Publetariat

Viral Loop Chronicles Part 1: Forget Everything You've Heard About Book Publishing

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This article, from Adam Penenberg, originally appeared on Fast Company on 10/22/09.

Forget everything you’ve heard about book publishing.

For instance, recently at a party to celebrate the publication of my latest book, a number of people asked, "Is your publisher sending you on a tour to promote your book?"

Dicl;dsCKWDfce9qdck. Sorry, I was laughing so hard recounting this story that I hit my head on my keyboard.

These friends/colleagues/acquaintances/random people I met were inquiring about Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. It tells the stories of the fastest growing companies in history–Skype, Hotmail, eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many more, all of which grew virally. By amassing such huge numbers of users without spending a dime on marketing, they were able to create multimillion and in some cases billion-dollar businesses practically overnight. They did it by creating a product that its users spread for them. In other words, to use it, they had to spread it. Never before in human history has it been possible to create this much wealth, this fast, and starting with so little. I’d like to think Viral Loop is partially inspirational. If they can create billion-dollar companies from scratch, why can’t you? (Read an excerpt here and here.)

Most people have a vision of publishing that ceased to exist years ago: writers of yore traipsing bookstore to bookstore across America to offer readings and scrawl inscriptions to the handful of strangers who bothered to show up. It sounds so quaint. Alas, today’s publishers have little patience for such low-yield marketing efforts. Building a writer’s career isn’t part of the equation. It’s all about the bottom line. If legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, who patiently guided some of our nation’s greatest writers (Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe) were alive today, he’d probably be working in public relations.

Publishers don’t pump serious marketing money into a book unless they know it’s a hit, even after coughing up a six-figure advance. They don’t commit to ad budgets in contract negotiations and are loath to spend a dime on authors’ Web sites, travel, or any other expenses. That’s because so few of the books they publish actually "earn out," that is, sell enough copies so that the author’s advance is covered by his or her sales. A book that sells enough copies to justify an author’s advance is about as common as a kind or thoughtful anonymous comment on Gawker.

Read the rest of the article, and continue to follow the series, on Fast Company.

Theme As Technique

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Today we continue Mark Barrett’s series on theme, which originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. You can read the first entry in the series, ‘Axing Theme’, here, and the second installment, Thinking Theme For Fun and Profit, here. 

On Monday I introduced you to Thomas McCormack and his devastating critique of the way theme is taught. On Tuesday I talked about how emphasizing theme and ‘important’ literary works actually discourages some (if not many) students from reading and learning. A helpful reader provided more ammunition in the comments.

The consistent theme in these arguments is that theme should not be deployed as an analytical tool. Readers, students and teachers have more insightful measures by which to judge literature and writing — a sampling of which awaits you in the conclusion of Mr. McCormack’s document. Too, at the highest levels of academia criticism is always in flux, meaning determinations of theme are not simply potentially speculative but inherently transitory.

In short, using theme to reveal meaning in a story is like using divining rods to discover water underground. Many people swear by it, but it has no basis in fact. Theme as a creative technique, however, can be a powerful means of organizing and expressing ideas. By understanding theme in this context we not only learn how to use it appropriately, but also gain insight into why theme is poorly taught, and how theme can be so easily turned to nefarious purposes. (A subject I’ll tackle tomorrow.)  

Now, suppose you and I are going to build a house, a car, or almost anything you can think of. In our collaboration we will have functional requirements to discover (it must not blow up, it must turn on when you press a button), we will have usability requirements (it must not be confusing, it should provide positive feedback when operated), and we will have aesthetic requirements (it should be cool, sexy, retro, whatever.) Unfortunately, completing these design tasks only reveals two new obstacles. First, there are a lot of requirements to organize. Second, there is no inherent consistency to the requirements.

For example, if we’re making an outdoor grill we could satisfy our aesthetic requirements by putting different stickers or paints on the same functional model. Or we could make different functional models with varying capacity and burners, yet present all models with a common paint scheme. Or we could emphasize usability and give everyone a Model-T grill: basic and black. We might even decide which choices to make based on a set of priorities, but that would only kick the can down the road. How do we know what our priorities should be?

The answer, as you might imagine, is to employ theme as an editorial tool to help determine which requirements to keep or emphasize, and which to omit or diminish in importance. But even here we need to be careful, because all themes are not equal. Proportionality in theme is also critical to our ability to integrate theme in any instance.

For example, it would be tricky to make an outdoor grill based on a theme such as ‘war is hell.’ I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but the end result would probably be so obvious as to make it no longer a war-is-hell grill but a statement in which the theme detached from the object. Yes, the grill might function as a grill, and particularly so as a conversation piece (hold that thought for tomorrow), but the theme would exist apart from the grill’s functionality. Meaning we could just junk the grill and go with the message, or vice versa.

(Note that this is exactly what happens when a student proposes a theme that seems preachy relative to the story being analyzed. The student goes too far in trying to find deeper meaning and ends up under hot lights, accused of moralizing. When an author writes a preachy story the same dynamic is at work. In such instances theme — meaning a message the writer is trying to communicate — separates from the story. The end result is that story dies at the hand of theme. And yes, you should consider that a cautionary tale.)

Scaling our thematic grill goals back, then, we could probably embrace themes like ‘the future,’ ‘masculinity,’ or even ‘heat’ in a way that allowed us to harmonize the elements of our grill without beating cooks over the head with a message. (It’s not that we’re trying to hide our theme per se, just that we don’t want it to separate from the object.)

