Publetariat

I am pleased to have attended the BOOK EXPO AMERICA show at the Jacob Javitts Center in New York City.

It was a very busy and productive show.  I was honored to meet MR. DONALD MAASS, Founder and President of THE DONALD MAASS LITERARY AGENCY, INC. of New York.  He is NOT my Agent (yet), but he is the most successful Agent ever, and a Best Selling Author in his own right.

My novel, THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE has received Nine Reviews thus far; 5 are FIVE STARS, and 4 are FOUR STARS. All reviews can be viewed at my web site: http://www.MichaelPhelpsNovels.com, www.amazon.com and www.BarnesandNoble.com.

I have posted new photos here.

Have a great week, and READ and WRITE!

Regards to all,

Michael Phelps

Indie authors have many different milestones — the first book published, the first sale, a new review, a great response to a guest blog, an interview . . . but yesterday I sold my 1,000th book over all titles and it only took , , , 18 months. Still, despite the fact that Dan Brown does that in a day or many other Indie authors on this site have done that thrice over, it is a rather nice feeling to touch a thousand souls and still manage good reviews and accelerated sales. I even took the first day off in 18 months from writing yesterday. Had steak and onion soup with the remnants of my family. Anyhow, the sun came up on another era for this author. I shall sail the waters of my ten current projects and perhaps another thousnd sales will be out there. However, I do not think the second will be as satisfying as the first.

Edward C. Patterson
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002BMI6X8
my new Amazon Author’s Page

This morning I was FeedBlitzed with "Four Tips for Submitting Nonfiction" by literary agent Ted Weinstein. I had to wonder why is Ted promoting himself as a literary agent. Very recently, Ted rejected me as a prospective author-client, stating, "We encounter many more talented writers and interesting projects than we can represent, so we carefully guard our time to serve most effectively our small number of clients." Suddenly, here’s Ted, out in public, leaving his clientele unguarded, as he trolls for new clientele and new projects.

Never before had it occurred to me that seeking an agent or publisher is no less demeaning than finding a girl friend during post puberty. Agents and publishers present authors with a strange and sometimes bizarre world, consumed in contradictions.

Take Ted’s "Four Tips," for example. They’re actually three.

First Ted says, if you’re writing nonfiction, assume you will be self publishing. OK…then no need to have an agent. Right?

Next, Ted advises, don’t submit the introduction, if you’re submitting a sample chapter, or two. Bravo! Such clarity. This makes sense.

Thirdly, Ted says, use the term "comparable titles," rather than "competitive titles." Oops! Ted must have grabbed this tidbit of advice from my recent submission to him. I used "competitive titles" in my proposal. My author’s logic tells me my book is special in the marketplace, and not "comparable." If, anything my book is incomparable. But I can’t see stating a list of other "incomparable titles" in a book proposal. This really would be tortured contradiction.

As for using "competitive titles," I live in the Kentucky Bluegrass. In my experience, a thoroughbred author runs against his or her own abilities only. A thoroughbred author doesn’t compete against the pack among which we can find ourselves. While we authors may be thoroughbreds, admittedly our product may not be. At least, not until proven. The proof comes in the actual competition against other titles in our genre. Hence, once more in my author’s logic, the term "competitive titles" seems to be the appropriate term.

But, as I’ve said, finding an agent is like finding a girl during post puberty. To your face, she says one thing. Elsewhere, she says the opposite. In Ted’s public forum, he advises, use "comparative titles." On the Submissions page of Ted’s web site, however, Ted advises in writing to use "competitive titles." As my aunt would say, "Oh, my."

Lastly, Ted’s fourth tip is no tip at all. If he requests a book proposal, Ted asks for no more than a week to review it, he says. Fair trade! I’ll forego an author tip any day for a prompt review of my submitted proposal that’s been requested. This must be the agent in Ted rising to the surface. He’s not Moses laying down the four commandments for nonfiction submissions. He’s Ted Weinstein, the literary agent. He’s a negotiator!

I wish I had met Ted Weinstein long before I met all those post puberty girls I once pursued.

This post, by Justine Larbalestier, originally appeared on her site on 5/20/09.

Daphne over at the Longstocking blog was talking about the Worst Review Ever blog and mentioned her shock at the meanness of some of the reviews:

I’m actually a reviewer for Publishers Weekly and while I’ve read some things that were kind of poorly constructed, I’ve never had even an urge to be even half this harsh, not even secretly if I strongly disliked the book. Too much work goes into a book for anything to warrant this kind of nastiness and seriously nothing is so bad it deserves to be called “a candy-coated turd.”

