaining to physical books that plague today's publishers and retailers—warehouse space, shipping and return costs, physical co-op, &c—don't and won't apply to e-books, so returns will become a thing of the past and you'll get your royalty statements faster. Some of you who have successfully published e-books already know this.

In short: yes, returns are a pain, and yes, the industry has been running on an outmoded and inefficient sales model for the past 80 years. At this point, however, it isn't worth changing: as e-books become the primary format for the written (and read) word, the issue will become more or less moot.

That said: if you're planning on publishing a book this decade, plan on getting a call from your agent at some point asking if you'd like to buy your returned/remaindered units at cost. And don't be surprised if your royalty statements, should you get any, take their sweet time arriving in your mailbox.

Tomorrow: Thanksgiving festivities begin, meine Autoren, so I'll be taking a short break. We'll be back with the return of genre sales breakdowns on Monday, November 29th!

Markets Are Our Specialty

2011-01-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned before, one of the many reasons the publishing industry is—well, unique, let's say—is because its product is more or less 100% returnable. If a publisher sends 10,000 copies of a book to Joe's Box o' Books and Joe can only sell off 7,000, 3,000 go back to the publisher to be remaindered or pulped.

As with all things, however, there are exceptions, and one of the major exceptions to the returns game in the publishing industry is in the realm of special markets.

Special markets are retailers that sell a fair number of—but do not specialize in—books (e.g. cooking stores, museum gift shops). Non-returnable (a.k.a. "firm") sales to these customers mean that no matter how poorly the title(s) in question do(es), that customer cannot send the books back to the publisher for credit. Just as with their other merchandise, they keep the product on the shelves until it sells or until they get rid of it at their own expense.

Because the risk is borne by the retailer and not the vendor, sales numbers for special markets are usually smaller and less flexible than they are for most book retailers. They depend to a much higher degree on price point and format, as certain retailers only do well with certain types of books, and most titles will only fit a very few niche special markets. All this to say: there is no universal "special markets book," meaning no title is immune to the spectre of returns.

As you can imagine, most titles sold in to special markets are nonfiction (arts & crafts, cooking, history, science, pop culture, and so on), so your novel is unlikely to be sold on a non-returnable basis in any significant way. However, various author events, shows, conferences, &c will require additional orders, and while these aren't "special markets" in the conventional sense, they very often entail non-returnable sales. There will be some capacities in which your books are safe from returns.

Speaking of returns, tomorrow: the return of... returns!

Tip o' the Week

2011-01-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

I've been re-reading Emerson, cats & kittens, and this quote of his caught my attention over the weekend: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."

Writing is work, folks. More than that, writing is hard work, it's getting up early and staying up late, it's sacrificing doing other fun things to put another few hundred or thousand words to paper, it's spending money on printer ink and postage and conference fees when you'd rather spend it on mega sweet vacations, it's applying for fellowships and retreats when you'd rather be watching reality TV, it's spending time on your on-line platform or reviewing proofs or perfecting your backlist of e-titles on Amazon instead of hanging out with friends.

Writing requires commitment and discipline even more than it requires talent. The hungrier writer will outperform the more talented writer nine times out of ten. If you don't want to be a writer more than you want any other professional goal, odds are you aren't going to make it very far.

This isn't to say that writers don't have families or personal lives or other hobbies and interests; they have all these things. They simply want to be professional writers badly enough to put in the requisite time and effort to improve their craft and make the necessary connections. If you want to be a writer, you'd better be willing to put in all the work and jump through all the crazy hoops. If you want to be a writer, you have to be good enough and smart enough and dedicated enough. And you've got to be lucky as hell.

Nothing worth doing or learning comes easily, dear readers, but if that were the case, you wouldn't get any satisfaction from doing or learning those things. Keep working, keep reading, and keep writing, and your efforts are bound to pay off in some respect sooner or later.

Tomorrow: a lesson on special markets!

This Is A Business: Redux

2011-01-24T10:00:00.002-05:00

I first made this point a little over a year ago, gentle readers, but it bears repeating.