In picking the theme for our grill we could simply make one up, but we are not obligated to conjure out of thin air. For more focused inspiration we could look to the intent of our object (cooking), or to knowledge about people who might want to experience or use that object. Because we are making a grill, and because we intend to sell it, we might distill marketing data about grill sales into a generic customer profile: male, mid-forties, overweight, meat-eating, stubble-faced, beer-can-crushing, etc. This profile, in turn, might suggest a variety of possible themes that could be used to harmonize our grill requirements.

If we chose ‘masculinity,’ for example, that one word and its attendant (real or imagined) traits would become both a filter and editorial point of focus. Each part on the grill could be shaped and machined to look burly. We could also comb through our usability and functionality requirements and make thematic choices there: eliminate a few conveniences to make the grill seem more rugged (and save on manufacturing costs); engineer the grill’s functionality to require more muscle (firm detents on the burner knobs, a heavy lid).

Ideally, at the end of the design and manufacturing process, our theme would be indistinguishable from the final product even though it informed every aspect of that product. We would not want someone looking at our grill to see our theme standing apart because that would mean we failed to integrate and harmonize our requirements. (In that case, again, we could have saved ourselves the trouble and simply put up a sign.)

Yet this is exactly what students are asked to do with stories. It should also be clear from this example that the easier it is for a student to identify a theme, the more likely it is that integration of theme into story was bungled. Ideally, integration of theme in a fictional work should be indistinguishable from the work itself, yet students are routinely told that they should be able to make such distinctions.

(It is possible for thematic obviousness to be a marketing goal in itself. A line of light-weight Cute Tools in various shades of pink would be a fairly obvious appeal to cultural norms of femininity. It is also possible for thematic obviousness to be an artistic goal, as demonstrated in the works of Andy Warhol. It is not, however, possible for thematic obviousness to be a storytelling goal because storytelling requires suspension of disbelief, where thematic obviousness destroys suspension of disbelief. Again: bad storytelling makes theme apparent while good storytelling makes it organic to the whole — yet students are routinely told that being able to identify a theme is central to being able to appreciate the best literature.)

Earlier I suggested one of the things we might do, short of harmonizing our imaginary products thematically, would be to paint them all the same. Readers steeped in marketing may have noticed that this projected our grill-making operation into the realm of branding. Not surprisingly, it’s possible to inject theme into branding, just as we used it to help organize the product requirements for our grill.

In fact, it could be argued that branding in its purest form equals theme at its most abstract. If our product line is widely varied — say, appealing to beer-can-crushing goons as well as more genteel shoppers — specific themes may actually thwart our objective (sales). Acting as both a filter and editorial tool, theme in the guise of branding can be used to unify elements of our business and products such as color, type style and logo design, which will in turn inform all resulting advertising in all media.

In instances where a product line is more focused, theme as branding can be extended to the look and feel of objects, and I think Apple is a good example of this. I can’t tell you what the theme of Apple’s products is — it may or may not have been articulated in-house — but when I see an Apple product I see it as thematically connected to other Apple products, which reinforces Apple’s branding. Even Apple’s preference for look and feel over usability is thematic: control systems that are unintuitive for novices ultimately provide a deeper sense of community and mastery as users becomes more familiar with them.

In these examples we can also see that theme as a technique owes nothing to sophisticated language, deeper meaning or valuation. Theme is quite happy to operate apart from concerns about worth, merit, the human condition or anything else we might want to saddle it with. This doesn’t mean we can’t employ theme in these ways, just that these are not inherent aspects of theme as a technique.

Which brings us back to storytelling and literature. As I said in my first post on theme, I gave up chasing art for something more useful to me as a writer: craft. By extension, viewing stories as machines that are made up of parts and subsystems which function to create specific intended effects means there’s little difference between our grill-making venture and any story I chose to write.

In the same way that theme can be used to edit and filter the requirements and components of our grill, we can employ theme in storytelling. But note: this does not alter theme in the least. Theme is not suddenly more important or powerful in fiction than it is when used in grill-making or branding. Theme is theme. It is a tool of creation and it is used in the same way in all instances: to filter and edit and harmonize.

For example, let’s say our grill business falters. You go back to what you were doing, I slink off to a shabby one-room hovel situated beside a polluted waterway. Night after cockroach-infested night goes by until the last lightbulb fails. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep for fear of being eaten. I am in agony.

Fortune smiles on me, however, when a typewriter and 500 sheets of 20-pound paper fall out of a passing truck. Seized by a desire I cannot name I set to work, determined to tell my story. Maybe it’s fiction, maybe it’s non-fiction, maybe it’s the stuff that guy and Oprah had to apologize for. It doesn’t matter. All I know is it’s ultimately going to be about one thing: pain.

That’s how complicated (not) theme is as a storytelling technique. Every word, every scene, every aspect of what happened in my document can be filtered and edited by one over-arching thematic point of reference — yet this says nothing about the subject matter or the facts or the events I might choose to portray.

(The previously-mentioned requirement of thematic proportionality doesn’t just apply to grills. If you are determined to write a story based around the theme that war is hell, you pretty much know going in that you’re going to have to show a lot of war and a lot of hell. War-is-hell short stories, to say nothing of war-is-hell flash fiction, usually end up about as convincing as a war-is-hell grill. Then again, if you’re going to include a lot of war and a lot of hell, to what extent does adopting war-is-hell as a theme impact the final product? The answer is that it doesn’t because you’re simply replicating the subject matter. Writing a war-is-hell story with a war-is-hell theme is as helpful as designing a grill with a grill theme. The first conclusion you should draw here is that theme should vary in some way from the object it relates to. The second conclusion you should draw is that asking a student to elicit the theme of a war-is-hell story is pointless.)