I have condemned books in stronger language than that. When I hate a book, I really hate a book. I totally get writing such vicious reviews. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I don’t write reviews and only discuss books on this blog if I love them: the knowledge that were I to write an honest review of a book I hate I would most definitely hurt other writers’ feelings, alienate their fans, and lose friends. Also the YA world is small and writing a bad review of another YA writer’s book leaves you open to charges of sour grapes. Life’s too short.

I say that as someone who has received very mean reviews. I know exactly how much it hurts. Reviews have made me cry and scream and kick my (thankfully imaginary) dog (poor Elvis, he knows I love him). But I believe people are moved to write such nasty reviews because of the intensity of their relationship with books. That’s awesome!

I feel that too. When I read a book I was expecting to love and it sucks I feel betrayed. When I read a book in a beloved series and the characters are suddenly transformed beyond recognition and there seems to have been no editing at all and the writing has gone to hell, I am OUTRAGED. I want to kick the editor and the author. On the scale of things, I think writing a mean review about the book is way better than assault.

Passionate reviews, good or bad, are fabulous. It’s great that people care enough to rant or rave about a book. I don’t think it’s unprofessional to vent your spleen at a book. Some eviscerations of books are wonderfully well written and a total pleasure to read. And some passionate raves about books are appallingly badly constructed. One of the reviews of my books that embarrasses me the most was a rave. An extraordinarily badly written rave in a professional location¹ which so mischaracterised my book that it was unrecognisable. The reviewer clearly loved the book. They also clearly didn’t understand it. No review has annoyed me as much as that one.

Read the rest of the post (and the footnote) on Justine Larbalestier’s site.

Hi. I’ve been to this site often, but just joined the forum.

I’ve posted a question under "Selling" and hope to get some replies. Please check it out.

I’ve self-published two novels; neither doing especially well, but I haven’t done too much marketing. (Life Without Music and All Out of Heart, both at Amazon if anyone’s interested.)

I also write for a living — marketing, p.r., journalistm, and do some editing.

My personal opinion is traditional publishing is on its last leg… But what do we have to replace it? New models — paying models!! — have to evolve somehow.

 

This essay, by Lethe Bashar, originally appeared on his The Blog of Innocence on 5/18/09.

I have a confession to make.

I haven’t been able to finish reading an entire book in over three months.

My compulsive and ardent participation on the Internet, writing blogs, commenting, publishing poems, and reading others’ work, seems to have something to do with this.

Mostly my reading these days is confined to the well-written columns of The New York Times. I am a New York Times enthusiast and reading the newspaper coincides perfectly with my short span of attention.

A couple weeks ago, I grew interested in the phenomenon of "mass amateurism" on the Web and I wanted to investigate it. I asked a couple prominent literary bloggers, Nigel Beale from Nota Bene Books and Andrew Seal, from Blographia Literaria, to write essays for the Arts and Culture Webzine I edit, called "Escape into Life."

In Nigel’s essay, he quotes the author Andrew Keen from "The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture". And while I won’t re-quote Keen here because the message is in the title, I would like to respond based on my own experience of the last couple years, and how my behavior has changed in regards to the medium of the Internet.

From college onward, I delved into literature as if it were a contact sport, devouring the classics with fervor and intensity. I majored in English, which gave me somewhat of a background in reading these authors, but I went beyond my studies to read European classics most of which weren’t taught in my classes.

I loved French and Russian realism. I relished the imaginative powers, the ability of these great writers to create worlds inside their fiction. My favorite authors were Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola in the French tradition; and Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov in the Russian.

Literary realism became my opium; I seemed to be able to live off of it forever; indulging in these beautiful and convincing worlds. Intoxicated I would spend days in the library reading, losing track of time and forgetting everything that pained me in my trivial life.

The days of literary intoxication may be over, however. I recall them with a sort of nostalgia but I can no longer enter those worlds. I refuse to abandon myself to them; I don’t have the patience to read Zola’s meticulous story-telling or Tolstoy’s epic handling of characters and events.

What has happened since? Have I changed? Have I lost my ability to engage in culture and art?

The Internet has definitely changed the way I read and what I read. But it has also changed my view of myself from a passive receiver of "culture" to an active participant and creator of it.

In many ways, I’ve become the epitome of the amateur artist on the Web. I publish everything; poetry, essays, novels, even some sketches. And like many bloggers, I bask in the freedom to express my thoughts, my impressions, my art.

I poignantly remember a creative writing college professor once telling me–after I announced my desire to become a professional writer–"You won’t publish for another ten years. I’ve seen the corpses."

And so, now it is with a certain exuberance and defiance that I publish freely on the Web, all with the click of a button.

