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

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.

Three Cups of Baloney

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!

The Death of (Another) Format (Rerun)

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?

A Lesson on Brand Management

As I've mentioned a few times before, mes auteurs, publishing is a strange industry in many ways. One of the ways in which it differs from other enterprises is that the author of the work, not its physical manufacturer, is the brand name. For the most part, no one cares who publishes a given book; they only care about who wrote it and what it's about.

Part of this is intrinsic to the industry: just like with movies and music, the writer(s)/actor(s)/artist(s) is/are the source of the desired material, so regardless of whose label is affixed to those names, consumers will make their purchases based principally on the artists involved. As a culture, we care about Johnny Depp more than Lionsgate, Jay-Z more than Def Jam Recordings, and Suzanne Collins more than Scholastic.

Another part of it, however, is due to publishers' treatment of their own brands. Many include their logos on the spines and back covers of their books, but never the front (Penguin Classics is a notable exception), and publishers with myriad subdivisions and imprints further confuse consumers by including those logos but not the logo of the parent company.

How many of you knew that Dutton, Gotham, Prentice Hall, Riverhead, and Viking were all part of Penguin? That Knopf, Crown, and Ballantine are all Random House (and that those groups contain their own smaller imprints)? That Grand Central (with its imprint, Twelve) is Hachette's, as is Little, Brown & Co.? I could go on, but you get the point.

I think a significant problem for publishers in the industry today is a lack of brand consolidation. A lot of it is because individual imprints have their own specialties and want to maintain their identities apart from their parent publisher: Threshold (Simon & Schuster) specializes in conservative politics and nonfiction, Tor (Macmillan) in science fiction and fantasy, &c. This is all fine and good—or at least, it has been—but with companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble beginning to dominate the market, publishers will have to change the way they play the game.

As Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch notes, Amazon is preparing to take over the role of publisher in the world of tomorrow. And in that hypothetical world, I think Amazon's name would be just as important as most of its authors'.

Unless traditional publishers can reinforce their names and reaffirm their relevance over the next five years, I don't see why anyone will prefer a Random House book or a Penguin book over an Amazon/Kindle book. Authors will always be major brands in publishing, but I think publishers will need to increase their visibility as well. If they continue to bank on running the show from behind the scenes, it's my opinion that it will be to their long-term detriment.

Unfair Use

In case you haven't been on the Interwebz in a few days, mes auteurs, here's the scoop: Gawker published an excerpt of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book, America By Heart, and Mama Grizzly got super mad. She had a judge issue an order for Gawker to take down the leaked pages, and now Palin and Gawker, llc will face off in court on November 30th.

Now, according to Ben Smith of Politico, it does look like Gawker may have been in the wrong: apparently Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) establishes a precedent for this sort of thing (dealing with the then-unpublished memoir by Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal). It even seems that Palin could use the avenue of discovery to retaliate against the "lamestream media" that has been "criticizing her" for so long.

The thing is, meine Autoren, after having read the four-balance test of fair use under Title 17 of the United States Code, I really don't see why Gawker's use of Palin's words doesn't fall under the protection of fair use. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.) The four-balance test for fair use basically asks these questions:

1. What's the purpose of the use? This seems, to me, to fall under news reporting/criticism, which is protected.

2. What's the nature of the copyrighted work? This is where (I think) you could make the argument that fair use doesn't apply because the work is unpublished—except that 17 U.S.C. § 107 actually says, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."

3. How much of the work was reproduced? In this case, a few pages out of a 304-page book. No biggie.

4. Will reproducing this work hurt the market for the book? I can't see how it would; if anything, it will add to Palin's exposure and increase her sales, potentially with an audience who generally finds her insufferable (i.e. most people who read Gawker).

It seems to me that Gawker should be able to print those excerpted pages with or without Palin's permission, and I don't really see why they should lose their case next month. Then again, the precedent of Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 does sort of complicate things, so I may not have all the facts here.