To continue the example, imagine that what I write gets published, pipelined into schools, force-fed to students, then analyzed by students and teachers alike. What are the odds that any of those down-steam analysts are going to figure out my theme, particularly if it varies from the subject matter? And to what extent is what I wrote even reducible to the original theme? Is my story, loaded with characters and events, really only pain? If so, why did I put all that other stuff in there? Why didn’t I just write PAIN on a single piece of paper? Or make PAIN posters and put them up all over town? More importantly, why didn’t I skip writing the story altogether and deal with my pain?

The question is: If pain is my theme, is pain the meaning of my story?

The answer is: No.

Pain as theme is simply one tool I use to shape the end product, just as character selection, setting, dialogue and every other aspect of storytelling should conspire to create a whole. The blindingly obvious proof of this is that I can neglect theme entirely as an author and still complete my project. I don’t even need pain as a theme in order to write about pain.

If you haven’t read Thomas McCormack’s essay, I urge you to do so. You’ll see clearly how theme as an analytical tool foisted on students is entirely misplaced, while theme as an editorial tool used by authors makes sense.

In the same way that a compass can tell you where you’re going, but not where I have been, theme seems only genuinely useful to the person employing it.

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry.

How To Get Your Book Reviewed: Online Book Reviews

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This article, from Annette Fix (with research assistance from Carrie Hulce), originally appeared on the W.O.W. Women on Writing site in 2007.

As each month goes by, there is more and more evidence that proves the internet has taken the publishing industry and pulled the dusty rug from beneath it. The Web 2.0 Quake as shaken many of the industry giants right down to their ink and paper foundations. And, bit-by-bit, the hallowed halls of the untouchables are crumbling around them.

In case I’ve instilled unnecessary fear into your heart about the impending publishing apocalypse, I’ll reassure you by explaining why and how the power is actually in your hands now.

With most major magazines and newspapers cutting their book sections, book reviews are moving back into the hands of the people—the readers, not the critics.

The power-house reviewers: Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist, and ForeWord will still sit atop their jeweled thrones—at least for a little while longer. But readers are done relying on the dictators for the “good book” nod.

One of the biggest influences in this trend has been Amazon.com, the behemoth of book reviews. This is the one-stop shop where an author can find reviewers for her book. It is, by far, the greatest resource to target reviewers, in any genre.

When you are ready to seek reviewers, keep in mind that your goal is to look for the badges for “Top 10 Reviewer, Top 50, Top 100, Top 500,” etc. These are the most prolific reviewers who are serious about their craft. You will find that their reviews are carefully and thoroughly written, much more comprehensive than what you will find posted by the casual reader. The Top Reviewers love books, are avid readers, and are committed to reviewing. Many of them also work with other sites to submit their review content, so being reviewed by these reviewers will give your book visibility on other sites as well.

There are two ways to seek out the best reviewers for your book. It is research, so yes, it will be time intensive. First, you can do a search for books that you know are similar to the book you have written. Cookbook? Historical romance? Dog-Training Guide?

Scroll through the reviews and look for the Top Reviewer badges. The names are clickable links to the reviewers’ Amazon pages. Once you go to their page, click on “Browse profile” and you will be able to see their lists of interests.

There is also another feature, once you are on their profile page, scroll down and see every review they have ever posted on Amazon. Read their reviews. See if you like their voice and their style. Are they overly generous with their stars or stingy? Do they give useful and fair commentary?

After you’ve analyzed their reviews, if you believe they would be a good fit, look for the contact information in the “Your Actions” box in the upper right corner of their profile page. There are several options, but look for the “Send this person email” link. When you click on it, it will open in your mail program or if you hover over the link, the email address will appear in the lower left corner of your browser frame.

Read the rest of the article, which includes numerous links to online reviewers, on the W.O.W. Women on Writing site.

Thinking Theme for Fun and Profit

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Today we continue Mark Barrett’s series on theme, which originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. You can read the first entry in the series, ‘Axing Theme’, here.

Yesterday I posted an important excerpt from Thomas McCormack’s book, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist. In the excerpt, Mr. McCormack dismantled the way theme is commonly taught in schools and colleges, and I urged readers to forward his essay to others so that we might collectively stop this abuse.

Today I’m going to explain why this is not simply a goofy idea but actually important. By which I of course mean that it involves making money.

If you remember my post referencing the 90-9-1 Principle, you’ll recall that 90% of the people interested in anything are passive about their interest. They want to watch movies, not make them. They want to watch cooking shows, not cook anything. They want to read books, not write them.

In the publishing business, this 90% is variously known as The Audience or Our Customers. Yes, writers read other writers’ books, and editors read books other than the one’s they’re editing. But when it comes to the people who buy and read books and generally provide the medium with a return on investment, that’s the 90% who are not interested in writing books or even in analyzing books. They just want to read.

So it stands to reason that booksellers and book writers would want as many such readers as they can get, and they would want those readers predisposed to enjoy the process of reading, as opposed to, say, hating it. Which is why the way theme is often taught to students is a serious question, and one that deserves addressing.  

In fact, it seems to me there is no better time to look at every aspect of the publishing industry than right now, while it’s collapsing under its own weight. (As an aside, when was the last time that an established entertainment medium went through a rebirth akin to what’s happening in publishing? The music business is certainly being transformed by the internet in similar ways — and faster — but revolutions in the music biz are common: wire recordings to vinyl to 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 to whatever. In publishing you have the printing press…27 million years of human history in which nothing changes [give or take]…then the internet.)