To me, the proliferation of artistic expression, the videos on YouTube, the online novels, the loads of bad poetry, cannot be equated with a loss or diminishment of culture but instead a replenishment of it. "More artists, more culture," I say–even if the great majority of those artists are naive and unskilled. The individual acts of creativity, that’s what’s important, and with more people creating, I see the phenomenon of mass amateurism as a boon.
 

Read the rest of the essay on The Blog of Innocence.

This article, by Mike Resnick, originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Jim Baen’s Universe.

I met a young man at a recent convention. He had submitted a story he thought was wonderful to Jim Baen’s Universe, and it had been turned down. Never got as far as Eric or me.

Okay, these things happen. Lots. For every would-be writer who can sell a story, there are dozens who never will. He decided he was one of them, and told me he’d wiped the story from his computer. Well, maybe he should have.

But let me give you a little hint: if you don’t have faith in your story, why should anyone else—like, for example, an editor? First impressions are important . . . but it’s last impressions that count. I’m not saying that every rejected story is a misunderstood gem, but a story that remains in a desk drawer or a computer file (or gets wiped) never has a chance of being understood or misunderstood.

Ever hear of a novel called Up the Down Staircase? It spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and was a major motion picture starring Sandy Dennis, back in the bygone days when she was a major motion picture actress.

That was a last impression. You know how many times the book was turned down?

88.

You know how it finally sold? The author, Bel Kaufman, showed it to her minister’s wife, whose brother happened to be peripherally connected to the publishing industry, and one thing led to another, and suddenly the 88-times-rejected manuscript was the Number One seller in the country. I guess it’s lucky that the author didn’t burn the damned thing after the 50^th or 75^th turndown after all.

You think that just happens in other fields?

Read the rest of the article on Jim Baen’s Universe, and if you like it, consider making a donation or signing up for a subscription.

This article, by Kelly Jane Torrance, originally appeared in The Washington Times on 5/22/09.

Headlines bring news every week of another industry failing. One, though, is doing better than ever — self-publishing.

On Tuesday, the bibliographic information company Bowker released statistics showing that last year, for the first time, more books were released by on-demand publishers than by traditional ones.

Traditional publishers released fewer books in 2008 than in 2007 — 275,232 new books, a drop of 3.2 percent. However, on-demand publishers, the route many writers take to self-publish, released an astounding 132 percent more — 285,394 in 2008.

Self-publishing used to be derided as "vanity publishing." No longer. Self-published books finally are getting more respect, thanks to two things — belt-tightening in the publishing industry and technology that makes it easier to publish and promote books electronically.

The big publishers have laid off scores of employees since last year’s financial meltdown, and at least one, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has announced a freeze on buying new manuscripts.

"Publishers are going into hibernation right now," said Jason Boog, an editor at the publishing blog GalleyCat, to The Washington Times a few months ago. "While they hibernate, a lot of writers aren’t going to have a place to publish."

Some already are looking elsewhere. Wil Wheaton declares, "The incredible ease of distribution online and the fact that more authors — and actually, all creative people — can reach their audience and their customers more easily and more directly than at any other time in history, I think makes self-publishing an option that can be considered in the first round of choices rather than the last resort it’s been perceived as up until, let’s say, 1998 to 2001."

The writer and actor — best known as Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" — has self-published all but one of his books, which include the memoir "Just a Geek." Mr. Wheaton, who made a new name for himself as one of the earliest bloggers, researched the industry after deciding to publish eight years ago. "What I saw repeated was the truism that books sell as well as their authors promote them," he says, "whether you’re publishing yourself and receiving the lion’s share of the profits or published by a big publisher and receiving a tiny portion of them."

He thought his renown as an actor actually would hurt his chances of being taken seriously as a writer by a big publisher, so he decided to go it alone.

"The first book was an overwhelming success," he says. "If you combine ‘the long tail’ with what Kevin Kelly calls ‘the 1,000 true fans model,’ it’s really realistic and reasonable for creative people who are willing to work really hard to be successful via self-publishing, whether that’s books or music or movies." In other words, an artist can make a living selling his or her niche product to a small but devoted group of people.

Read the rest of the article, which includes some quotes from Publetariat founder April L. Hamilton, on The Washington Times site.

This post, from Editorial Ass, appeared on that site on 5/20/09.