What do you think, mes amis? (Particularly you lawyers in the audience.)

44% is the New 50%

In case you're not following me on Twitter, mes auteurs (and why wouldn't you be?), the results of the Barnes and Noble shareholder vote are in, with preliminary results indicating 44% supporting Riggio and 39% supporting Burkle. Quel fromage.

Riggio is looking to sell the company to other bidders, with books on the company going out to at least 20 interested parties this week. Burkle, who immediately called for a "transparent auction that delivers the best possible outcome for investors," is rumored to be considering a bid himself. If his is the highest, I'm not sure on what grounds Riggio would refuse (although I expect he will, given the bad blood resulting from the proxy war). For the time being, the incumenbent management and board members will remain.

Although this battle is more or less decided (pending certification of the final results over the next few days), the war is far from over. Shareholders will again vote in mid-November on whether to ratify the "poison pill" plan that prevents any shareholder, save Riggio, from accumulating more than a 20% stake in the company. Should the poison pill be significantly altered (say, in accordance with Burkle's proposal of increasing the trigger to 30%), we could see a whole new round of these shenanigans.

In my opinion, the 44/39 split, though close, might have resulted from a point raised by investor Howard Tannenbaum: "Riggio and his brother built up the company. What does Burkle know about book selling?" I ask you, meine Autoren: does it matter to you whether the head of the largest brick-and-mortar trade book retailer in the country knows anything about selling books?

A Home for Your Tea Party Memoir

I was born in a red state. I was later raised in a state that, not unlike Lindsay Lohan, has been known to swing both ways (moreso when in a retaliatory mood). Needless to say, I know more than a few people who continually bemoan the state of publishing/print media in general and its relentless "liberal bias." If you're one of those people, you're in luck! HarperCollins has just announced their new conservative imprint, Broadside Books.

As the article notes, the addition of conservative imprints to major publishers is not uncommon, though it is a relatively new phenomenon. Random House has Crown Forum; Simon & Schuster has Threshold Editions; Penguin has Sentinel. Publishers can print Karl Marx and Sarah Palin side-by-side under different imprints, and as the Tea Party furor continues to mount over the next year or two, I expect publishers to begin printing a lot more of the latter.

There's a sizable minority in the publishing industry that says—or at least jokes—that conservative voters don't read, so publishing books that cater to them is a waste of time and money. I'm certain that the continued success of books by politicians/pundits/celebrities like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Sean Hannity, not to mention their perpetual presence on the New York Times bestseller list, fairly refutes this notion; there can't be that many liberals buying these books out of morbid curiosity.

So, with all the usual caveats that: I am not a seer; I am not speaking from any inside or non-public knowledge; I am not providing professional advice; I am not responsible for your lost time or money in the event you decide to go ahead and do this, &c: if you're writing conservative non-fiction, political analysis, or memoir, especially anything Tea Party-oriented, you might have more of a chance at representation and good sales than you think. Just, you know, try to avoid ranting.

My personal politics notwithstanding, I'm encouraged by this quote from Adam Bellow, son of Saul Bellow and head of Broadside Books: "What I intend to do is uphold a standard of intellectual seriousness on the right. [These books] should be written in a way that they are serious, soberly argued, well researched, and make a respectable case—agree or disagree." If your book is well-researched and well-written, I see no reason why you shouldn't give the Liberal Book Publishing Machine a try.

The Never-Ending Battle Continues

As I mentioned last month, there's a battle going on for control of Barnes & Noble (BKS). Leonard Riggio, chairman and largest stockholder of the company, wants to retain control; Ron Burkle, billionaire and founder of the Yucaipa Companies, llc, wants to seize it. Until recently, that was all there was to say about it.