I understand that everyone is in a hurry to discover the next big bandwagon, but there are some serious structural problems with the book business. One of them is the fact that of all the entertainment mediums in existence, no audience gets hassled more than people who read books. And all that hassling — at all levels — drives people who might otherwise enjoy books to look for alternatives like fast food, heroin, overthrowing the government and watching television.

The whole thing starts in grade school. Not in individual homes (unless your parents are snobs), but in the educational system that kids encounter across the entire country. Some teachers, administrators and librarians believe that children should read specific material so they will be properly educated. Others believe that children should be encouraged to follow their passions, because promoting and preserving a life-long interest in learning and knowledge is critical to the long-term health and welfare of that student.

These battles rage up to and through high school, and there are valid points on both sides. You can’t have everyone reading comic books and nobody reading about global events and history: that leads to stupidity. But you also can’t force everyone to read Shakespeare and Chaucer and allow no one to read popular fiction because that leads to hating school and hating reading. (My own personal belief is that anyone who does anything to discourage a student from reading anything should be shot.)

Somewhere in late junior high or high school, a new wrinkle is added to this tug of war between being educated and being interested. At some point a teacher assigns a book report which is not only about what happens in a book, or about who wrote the book and when, or even about how that book fits into the history of books. At some point someone asks what a given book means.

And this is where the real trouble begins. Because moments earlier each student was thinking, “Well, I enjoyed this book,” or, “Gosh, this book is super stupid,” and all of those reactions were honest if perhaps also youthful and maybe even uninformed. But now something different is in play. First, there’s the possibility that there is a right answer, meaning the student can be wrong. Second, this new meaning may have nothing to do with emotion and existence, “It made me feel cold,” and everything with thinking and abstraction: “It made me wonder about global warming.” Third, the reader’s subjective experience and all that went with it is now being superseded by objective meaning as a point of educational focus.

As Thomas McCormack notes: the student is now being asked to perform an autopsy, rather than being asked to understand a living being:

The remaining counts in the indictment—that the professors’ “theme” hunt misleads the student about, indeed positively shields him from, a good book’s best reward—is something that would be corroborated by many adults looking back on their school days. Picture the student, told that he must derive an abstract generality that “accounts for” and “explains” all the major details of a story. He figuratively dons his white clinician’s smock and knuckles down to his grim task. He lays the tale out on a slab and begins his joyless dissections—not in search of its beauty of feature, grace of movement, charm of voice, vitality of nature, but in search of its ‘idea’; in search not of its feeling but of its ‘statement’; not of what it does, but of what it ‘says’.

When he has finished his examination, he then must write up his report, a tricky business requiring that all the x’s, y’s, and z’s be encompassed in the algebraic formula. In the end it no more conveys the meaning of what’s on the slab than the coroner’s report that starts, “A well-nourished Caucasian female of one hundred eighteen pounds, aged between twenty-five and thirty . . . ”

Again, if the 90-9-1 Principle is even remotely accurate, then 90% of the people who are being subjected to this kind of teaching have no interest in going on to become English majors or professors or authors. If they enjoy reading at all, they enjoy it as a reader. Yet during much of their ride on the educational conveyor belt these readers are being bombarded with the idea that there’s more to writing that what you get out of it — particularly if what you get out of it is enjoyment. Writing is IMPORTANT and MEANINGFUL and other big words that don’t get hung on movies and music and TV and video games until you’re in college and decide you want to do that to yourself.

Worse, writing has the fewest (meaning none) bells-and-whistles of any medium. It’s got nothing going for it other than content, while at the same time the one thing the educational system seems determined to do is make sure that content is not fun. Imagine how much less enjoyment kids would have playing video games if they had to anatomize the theme of a game in an MLA-certified five-page paper. This is the minefield the publishing audience must navigate until they grow into adults with free time and disposable income, at which point a certain percentage of them decide to blow that time and money on anything and everything other than books.

And yet….even as we admit that books are inherently boring as objects, we also know that you get things from books that you can’t get anywhere else. Catch-22 comes to mind — and particularly so given how impossible it would be to turn it into anything else even if you set your mind to it. The depth, complexity, breadth, richness and power of a good novel or biography destroys everything in its path.

Amazingly, the necessary skill to access a book is taught to most children before they are taught anything else, yet somehow swaths of kids ultimately decide that reading for entertainment isn’t for them. I wonder why that happens?

The movie business faces none of this. Television, unarguably the greatest brain-destroying invention since the cudgel, gets little notice in school, even as legions of marketing weasels plot daily how to inject corporate brand loyalties into the minds of three-year-olds. Music is subjected to none of this: in fact it’s a relief to students who have to study music precisely because no one makes them think it to death. Interactive entertainment doesn’t even exist on the curriculum radar: it’s all fun.

My point here is that our audience — the 90% who are simply interested in reading books — is inevitably smaller than it should be because of this intellectual gauntlet. If this were any old time I wouldn’t dare to dream of changing the status quo. But this isn’t any old time: it’s a pivotal time because the status quo is already changing. Today we have an opportunity to go beyond transformation for its own sake to making changes we should have made a long time ago. Because of the way the internet is impacting publishing, we have an opportunity to revisit the entire evolutionary process by which itty-bitty babies become book-reading kids become book-buying adults become book-buying parents.

If readers are always important then they’re even more important when the publishing industry is hurting. Every reader is one more customer that we can satisfy or disappoint. Richard Nash gets it. It’s all about the readers, and I don’t mean the damn devices.