The other day I overheard a conversation in which one book-loving acquaintance of mine expressed the opinion that selling e-books amounts to a betrayal of the physical book.

Let me be the first to say: this a bunch of maudlin nonsense.

The book business is precisely that, mes auteurs: a business. Yes, in many instances we're selling art, but I've always been of the opinion that the art of the book is almost always found in its content, not in its form; if a majority of consumers want their books electronically, any publisher or bookseller resisting that change will likely be driven out of business. If it sounds Darwinian, that's because it is. If you're not selling what people want, you're not going to be in business very long.

This isn't at all to say that the physical book is going extinct (though hardcover fiction may, à mon avis, be more or less gone within a few years)—I'm only saying that refusing to cultivate an electronic platform or sell e-books due to the misguided notion that you're somehow betraying an inanimate cultural medium is, well, childish. Books aren't people; they don't have feelings. Those who really love them will buy and sell them in whatever format is available.

The book is very old, cats & kittens, but before we had them we had scrolls and before that we had tablets and before that we had oral traditions. The codex—a book with a cover and pages—hasn't been around forever and it won't be around forever, and the sooner publishers, booksellers, and other industry insiders realize this and not only accommodate but embrace the changes that are revolutionizing the way people read, the better.

The Round Up and Up

2011-01-21T18:45:00.005-05:00

Yet another Friday round up with Laura:

This week was great, friends and foes. We got the top ten dead bodies in literature, the top ten best beards in books, and Joss Whedon explained WTF is up with the Buffy graphic novels (there are tons of spoilers, followers who made it past the TV show). Sure, autocorrections are a pain, and hey, maybe the Bible is influencing your speech patterns more than you thought, but Bob Dylan is putting out six books. Six! That's a lot of Dylan. I'm going to bring my homemade book handbag when I get invited to the launch party.

Hello, techie friends. Have you learned your Amazon ABCs? If not, here are some tips for Kindle newbies (not n00bs, heaven forbid), and a how-to for Kindle book publishing. Did we all see the Kobo reader on The Office? Reading: it happens on TV sometimes. There's also some debate about ebooks impacting territories and the usual book piracy and sales convo, but I was watching television and totally missed all of that jazz. I didn't miss the new excerpts from the Obama fictionalization, which is making people ask: why are Washington novels so bad? Maybe the answer can be found in JFK's application to Harvard.

I'm off to do "other things," reader types, but besos to you, and see you next week!

The Death of (Another) Format (Rerun)

2011-01-20T10:00:00.002-05:00

One more rerun from the PMN vaults. Enjoy!

Episode: "The Death of (Another) Format"
Originally aired: Monday, August 9th, 2010

A couple of months ago, I mentioned my belief that e-readers will quickly make large print paper books obsolete. After careful analysis, mes auteurs, I'm comfortable predicting the death of another format (although I think this one will take much longer): the mass market paperback.

For those not familiar, the mass market paperback is that chunky, newsprinty $4 to $8 paperback you find in airports and grocery stores (in addition to traditional independent and chain bookstores). It's especially popular with genre fiction (fantasy, mystery, romance, science fiction). Historically, they've sold well because they're cheap, lightweight, and don't take up a lot of space; not many people buy them to display on bookshelves or coffee tables.

E-books are already relatively cheap, and they have no weight and occupy no physical space at all. As the cost and heft of e-readers steadily declines, there will be (in my opinion) no reason to buy a mass market paperback rather than an e-book, and I think this will lead to the format's demise.

A lot of people are currently worried that e-books will kill the hardcover, but I find this relatively unlikely. Hardcovers have been status symbols and conversation pieces for centuries, if not millennia. People like having bookshelves full of hardcovers. They like having them signed. They like physically perusing a library rather than flipping through a list of titles on a screen. For these reasons (among others), I think hardcovers will survive the conversion to e-books, although I certainly expect print runs to be reduced and POD to become a more tenable option for smaller publishers.