Last week, however, Institutional Shareholder Services, a major proxy advisory company to stock investors, endorsed Burkle's plan to seat three of his own nominees (including himself) on the company's nine-member Board of Directors, as well as rewrite Barnes & Noble's shareholder rights (or "poison pill") plan, a measure designed to prevent hostile takeovers. Apparently, Burkle believes that BKS is "significantly undervalued" and a change of management is necessary to restore the company to fiscal health. Among his chief complaints is that Barnes & Noble waited too long to introduce the Nook, thereby handicapping the bookseller in the digital media/e-book market.

Not everyone agrees with ISS, however: three major advisory services (Glass Lewis & Co., Egan-Jones Proxy Services, and Proxy Governance Inc.) are on Riggio's side, a position somewhat strengthened by the fact that a Delaware judge ruled against Burkle's legal assault on BKS' poison pill defense. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the proposals at the end of the month.

What does this mean for the industry and for you as authors, readers, and consumers?

Again, I doubt this battle will much affect Barnes & Noble's bottom line in the short term. An ultimate victory by Team Riggio will probably result in little substantive change for the company; a victory by Team Burkle could be game-changing, as his vocal desire to move BKS further into digital media and Yucaipa's successful history of leveraged buyouts could indicate a plan to convert Barnes & Noble into a more direct competitor with Amazon (more emphasis on e-books and related content, reduction of physical title stock, more money allocated to .com business, and so on). The times, they are a-changin', mes auteurs.

To be clear: this is all speculation on my part, and I don't know what Burkle is planning to do any more than any other moderately interested third party; I only know what's being reported in the news. I also have no real preference regarding control of the company; it's all the same to me whether it's run by a rich guy from New York or a rich guy from Los Angeles. I am, however, intrigued by the repercussions of either's victory, and I'm curious to see where this will take Barnes & Noble over the next five years.

What about you, gentle readers?

The Battle for Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble (BKS) announced a first quarter loss today, falling short of the company's forecast and underscoring not only booksellers' ongoing struggles in a soft market, but Barnes & Noble's particular battle between Ron Burkle and Leonard Riggio.

First, some background. Leonard Riggio is the chairman and largest stockholder of the company, which has been trying to sell itself (on its own terms, more or less) for awhile now, given that their sales are declining and (in my opinion) they want to attract fresh capital for their reinvention as a cutting-edge digital media company. Ron Burkle is a mega-rich investor who has accumulated almost 20% of BKS's stock and, despite his comments to the contrary, is widely believed to be attempting a takeover of the company.

Barnes & Noble, however, has what's called a "poison pill" defense (named for a spy's last resort should he or she be captured by the enemy) that makes it prohibitively expensive for Burkle to reach 20% (Riggo himself owns almost 30%). (If you're interested, you can read the details here.) Long story short: Burkle wants Barnes & Noble, which comes with the ability to unseat Riggio and to add his own people to the company's board of directors. Riggio, of course, is fighting back.

Talks have repeatedly broken down this summer, culminating with a Delaware judge's ruling that BKS was not being unreasonable in its defense against Burkle. This resulted in a proxy fight that, if successful, will accomplish the same thing: eliminate Riggio and add Burkle to the board.

This doesn't mean a whole lot for Barnes & Noble in the short term (at least, not in an operational sense); business will continue as usual despite the mounting legal fees. While some have speculated that the battle against Burkle is partially responsible for BKS's 1Q decline, I'm more inclined to think it has to do with slumping hardcover sales and reduced consumer spending in general. In short: Barnes & Noble is, à mon avis, far from doomed, but they certainly have their work cut out for them.

What do you think, mes auteurs?

The Death of (Another) Format

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?

The eRights Fight

The time: the early 1990s.
The place: publishing.

About fifteen to twenty years ago, publishers began specifying the acquisition of electronic rights in their contracts. While I don't think anyone necessarily foresaw the impact e-books would have on the market and the speed with which they'd come to comprise a substantial percentage of sales, I do believe publishers were forward-thinking and wanted to keep as many avenues of revenue open as possible.