Yes, what I’m talking about would be a revolution. But the internet is a revolution. Teachers are inevitably going to have to adapt to new technology and writing that uses that technology, so we should be trying to help them and their students avoid fumbling live grenades like theme if they haven’t been trained in demolitions. No child should go to school and learn that reading sucks. Chemistry can suck. Or biology. Or gym class for all I care. But not reading.

That’s why I’m asking you to think about theme and the damage that it’s doing to our readers. I mean, our customers.

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry.

Axing Theme

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Mark Barrett recently published a fascinating series of posts on the subject of theme on his Ditchwalk site, and has graciously given his permission for the series to be reprinted in its entirety here on Publetariat. This first post in the series appeared on Ditchwalk on 10/18/09.

You were right not to trust theme. You knew it in your gut, but you couldn’t prove it.

Today I am going to give you the proof. If you are liberated by it, as I was when I first came across it two decades ago, I ask you to join me in putting a stop to this fraud. I did not have the internet available to me then but I do now. And I have the generous permission of the author to spread this dismantling of theme far and wide.

Thomas McCormack is a playwright. He is also the former CEO of St. Martin’s Press — a position he rose to in little more than a decade after entering the publishing industry as an editor. While at St. Martin’s Mr. McCormack wrote a book titled The Fiction Editor, drawing on his long experience in that capacity. Composed of an essay and supporting chapters, The Fiction Editor addressed storytelling not from the point of view of criticism or marketing, but solely as craft.

Included in the book (later revised in a second edition and reissued as The Fiction Editor, The Novel and the Novelist), was a chapter called Axing Theme. Which did exactly that:

Let’s start calmly: Each appearance of the word ‘theme’ in a literature appreciation textbook should be marked with that yellow crime-scene tape. Samples of the way ‘theme’ is taught should be sent to Atlanta so the Centers for Disease Control can get on it.

Is your heart leaping? Is your mind saying, “Yes!” If so, read on:

I seriously pursue this crusade here, albeit in condensed, almost outline, form, because I believe that what’s being done in classrooms stunts, and even kills, the ability and appetite of many of the best students. This deprives our globe of much talent that would otherwise find itself in writing, teaching, reading . . . and editing.

My relief at being liberated from theme by Mr. McCormack has never left me. As a writer and storyteller it is one of the most important events in the development of my craft. After searching in vain recently for the text of Axing Theme, I changed keywords and sought out Mr. McCormack himself. Finding him on his playwriting website I wrote to ask if I might post the contents of Axing Theme in order to further his crusade.

His response was immediate and unequivocal:

I have no objection to your posting the piece wherever you will — the primary motivation behind my writing that book was not to get rich but to promulgate some helpful things I’d learned in many years of association with storytelling.

The version Mr. McCormack sent me is from the Second Edition. It was retitled as ‘Theme’ and Its Dire Effects, but it is still the weighty axe I remember, honed to a razor’s edge and swung with might.

When you have finished reading it, if you agree it is the proof you always sought, I would like to enlist you. Please take a moment, today — right now — to forward a link to this post, a link to Mr. McCormack’s doc, or both, to anyone who is:

    * In college or high school
    * Teaching writing or criticism in any discipline at any level

I mean this assault to be viral. I want every student and teacher on planet Earth to get this document. Enough is enough.

Swing the axe.

 

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry. 

Stop Apologising (for the things you’ve never done)

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This post, from Joanna Young, originally appeared on her Confident Writing site on 10/22/09.

One of the defining features of confident writing is that it’s not apologetic.

Yes, I know it’s good to signal that you’re human, that you’re not perfect, that you have doubts and concerns and things you’re insecure about just like the next person. That’s part of being engaging, warm, human. It’s part of making connections, and writing with rapport.

But we can take that too far, to a point where the writing starts to become apologetic. I seem to have been doing battle with this over the last few weeks, and I’ve been jotting down some thoughts on its various guises:

 

8 Tell-Tale Signs that You’re Being Over Apologetic:

1. Your writing is littered with verbs in the passive voice (and I don’t just mean a few, I mean littered)

2. There’s an explicit apology in the text (when there isn’t anything to apologise for)

3. You spend as many words justifying what you’re saying as saying it

4. There are too many words: too much wrapping, too many abstract words, too much clutter, all getting in the way of the bit that really matters (the point)

Read the rest of the post, which includes 4 more signs that your writing is apologetic and explains how being apologetic weakens your work, on Confident Writing.

Opertion EBook Drop now Has 201 Participating Indie Authors

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Operation EBook Drop has past the 201 Indie author participation level. The program donates eBooks via links and coupons to our brave deployed coalition forces throughout the world. For further informtion on the program or to join, go to:

blog.smashwords.com/2009/09/smashwords-supports-operation-ebook.html

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Publishing Choices

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There are three general choices for getting your book published:

  • Traditional Publishing
  • Vanity Publishing
  • Self-Publishing

Due to space restrictions, the following barely scratches the surface of this subject (after all, there are whole books on the subject, such as Dan Poynter’s excellent self-publishing manual which goes into much greater detail).

Traditional Publishing

This means finding a publisher willing to gamble that your book has enough commercial or literary value to justify their investment of good money in your creation. The publisher usually takes over control of all rights to the work. The process is usually slow (unless you are a celeb currently in the news). There may or may not be an advance on royalties (depending on the resources of the publisher). When royalties are paid (usually twice a year), generally half the royalties are withheld in case some books are returned by the booksellers. It often requires being accepted by an agent, who will want between 10 and 20% of the paid out royalties as a commission to place your book and to meter out any and all monies to you after they have extracted their commission.