My mother has read and loved a particular book I edited. Last week, she called me and asked, out of curiosity, how much money that favorite author of hers might make off the book. Well, I said, there’s an advance, I said, but really what matters is royalties, but you can’t just assume those are rolling in every six months, since there’s a reserve against returns, but then there’s rights sales that are straight pocket change, but there’s a fee for the…

As I spoke, her eyebrows came down into her nose and her mouth pursed fretfully as she tried to follow me. Watching these changes come over her face, I started listening to myself and the malarkey I spoke. I realized that royalty accounting must be SO mysterious to anyone unpublished. Or published. Or anyone. I realized even I didn’t really know what I was talking about.

So here is my imperfect attempt to describe to you an author’s possibilities for making money with her/his books. I don’t claim the final word, and I welcome amendments. But I think everyone deserves to know how they might profit from their work, because it might help them make good decisions about their writing and publication processes.

Let’s try to go in rough chronological order.

The Advance
What does "advance" mean: It’s money "advanced" to you against royalties, meaning it’s a loan the publisher gives you in a lump sum under the assumption that your book will make enough money for said publisher that the advance will be recouped. This means that you will start earning royalties when and only if your book makes enough money that your publisher’s advance to you it paid back, using your negotiated royalty percentage as a marker. If your advance is $10,000, your royalty is 10%, and your cover price is $25.00, you will need to sell 4,000 copies of your book before you start making additional royalties. This is called earnout.

How the advance is divided: Either in half of thirds–usually. If it’s a smaller advance (or your agent manages to force them to agree to this), your publisher might agree to pay it in two lumps, often half on signing, half on delivery and acceptance of your final manuscript. If it’s larger advance, you’ll probably get a third on signing, a third on delivery and acceptance (or d&a), a third on publication.

The Royalties:
What are typical royalty percentages: Standard royalties for new books are as follows: 10% for hardcover, 7% (or sometimes 7.5%) for trade paperback, and 5% for mass market. Often, publishers will agree to incentive escalators (usually only on hardcovers). Here’s a very typical hardcover example:

10% on the first 5,000 copies sold
12.5% on the next 5,000 copies sold
15% thereafter

When royalties are paid: As we mentioned above, you’ll only start earning additional royalties when your advance has earned out. Supposing your book has earned out, royalties are (at most companies) paid every 6 months, in statements that go directly to agents.
 

Read the rest of the post, which includes information about ‘reserves against returns’, rights sales and some what-if scenarios, on the Editorial Ass blog.

This post, from R.J. Keller, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 2/4/09.

There’s been much debate recently – here at Publishing Renaissance and elsewhere around the blogosphere – about the advisability of writers offering their work online for free. This post is not intended to add to that debate. My book is already out there for free, so that ship has sailed. No, today’s post is intended to help those who have already made the decision to offer their books for free to make the most of it.

First of all, you must decide how to put your book online. Many writers post them either in their entirety or one chapter at a time to a blog, or, as it’s sometimes referred to, a “blook.” There are advantages to this, chief among them is that it’s FREE for the author. Also, the built-in comments box makes it easy to get immediate feedback, to interact with readers. The drawback is that it can look a little unprofessional if you’re not careful.

If you go this route, be sure to choose a template that’s easy on the eyes. Your readers will – hopefully – be spending hours staring at your book on the screen. Be kind to their eyes. If you decide to serialize your blook by chapters weekly, monthly, or as you write it, be sure to offer your readers an option to subscribe to a feed, so they know when you’ve updated it.

If you’ve got a little cash to spend, you can post your book on a regular website. This gives you more control over the look and feel of your online book, but it requires at least a basic knowledge of HTML and/or CSS, and is a lot more work. If you like that kind of thing (I’m getting to that point) and don’t mind the work, this is a good way to go.

You can also post your book to an existing website or blog as a downloadable file, usually a PDF. (Although I know there are other formats available.) This can have the advantage of putting your book directly into the “hands” of your readers, but it also takes control of your book out of your hands. This is a huge deal to some authors, not so much to others. If you do opt to go this route, be sure to format your book as professionally as possible and to include links to your website and/or blog.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: you can publish your work online and make it available for free, or at a price, at Scribd or Smashwords as well.]

Read the rest of the post on Publishing Renaissance.

This post, from Devon Ellington, originally appeared on the Procrastinating Writers blog on 5/8/09.

It’s easy to stay on track for a contracted, deadlined project. You know when it has to be finished and to the client/publisher/editor/agent. You have a fixed date, and, whether you break it down into do-able bits or wait until the last moment for that adrenalin rush. It’s out the door on time if you expect to work for that particular person again.

But what about the pieces you write just for you? The novel you always wanted to start and finally “got around to?” How do you stay on track if a project isn’t under someone else’s deadline?

You have to apply some of the same tools, but modify them a bit. You have to make the stakes high enough to actually do it. And, most importantly, you have to want it enough.