Before this switch, most contracts simply granted the publisher the right to publish "in all formats" (though this was not always true, e.g. in cases where audio rights were withheld and sold elsewhere). Ambiguous language like this is at the heart of the e-rights debacle currently consuming the industry, the most notable example being the battle between Random House and the Wylie Agency.

Wylie's questionable deal with Amazon aside, the argument looks something like this.

Wylie's Point of View

The Wylie Agency's contracts show no specific record of electronic rights sales for a number of backlist titles by Very Famous Authors. Since more recent contracts specifically mention the acquisition of electronic rights, Wylie concludes that those rights (legally speaking) were not included under the "all formats" umbrella of earlier contracts (believed only to cover formats that existed at the time the contracts were signed). The Wylie Agency, being very smart, recognizes that these rights are valuable, and so they sell them to make boatloads of extra cash for themselves and their Very Famous Authors (or rather, their Very Famous Authors' estates).

Random House's Point of View

Some of Wylie's Very Famous Authors have written bestselling books that Random House has published. Random House bought the rights to publish some of these books "in all formats," so Random House concludes that they (again, legally speaking) have the right to publish these books in an electronic (wait for it!) format.

More importantly, however: Random House's Tireless and Very Talented Editors worked on the manuscripts for these books, sometimes altering/improving them dramatically. Since Random House had substantial creative input on these manuscripts, they don't think it's fair for the Wylie Agency to turn around and sell them in e-format to Amazon. (They also don't like the exclusive deal with Amazon, but that's another post for another day.)

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think you get the gist of it. What do you think, mes auteurs?

Advance! (Retreat?)

Yesterday (à la Twitter), the topic of advances came up; specifically, how authors and publishers would be affected by a switch to a no-advance model. The question intrigues me, so I think a little exploration is in order.

The advance is, theoretically, payment for services rendered; after all, you've already written the book*, so you're essentially being paid for the legwork you've done so far. Oftentimes the advance will be paid in installments, with the last installment being paid out when the final manuscript is received and deemed ready for publication (or, occasionally, on or shortly after the date of publication).

In my estimation, you're unlikely to get much more than $10,000 for a first novel (though some genres and writers average slightly higher, perhaps $20,000 or even $30,000) and the royalty rate will probably work out to somewhere between $1.00 and $3.00 per book. If we assume a $10,000 advance on a $20.00 book for which, when all's said and done, the house earns a $2.00-per-copy profit, that house will need to move 5,000 units to break even, which is about right for your average début. Many books, however (up to 75% by some estimations) do not move sufficiently well through the register, and therefore do not earn out the advance paid to the author. Good (in the short term) for the author, bad for the house; in the long term, a string of unearned advances can have a negative impact on an author's career and is also pretty bad for the house.

There are many arguments for and against the no-advance model, but I think it's best summed up as follows: publishers will be much more willing to take risks on new authors if they don't need to pay an advance, but since this removes the "we paid for this and we have to make it work" pressure, many a publisher may reduce the amount of time, money, and effort spent on marketing these books. While a no-advance model would likely result in a higher royalty rate for the author, it won't do much good if net sales are damaged by a reduction in in-house support.

This may be an overly pessimistic view of things, so I'm curious to know what you think. What say ye, readeurs and readeuses?


*This isn't necessarily the case for non-fiction, in which case the advance also theoretically covers research costs.

Terms to Know: Lead Title

All books are created equal.

Some books are more equal than others.

When publishers talk about a lead title, they're referring to a book (often, but certainly not always, by a début author) that they believe has the potential to blow out in terms of sales. These aren't the books by established hot shots or memoirs/self help books by celebrities; these are those front-of-store, gotta-read titles that seem to erupt out of nowhere. But nay! They do not appear ex nihilo, cats and kittens, but rather, they are built and designed: they receive six-figure marketing budgets, co-op dollars, aggressive publicity, additional sales materials. In short: the works.