Vanity Publishing

Usually provided by printing companies who represent themselves as publishers. The author pays all the costs, which are generally exorbitant. This a good approach for folks who want to leave a legacy for their family and friends. It will not produce best sellers and bookstores will normally not care to sell their products. The author generally keeps rights, although I’m aware of one company that ties the rights up for seven years.

Self-Publishing

This approach is not necessarily vanity publishing. The author has total control and all rights. It covers a wide variety of possibilities. They range from creating your own publishing company to handle your works to using established publishers who provide any and all publishing/marketing services, which the author pays for, and their distributing connections. One thing to be careful is their establishing very high retail prices, which will guarantee the booksellers won’t touch it.

With all these approaches, the author must get involved in the marketing effort. All approaches can include both books on paper and digitized versions (another subject in itself). Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. There are many sharks out there, so one has to be careful. In addition, all approaches requires the author to insure the manuscript is as well-prepared as possible. I highly encourage hiring professionals to help with this. Although I am a professional editor, many people get involved in my process. I use at least one and sometimes more than one editor who does that for at least part of their living. Another blog thread will cover the types and levels of editing and the people who provide them.

This is a cross-posting from the Book Trends Blog.

Was Blind But Now I See– Text-to-Voice: An Underappreciated Editing Tool

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This post, from H.L. Dyer, originally appeared on the QueryTracker.net blog on 10/21/09.

So, we’ve already discussed the value of reading your work aloud during the editing process. This works amazingly well, especially for a specific scene or passage at a time. But, if you’re planning a full head-to-toenails edit, you’re gonna need an awful lot of tea and honey to read a full manuscript out loud.

Now, maybe some of you have spouses and/or BFF’s lining up for the chance to read your novel to you, but for most of us editing is a pretty solitary endeavor. 

If only there was someone else… someone who could read forever without getting hoarse or grumpy when you make them repeat the same sentence thirty-eight times in a row…

Well, if you have a fairly recent computer, chances are you do have access to such a person. Okay, fine, you have access to a robotic equivalent of a person, but still an amazing resource.

I’m talking about Text-to-Voice software.

I had heard that text-to-voice software was included on most recent PC’s (They are intended to assist users with visual impairments), but I’d never bothered looking up how to use it until a few months ago.

I find reading aloud to be a great editing tool, but impractical for completing a full edit at my (relatively high speed) pace. I have also noticed that when I read aloud from my manuscript, I sometimes still miss problems like missing or repeated words because I know what the text is supposed to say and my brain corrects the errors without my noticing.
 

Read the rest of the post on the QueryTracker.net blog.

5 Editor’s Secrets to Help You Write Like a Pro

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This post, from Sonia Simone, originally appeared on her Remarkable Communication site on 9/10/07.

I do a lot of copyediting, both of books and advertising collateral. I’ll let you in on a secret that still surprises me, although I’ve seen it hundreds of times now. If you looked at the raw work of most professional writers, you’d be pretty underwhelmed.

Professional writers get work because they hit their deadlines, they stay on message, and they don’t throw too many tantrums. Some pros have a great writing voice or a superb style, but as often as not, that gets in the way. When you know that the best word is “prescient,” it’s hard to swallow when an account manager tells you the client won’t know what it means.

Professional writers rely on editors to fix their clunks. Like good gardeners, sensitive editors don’t hack away—we prune and gently shape. When we’ve done a great job, the page looks just like it did before, only better. It’s the page the writer intended to write.

Editing, like writing, takes time to learn. But here are five fixes I make with nearly every project. Learn to make them yourself and you’ll take your writing to a more professional, marketable, and persuasive level.

1. Sentences can only do one thing at a time.

Have you ever heard a four-year-old run out of breath before she can finish her thought? I edit a lot of sentences that work the same way. You need a noun, you need a verb, you might need an object. Give some serious thought to stopping right there.

Sentences are building blocks, not bungee cords; they’re not meant to be stretched to the limit. I’m not saying you necessarily want a Hemingway-esque series of clipped short sentences, but most writers benefit from dividing their longest sentences into shorter, more muscular ones.

2. Paragraphs can only do one thing at a time.

A paragraph supports a single idea. Construct complex arguments by combining simple ideas that follow logically. Every time you address a new idea, add a line break. Short paragraphs are the most readable; few should be more than three or four sentences long. This is more important if you’re writing for the Web.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes secrets #3-5, on Remarkable Communication.

Twitter Tips From My Tweeps

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This post, from Alice Pope, originally appeared on her Alice’s CWIM Blog on 10/19/09.

Last week I was working on an article on Twitter for the SCBWI Bulletin and asked my Twitter followers to answer this question:
 

@alicepope: I’m writing an article on Twitter (aimed at writers and illustrators). What’s your best Twitter tip (in 140 characters or less, of course)?

In a matter of minutes my question had been retweeted several times and I’d gotten more than a dozen tips (from writers, editors, and other publishing professionals) which you’ll find below. This served as a great demonstration of how one’s Twitter community can be useful. I suggest you follow each of the wise tweeps who replied to me—and follow their advice as well.
 

  • @HeatherMcCorkle: Twitter tip: Never write anything you don’t want to read on the front page of the newspaper. Could hurt your career later!
     
  • @aliciapadron: tweet how you like to be tweeted
     
  • @GirlsSentAway: Follow 80/20 rule: 80% professional tweets, 20% to show your personality. Interact.
     
  • @EyeOnFlux: Avoid TMI (overly personal information). This begs the question: what DO most people use their Twitter accounts for? Professional? Personal? Should the two mix?
     
  • @glecharles: Be relevant, always add value and remember, it’s SOCIAL media, not just an alternative RSS feed.
     