As for the mass market paperback: granted, the lendability factor will definitely keep it alive for a few more years, and it will probably take decades beyond that before the second-hand market begins to fold. As soon as solid lending or renting protocols are established by the e-book industry, however, I don't see any reason why consumers would rather have a physical, low-quality paperback than a non-physical, high-quality e-book. Can you?

This is Why You Always Meet Your Deadlines (Rerun)

2011-01-19T10:00:00.001-05:00

Meetings abound this week, mes auteurs, so I'll be posting reruns today and tomorrow. Enjoy!

Episode: "This is Why You Always Meet Your Deadlines"
Originally aired: Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

In case you hadn't heard, Yahoo! sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski (say that three times fast) has been sued by Penguin Books for failure to meet his deadline regarding a book about former North Carolina State University basketball coach Jim Valvano. The original manuscript delivery date? August 1, 2007.

Wojnarowski was originally offered a cool $400,000 (of which he received $140,000), but his repeated delays caused Penguin to reduce the total advance to $325,000. Now, over three years later, they've canceled the book and are taking Wojnarowski to court to recover the $140,000 they already paid him.

I wish I could say this kind of story was uncommon, but honestly, the only unusual aspect is the filing of a lawsuit. Books are delayed by months (sometimes years) all the time, and failure to meet deadline (sometimes more than once) is not unheard of. I think, however, that publishers' patience is particularly short in the midst of the recession, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to become even less lenient about missed deadlines, particularly for books bought for six- or seven-figure advances.

The reasons for delays can range from author laziness to the publisher's disapproval of various drafts (that is, sending them back for rewrites) to changes in current events that warrant substantial revisions (generally affecting only nonfiction). Remember, too, that most advances are cut into pieces: often one installment is paid on signing, another on receipt of the manuscript by the publisher, and occasionally a third on or around the date of publication. If you're getting $400,000 and you've already gotten $140,000 just for signing a piece of a paper, one can see how your motivation might be temporarily shot.

That said: this business is slow enough as-is, so as début writers who always want to make the best of impressions, it's in your collective best interest to get your manuscripts and revisions delivered on time. Always be professional, always be on time, and always ask your agent or editor if you have any questions about deadlines, timelines, or any of the other myriad -lines to which you might be subject.

An Incomplete Education

2011-01-18T10:00:00.003-05:00

I love web comics, mes auteurs, more than I love most people and some varieties of whisk(e)y. It should come as no surprise, then, that the intersection of books/grammar and web comics in the Venn diagram of my life is a most wond'rous and magical place.

I therefore present to you my top ten grammar pet peeves—in web comic form!

1. "Alot." "Alot" is not a word. Or, if it is, it refers to an animal that's better than you at everything.

2. Semicolons. I'm not a big fan of them; Kurt Vonnegut once labeled the semicolon a "transvestite hermaphrodite representing absolutely nothing," insisting that "all they do is show you've been to college." If you insist on using them, however, here's how to do it.

3. Mondegreens. Here's a definition; here's a visual guide to some common ones pertaining to English idiom.

4. Misuse of the word "literally." If you're guilty of this, I'll literally send you a strongly worded e-mail/figuratively explode.

5. Confusion of its/it's. Especially on the Internet.

6. Misuse of apostrophes in general. Thankfully, there is a cure: flowcharts.

7. Misspellings. Here are ten you should avoid.

8. Internet comments. This is more of a video than a comic, but it gets the point across: 99.9% of the people on the Internet are functionally illiterate, some of them hilariously so. (I've spent countless hours laughing at seething, near-incomprehensible rants on YouTube.)

9. People who think they can out-grammar me. Sometimes I lay traps for them just for fun.

10. People who smugly correct other people's grammar. It's just kind of a jerk thing to do. Me? I'd do it subtly via blog post.

Also, in case you were curious:

Created by Oatmeal

Many thanks to Hyperbole and a Half, Dinosaur Comics, and The Oatmeal for their fantastic comics.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

2011-01-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

I'm off today, mes auteurs, and I hope you are, too. Come back tomorrow for another brand-new post!