Now, to be fair, it's not possible to engineer a bestselling title without the reading public's participation. A Big Six publisher could throw millions into marketing and co-op and not come anywhere close to breaking even if the consumer doesn't participate (i.e., purchase the book). That said, we all (as consumers, anyway) are much more easily manipulated than we would like to believe, and there is a direct correlation between the amount of money, time, and energy that a publisher puts into a book—a lead title—and that title's performance in the market.

Some lead titles flop terribly. Most, I think, break even, depending on the amount of money sunk into the endeavor. A few (far more than the average for books in general, but still not a huge number) become major bestsellers, and I'm inclined to believe they wouldn't have had they not had the big budgets and know-how of a large publishing operation. When the publisher pays for those big stacks of books at the front of Borders or Barnes & Noble, lines up interview after interview with major media, and advertises in magazines and locations you're likely to read and frequent, aren't you going to pick up that book and at least read the dust jacket? That's half the battle, friends: getting you to pick up the book. The publisher believes the content is enough to win the second half of the battle (getting you to bring the book to the register), but first they have to spend enough money to make it easy for you to find.

Not all major titles are/were lead titles (Harry Potter—the early books, anyway—being a good example), but classifying a book as such is a way of allocating funds and marking which books are believed to be wildly successful before they even ship out to stores. Is it fair? No. Is it practical in this industry? Absolutely. And by no means are the non-lead titles of the world doomed to failure—they are, as I said, "equal"—but they're not as equal as the titles that receive substantially larger investments of time, money, and effort, and the odds of their doing as well sales-wise is very slim indeed.

The E-pocalypse Draws Ever Nearer

As Ms. Ombreviations is unavailable this fine morning, I'll be taking care of today's post. Laura will no doubt be back next Friday with some witty rejoinder and a basketful of strange and hilarious links.

Onward!

I mentioned the other day that Barnes & Noble, via PubIt!, is getting in on the self-publishing act. It now appears that Apple is doing the same thing; all you need is an isbn, a US tax ID, and an iTunes account. Oh, yeah, and a new(ish) Mac: the Intel chip variety, running OS 10.5.

Because Apple's model places a relatively large number of restrictions on would-be self-publishers, I don't necessarily see the company as the proverbial "go-to guy" for most authors looking to self-publish their e-books. It's much easier to upload an e-book to the Kindle store via Amazon's Digital Text Platform, and the Kindle app on the iPad would automatically make those books available on Apple's device.

Amazon also grants you substantially more flexibility with format, the option of using their DRM (it seems to be automatically encoded into any books sold through the iBookstore), just as many (if not more) options regarding rights territories, and the benefit of knowing what you're getting into (royalty-wise) ahead of time. As far as I know, the details of Apple's royalty structure for self-published material still haven't been hammered out.

Again, I'm not encouraging you to self-publish because, frankly, I think it's still to your disadvantage. (I think it will be to your disadvantage for the foreseeable future, but there are many who disagree with me on that.) Think of it this way: if you're recommended to an agent, you have an implicit seal of approval that means you're going to get that agent's full attention much faster than if you were to appear in the endless query sea through which (s)he slogs so dutifully each day. Likewise, if you are published traditionally by a publishing house, you are going to get the attention of the reading public much more easily than if you self-publish your novel and throw it out into the infinitely larger sea of written material available for sale on the Internet.

I believe that the theory that e-books will utterly democratize publishing is a myth, as is the theory that agents and editors will be out of jobs once the market share for electronic books reaches a certain level. I'm not saying this out of some misguided sense of self-preservation, either; I mean, Christ, I'm in sales. If you can sell books in America today, you can sell anything. If publishing were to finally die tomorrow, I'd find a job selling something else.

In brief: I don't think you should self-publish, but if you're totally committed to the idea, make sure you do your research. Find a good product/platform, do as much as you possibly can with it, and sell yourself and your book as much as humanly possible. Without an agent, editor, marketing team, publicist, or sales rep, no one else is going to do it for you.