  • @loniedwards: Tip: Download an add-on like tweetdeck to help sort. Especially during kidlit chats!
     
  • @KateMessner: Just aim to be a friendly, helpful human being online. It’s much better self-promotion than shouting about your book.
     
  • @Lynne_Griffin: I found this helpful “RT @EliseBlackwell @thefictiondesk “Be yourself, not your book.”
     
  • @RuthSpiro: My tip: Connect w/folks OUTSIDE the writing/publishing world; they don’t encounter authors daily, and think you’re really cool!
     
  • @wendy_mc: If you want your funny stuff to be retweeted, shorter tweets are better (leave room for your name)
     
  • @BrianKlems: Be honest in what you post, be it personal or promotional. If you wouldn’t read it, don’t post it.
     

Read the rest of the post, which features many more Twitter tips, on Alice’s CWIM Blog.

Ransom Stephens on The God Patent and the Future of Publishing

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This post, from Henry Baum, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 7/28/09.

Ransom Stephens has written one of the best assessments of the future of publishing that you’re likely to read (found via Pod People).  Called Booking the Future, it needs to be read – more than once.  Here we talk about the ideas put forth in the article and the success of his digitally-published novel, The God Patent, which basically proves the thesis of his essay: the future of publishing is going to look very different than it does today. 

It will have many elements of self-publishing writ large.  As he says, “Though the role of publishing has not changed – connect readers to writers – the revolution will not be led by an established publisher.” The writers who are shunned by some in the lit business are actually the innovators.  Publishing is about to go very digital.

Self-Publishing Review: Your book, The God Patent, has 7200 reads and growing. How did that happen? What’s it take to become a Scribd phenomenon? Did you promote the book a lot or did it just sort of happen?

Ransom Stephens: It kinda blows me away, I’m not sure how it happened.

The whole problem is signal to noise – having your signal emerge from the noise. When I got word that “The iTunes for books” was about to open, it seemed like an opportunity to get above the noise. I didn’t know when it would happen and I didn’t know who would do it. I got everything ready and waited. Then that first day came, May 18, and I jumped on.

I’ve promoted the book pretty much the same way I would a book in print. I’ve handed out 1000 bookmarks at bookstores and literary events and set them in obvious spots where people use computers. I didn’t catch the irony of handing out bookmarks for an ebook until I was introduced at a reading and the MC said that my bookmarks must require understanding of quantum physics to make them work with the scribd e-ink.

I think the bookmarks were a waste of money. The trick with an e-book is to get links in front of people. I used email. By the end of the month, I’ll have sent email to everyone who I’ve ever sent email to or received email from (sans spammers), about 2000 people. A lot of my friends have forwarded my emails to their friends and, I think this is really the key: there are a few people who flat out LOVE my book and they are the best salespeople. They quote it on Facebook, put links all over and stuff. That’s gratifying. And it was weird when my neighbor asked me detailed questions about The God Patent. It’s set in the town where I live, and she had a lot of questions about what was modeled after what and that sort of thing.

As a public speaker, I’ve been able to “capitalize on the bad economy” by giving speeches to mainstream audiences, sometimes even for free (since there is so little work out there right now), based on topics and themes in The God Patent. For example, the woman physicist in the book, Emmy Nutter, is based on the Emmy Noether, the Einstein contemporary who I think made the greatest contribution to mathematical physics of anyone. Ever. I have a speech titled “The Fabric of Reality” that focuses on her work that I’ve given to Rotary Clubs, some new-age groups, a science café, and have pumped up The God Patent at each one.

Ultimately though, I don’t see how anything I’ve done can account for the success The God Patent has experienced at Scribd.

SPR: Do you think posting work online changes how writers approach the work. Did you write your book thinking about how the book would work on screen with the glare of a monitor, and not on paper? If not, would you approach your next book differently keeping the Scribd audience in mind?

 

Read the rest of the post on Self-Publishing Review.

Why Isn't This Working?

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This post, from Sharon Wildwind, originally appeared on the Poe’s Deadly Daughters blog on 10/13/09.

There comes a point when a chapter sits there and stares at you. The longer you stare at it, the longer it stares back. Some people call it writer’s block, but in fact, it may be more story block.

Granted, writers attempt to keep going under horrendous circumstances that have nothing to do with their story line. There comes a point where real life overtakes narrative. Writers have to stop writing while they work with health professionals, lawyers, spiritual advisors, or whomever the heck it takes to get through the crises.

On a less horrendous scale, we know the remedy list. Get more sleep. Exercise. Decrease stress. Eat more beans, steamed vegetables, and multi-grained carbohydrates. Drink less alcohol, caffeine, and sugar.

We also know the remedy list for the story. High public stakes, high private stakes, or both. (Donald Maass) Sufficient goal, motivation, and disaster for each major character in the scene. (Debra Dixon, Sherry Lewis, and others) Characters wanting something right away, even if it’s only a glass of water. (Kirt Vonnegut)

If we’re doing all that good stuff—or as much of it as we can accomplish in a given day—and the chapter still stares back at us, what next?

Change the point of view. Yes, your story may be in first person so all of the chapters have to be in Annabelle’s point of view, but as an exercise try writing from the point of view of anyone else in the scene, even the dog, cat or canary if you’re desperate. There a good chance that another character will spot the flaws.

Re-sequence. Right now Tyrone enters the scene after Annabelle says, “I’ve seen to it that Tyrone will never get promoted.” What happens if he comes in before she says it? Why would she still say what she said if he’s in the room? What if he comes in the split second after she says it, and neither she nor the reader are certain if he overheard what she said? The registered letter is delivered at the end of the scene. What happens if it’s delivered at the beginning? Or half-way through?
 

Read the rest of the post for more tips and advice on the Poe’s Deadly Daughters blog.

Publishing Is A Community Service

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This is a cross-posting from Guy LeCharles Gonzalez‘ Loudpoet site.

Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a tecnology is entirely netural… Each technology has an agenda of its own. It is, as I have suggested, a metaphor waiting to unfold.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

There’s a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing happening in publishing these days, both by those struggling to find solutions to the challenges the industry faces, and by various Joker-pundits who apparently “just want to see the world burn.” Demagogues and idealogues love the spotlight, and attention-seeking media outlets happily provide them a stage to stoke faux controversies over what’s not being done, or is being done wrong, yelling loudly about the inevitable end of publishing as we know it!

Personally, I’m pretty confident that the end is not near; in fact, I’m very optimistic that new generations of readers will continue to be served by ambitious authors, passionate publishers, and brazen booksellers for many years to come. The individual players and channels may will change, of course, but that’s neither new nor a bad thing.

Change is good, inevitable, and in publishing, very necessary.

For all the talk of publishing’s supposedly imminent demise, there are far too many passionate people working in and around the industry, at every level, to let that happen. And whether they realize it or not, it doesn’t matter if they’re working for one of the major publishers or an independent press, in senior management or as an editor, author or bookseller — there’s a wide and fertile common ground we all share and it’s best represented by the community we all serve: the readers.

Ultimately, it’s readers’ changing habits that are driving the fundamental changes in the publishing industry – everything from the types of books they’re reading to the formats they prefer reading them in – and as a result, it’s the current business model of most publishers that’s under stress, not the community service of publishing itself.

I’m in Frankfurt this week for Tools of Change and the Book Fair, and I’m particularly excited about the opportunity to see Cory Doctorow, Richard Nash, Dominique Raccah, and the Pecha Kucha presentations at the former; and to get a glimpse of the global publishing community, including this year’s guest of honor, China, at the latter. I’m also here on behalf of Digital Book World, meeting some of our Advisory Board and sponsors, and getting feedback on the exciting program we’ve put together for the event in January.

Among the hot publishing topics of the moment, the eBook debate is perhaps the most torrid, and a particularly annoying one when it’s treated like a zero-sum game — Print vs. eBooks in a Battle to the Death! Death!! DEATH!!! It’s also fraught with larger implications for both publishers and authors alike that too many pundits willfully overlook (while pushing their own self-serving agendas), like DRM, international rights, and unequal access to information and technology.

Publishers are also facing the difficult question of justifying their role in the supply chain when the Internet has cracked the playing field wide open, making verticality a more viable model than it’s ever been, and enabling savvy authors and small presses to outmaneuver their larger, more established competitors.

On the flight over I caught up on some reading, a one-two punch of the July/August issue of the Harvard Business Review, and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Postman’s must-read classic could easily have been written in 2009 about the current Internet era; many of his critiques of television apply doubly today, especially with regards to social media, and there are many interesting parallels to be made in the current “battle” of print vs. eBooks.

HBR’s “Managing in the New World” special issue offered a thorough and insightful look at what’s changed and what needs to change for businesses to survive in 2010 and beyond, noting that, “An organization that depends solely on its senior managers to deal with the challenges risks failure.”

Coupled with that statement, perhaps the most relevant article in the issue is Henry Mitzenberg’s “Rebuilding Companies as Communities“, which argues that in order to succeed in the future, companies have to become places “where people are committed to one another and their enterprise.”

Leadership at the center. A robust community requires a form of leadership quite different from the models that have it driving transformation from the top. Community leaders see themselves as being in the center, reaching out rather than down. They facilitate change, recognizing that much of it must be driven by others.

This week, I’ll be giving a lot of thought to what I can do to help move the industry forward in a community-centric direction, and I already have a few intriguing ideas that will unfold over the coming months.

What are some of the things you’re doing from your vantage point to serve the publishing industry’s community of readers?

My Online Booksbyfay Bookstore

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I’m proud to announce that I now have my very own Online Bookstore with a paypal account. Putting together a website is not fast or easy. Not every website I checked out would let me sell products. The website I have on tripod wouldn’t come up for those who tried to find me. Most of the time, I had trouble getting into the site. So recently I explored other websites, thinking that I would have to have one for personal and another for business. The website I found will allow me to do both in one place. So far I am able to gain access to the site. If readers of this blog can’t gain entry let me know.

 

 

The bookstore comes up on the first page with paypal buttons under each book and a description along side the book picture. Other pages contain my bio and favorite links, my accomplishments, an event calendar and hit counter, a blog and Book event pictures which will change from time to time. Do I have this website perfect? No, it needs work and picture will change from time to time. I thrilled that I now have my book inventory available to purchase.

At the very top, I made sure to include that I am a member of MyEntre.net’s Iowa Entrepreneuers and Small Business Owners Group. For me, that lends proof to the fact that I am who I say I am. A small, honest business owner. Besides, I’m proud to say I’m a member.

Hopefully, my site shows buyers a self published author that writes the kind of books she reads – wholesome, heartwarming, humorous, entertaining, suspenseful, exciting and hard to put down until the end. I stated that not one of my books will be rated X or graphically violent. Any member of the family can read them if the books are to their liking. In September, a middle school girl ask her mother to buy my Amish book – A Promise Is A Promise – for her. After talking to me, the girl’s mother bought the book. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear when the girl was done reading the book, the mother read it, too.

　

　

　

　

 

Http://www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com