On the Importance of Storytelling

***CAUTION: LOST SPOILERS AHEAD***

If you haven't yet seen the lost series finale, I suggest you put off reading the below post until you do. Anything after the break may contain significant spoilers.




















Yes. lost.

Say what you will about the series finale—who died*, who lived, what was wrapped up, what was never addressed**, what questions were answered, sort of answered, left unanswered, &c—one of the major strengths behind the show is the establishment of an interesting, consistent mythology that is slowly revealed (I hesitate to say "explained") to viewers via effective storytelling.

When writing a short story, novel, screenplay, or television show, it's not enough to have interesting characters and a cool plot; you have to be able to advance the story and explore the psychologies and depths of the characters in an engaging way. Simply put: it's not enough to have a great story, but you need to tell that story well, too. The what is necessary, but the how is absolutely essential. It's character development, it's maintaining the relationship (often tension) between what the characters know versus what the reader/viewer knows (dramatic irony, anyone?), it's controlling pacing, it's telling your story in the best order, &c &c. If lost had been told from the point of view of the smoke monster (what the hell is his name, anyway?) from the very beginning, or if the show had unfolded in strict chronological order (starting with Jacob's birth and ending with the series finale), the show wouldn't have been nearly as effective as it was.

Granted, there were some pretty big questions that were left partially or wholly unresolved, and I don't necessarily recommend that M.O. when writing your novels—readers like loose ends tied up, even if it's not perfect. I also tend to think readers don't really like abstract church-afterlives vaguely reminiscent of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, either, so I'd also avoid that tack if possible. To each his/her own.

As for the ending of lost in particular: I think it was interesting and competent, but not totally mind-blowing. I didn't like that major questions weren't answered (e.g. what the island actually is, the fates of certain seemingly extraneous characters, the source of Eloise Hawking's apparent extra-temporal awareness, and so on), but I suppose those weren't really "the point." I'm not sure I could really tell you what "the point" was. I did, however, think the bookending of the eye opening/eye closing image, while predictable, was nice, and while I wasn't really a fan of Christian being there (though I suppose, being dead, he did belong), I did like the "reunion" feel of the church scene. It may grow on me as time goes on.

What do/did you think, fair readers?


[Edit: speaking of you, fair readers: there are now 1,000 of you following PMN! Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, and following!]


* Everyone? I think?
** Walt?

Google Me This, Google Me That

In the ongoing battle for the Future of Publishing, it seems there's another player vying for the crown of Evil Book Overlord™: Google. Yes, yes, I know we've been hearing about them for years with regard to copyright infringement, but now that it seems like the G-Unit has made deals with several (read: 25,000+) publishers and authors to sell their works via Google Editions, I think Amazon and Apple have good reason to be worried.

Between books it will legally sell through publisher/author contracts and books with expired copyrights, Google Editions will have nearly four million e-book titles available (compared to the iBookstore's 46,000 or so and Amazon's 500,000). If you tried to read one Google Editions book per day (assuming they didn't add more over time), it would take you almost eleven thousand years to read them all. To which I say: that is pretty awesome.

Some interesting caveats, however: apparently, your Google books will live in the cloud, which is a fancy way of saying "on the Internet." They won't live on your computer and you'll either need to be connected to the Internet or download the books into an off-line cache to read them. No word yet on which device formats the books will be available in, but I'm guessing that since Google is competing with Amazon, their proprietary e-book format won't be one of them.

Questions/comments/vitriol/praise: you know what to do.

Bicentenne-mail!... I Mean, Post

That's right, mes auteurs, today marks PMN's 200th post. And, much like Strong Bad, I feel the need to celebrate this arbitrary milestone unnecessarily. All of you, quick! Look under your chairs! That's right, you're all going home with four dust bunnies, a half-dozen stale Cheerios, and a water-stained, dog-eared copy of John Gardner's The Art of Fiction! O joy! O rapture!

...in serious bicentennial-type business, it seems that The Big House is relinquishing e-rights to the works of William Styron. While Random House indicated last year that contract clauses like "in book form" implicitly give publishing houses e-rights to any book they publish (e-book rights weren't specifically delineated in contracts until about fifteen years ago), they seem to be reversing their decision with regard to Styron's estate. Speaking for the company, Stuart Applebaum says that the decision is "an exception" and their "understanding is that this is a unique family situation."

The question, of course, is whether there will be (to quote Richard Curtis) "a spate of 'me toos'" in which authors decide to legally challenge their publishers' implicit rights to their books in e-format (assuming those rights weren't negotiated specifically after 1995) and attempt to e-publish with other companies. While I'm certainly not a lawyer, it seems to me that a company as large as Random House wouldn't surrender rights like these unless they believed Styron's lawyer(s) had a strong legal argument that the e-rights to his works were the property of his estate. It's possible that there's something unique to Styron's contract(s) at work here, but it seems much more likely to me that his family's legal team is making the case that Random House didn't specifically acquire electronic rights to his work, and therefore they remain with the author (or in this case, the author's estate).

What do you think, gentle readers? Do phrases like "in book form" include media that didn't exist (and perhaps weren't even really imagined) at the time the contract was signed? If you were (or are!) in this kind of situation, how would (will) you handle it?

Don't Go Down That Road

For those of you who haven't seen Pet Sematary or the South Park episode that references it, I am comparing self-publishing to reanimating the dead: sure, it sounds cool (especially if you've run out of other options), but 99.9% of the time it's not a good idea. (Whether or not self-publishing will get you murdered by zombies remains to be seen.)

In Monday's comments, akashina asked what I thought of an author's opening his or her own press to publish his/her books, and how this might compare to self-publishing via large companies like Lulu. While I do think that going with a company like Lulu is the lesser of two evils, there are a number of caveats attached.

First, I strongly suggest that you not self-publish unless your book is not intended as a commercial endeavor (i.e., you don't expect anyone beyond your friends and family to read it), you're catering to an extraordinarily small niche audience (e.g. people who want to learn how to make vegan, gluten-free cupcakes using only ingredients available in North Korea), or you intend to simply disseminate it for free on the Internet (in which case, why not just save your money and make a .pdf e-book out of it?). While it's true that the traditional publishing model screens out a fair amount of good, salable material, it also screens out the most abominable garbage you've never seen. The quality of self-published material is, on average, unequivocally far inferior to the quality of traditionally published material. Almost without exception, every writer benefits from a good editor.

Second, I can't stress this enough: you should not self-publish out of frustration or the belief that your book is "too good" or "too smart" for the average agent or reader. Most people are not as good writers as they think they are. I'll reiterate: if you've done literally everything humanly possible to publish your novel in the traditional sense and haven't even gotten a nibble (no requests for the full MS, no personalized rejections, nothing), it's probably not very good. Keep working, keep learning, and write a better novel.

Third, if you are dead-set on self-publishing, I recommend you do your research and go with a company like Lulu that specializes in this sort of thing. While self-publishing via an outside party can signal to industry professionals that you're (potentially) impatient or overly confident of your abilities, it at least earns you the opportunity to have your work showcased in a somewhat professional manner (and we do hear the very occasional story of a self-published novel being picked up by an agent). Opening your own press to publish your work (and no one else's), on the other hand, will not only be perceived as the height of hubris and ignorance of how this business actually works, but will probably cost you far more money than a basic Lulu-type package (assuming you actually shell out the money to do it right). A $9.99 domain name and a bunch of .pdfs of your novels available for paid download does not a professional press make.

In short: if you don't have a very good reason for self-publishing, don't do it (at least not in print; the e-book revolution may change things in the next five or so years). If you feel you must self-publish, do it right. Printing your own material without anyone else's help—no editors, no publicists, no marketing directors, no advertising budget, no nothing, nada, zero, zilch—is not only likely a tremendous waste of your time, but your hard-earned cash, as well.

iPad, YouPad... WePad?

It's not that I haven't previously heard of this supposed savior of the European book scene, it's that I'm really questioning the wisdom behind the name. I mean, come on. "WePad"? Is that really what you want to call your iPad competitor when the name of the original has already been likened to both a maxi pad and an adult diaper?

Regardless, said WePad has recently been adopted by Germany's largest publisher, Gruner & Jahr. While the WePad (no, I will not stop saying it) does seem to have some advantages over the iPad—for example, Adobe Flash—its brand recognition (particularly outside of Europe) and full specs are still iffy, and likely will remain so until the official press release on April 12th.

It's interesting to note, however, that not only has Gruner & Jahr's involvement already been made known well ahead of the official announcement, but G&J is owned by (dun dun dun!) Bertelsmann (they hold a 74.9% stake in the company). You may recall from Friday's post that Bertelsmann is the parent company of Random House, currently the only one of the big six publishers that has not signed on with the Apple iPad. Curious, no?

Whether or not there's a significant connection here is anyone's guess, but I do wonder whether a potential WePad/iPad controversy may be part of the reason Random House has resisted jumping on the Apple bandwagon too soon. I'm not insinuating that either company would insist that Random House/G&J/Bertelsmann not do business with the other, or that translation issues would be a disaster down the road, but I do wonder how the politics of electronic publishing are going to play out as companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and perhaps even Neofonie (the company that produces the WePad) begin playing larger and larger roles in the industry.

Thoughts?

O Fortune, Fortune!

Occasionally in this oft-misunderstood (and sometimes maligned) industry, dear authors, factors beyond your control will play significant part in how many copies of your book a given account will buy (assuming they buy it at all). While I've already talked a little about what you can do to sell yourself and your book, there will be many a time in which the outcome is largely beyond your control. Examples include:

· Overcrowding. Your book may be unique relative to the overall market, but if an account's buyer has already bought five other titles that are (to him or her) essentially identical, their buy for your book is going to be lower than it otherwise would have been—doubly so if your title is designed to appeal to a very small or niche audience. (This is one reason why trend chasing can be a bad idea.) You have no control over what other people are writing, agents are pitching, editors are acquiring, and sales reps are selling, so there's no real way for you to account for this ahead of time. You'll just need to write what you want to write as well as possible.

· Publicity. Sure, you have control over your reputation as a person and a writer, but the kind of publicity I'm talking about is the pie-in-the-sky stuff about which even the publishing house can't make any guarantees: an Oprah's Book Club seal, a spot on Good Morning America, &c, &c. These are game-changing factors that will certainly boost sales of your book, but you can neither account for nor depend on them beforehand.

· The sales call. Maybe the rep isn't super enthusiastic about your book (though he or she will do his/her absolute best to seem so). Maybe the buyer doesn't like the title of your book, or hates the cover, or is simply having a bad day. Maybe the sales call is running over and the rep only has thirty seconds to sell your book. There are innumerable factors that affect the actual sales call over which you have no control whatsoever, and each of them can influence the account's buy one way or the other.

· Plain old luck. I've said it before and I'll say it again: good luck or bad, it's going to affect your career in some capacity. Maybe you got that Oprah's Book Club pick! Maybe you've had to change editors six times since acquisition. Maybe you wrote that killer bio of Millard Fillmore right before they discovered he was secretly a space Nazi!* Maybe your book gave Stephen King a terrible papercut, prompting him to write a scathing public review. The list is endless.

The point of all this, author-acquaintances™? Many aspects of your career will be difficult to predict or control. Everything from having your partial MS passed on to the agent by his/her assistant to the final sales call to winning all kinds of fancy literary awards will inherently contain an element of randomness or luck, and it's up to you to make the best of it, regardless of the circumstance.





*The author has no reason to believe Millard Fillmore is, was, or ever has been a space Nazi. Sorry, Millard.