For the purposes of this piece, let’s use a novel as an example. You want to try something new, it’s not contracted, it’s not deadlined. You might not yet know how long it’s going to be, what genre it’s in, or where it’s headed. That’s fine. You just have to really want to write this novel.

• Figure out what a comfortable daily pace is for your work. Something that makes you feel that you’ve accomplished something. I prefer to use word count or page count rather than time count. It’s easy to sit and stare at the screen for two hours and say, “Oh, that was my two hour session. Done.” And there’s not a word on the page. With a word count or a page count, you don’t get to end your session until you’ve hit your quota.

  I write my first 1,000 of fiction first thing in the morning, before I am “tainted by the day.” I get up, feed the cats, put on the coffee, do my yoga/meditation, and then write my first 1,000. If it’s going well, I keep going as long as possible. If it’s a slog to get through that first 1,000 words, at least, no matter how frustrating the rest of the day gets, I know I’ve written 1,000 that day. It takes off a huge amount of pressure from the rest of the day. Sometimes, it’s a deadlined project, such as my next Jain Lazarus adventure. Often, it’s a project with which I’m playing, where I’m still unclear as to what it will be when it grows up.

  Carolyn See suggests 1,000 of fiction “every day for the rest of your life” in her wonderful book Making a Literary Life. It’s four pages. Doable in most situations. But if two pages (500 words) makes more sense in the scheme of your life, then that’s your daily quota. What matters is doing them. Every day. If you miss a day because you’re sick or life gets in the way, get back to it as fast as possible. Don’t give up.Also, remember that every novel has its own innate rhythm. Some will have a quicker natural flow than others. It’ll take you a few chapters to figure out the book’s natural rhythm. Once you’ve found it, work with it, not against it.

Read the rest of the post on the Procrastinating Writers blog.

This post, from Nathan Bransford, originally appeared on his blog on 5/5/09.

One of the more unique aspects of writing is the way people associate themselves and their identities with their words on the page. People don’t just spend time in the evening reflecting on the capricious vicissitudes of life and/or zombie killers from another planet. It somehow becomes more than that.

You can see this in the way people talk about writing: some people compare it to oxygen, i.e. something that they can’t live without. They don’t say, "I like to write, it’s fun, I enjoy it." They say, unequivocally, "I am a writer. It’s who I am."

I’m going to be honest here and say that while I don’t judge people when they define themselves as writer, whatever their publication status, I find it a little unsettling when they make it an overly intrinsic part of their identity.

First of all, people just don’t tend to define themselves by what they do in their spare time. You don’t hear anyone shout to the rafters, "I AM STAMP COLLECTOR!" or "I AM A CONNOISSEUR OF REALITY TELEVISION!"

To be sure, there’s something about writing that’s a little different (to say the least) from stamp collecting. It’s more personal, even when it’s not a memoir or something that relates directly to someone’s real life. Putting thoughts on the page, any thoughts, means taking one’s inner life and putting it all out there for the world to see. Normally we’re at great pains to keep our emotions hidden, whether that’s concealing anger or love or nervousness. Writers do the opposite: they take their innermost thoughts and show them to the world. And there’s something scary/thrilling about externalizing what is normally kept hidden.

But an identity?

Here’s where that becomes problematic. Once someone makes the leap from writing as a fun, intense pursuit to something wrapped up in identity, it’s a dangerous road to be walking on. As we all know, the path to material success in the writing world is ridden with obstacles and rejections. And when people begin to wrap up their identity with the publication process, the rejections become personal, and a judgment on a book becomes intertwined, in the writer’s eye, with a judgment of self.
 

Read the rest of the post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

This post, by Jeremiah Tolbert, originally appeared on his site on 4/22/09.

I have often written about a concept pioneered by Barry Schwartz called the paradox of choice.  Basically, the idea is that the more choices you give people, the more likely they are to be paralyzed with indecision.  It’s easier to make up your mind when you have fewer choices.  

In yesterday’s post, C.S. Inman asked the following question:

When I begin a story, I do a good job with characterization, with setting up engaging conflicts, with possibilities for compounded problems and solutions. From what they tell me, people generally want to keep turning pages.

Unfortunately, when I’m writing past the “beginning” I have difficulty choosing which plot options should take up those subsequent pages. The “middles” of my stories are a crossroads where I feel like no matter which path I let the protagonist take, I’m missing something better on one of the other paths. It doesn’t help when I sometimes finish a short story (or a chapter of a novel) and realize I have to delete 2,000 words and go a different direction because it’s totally awesome, and how didn’t I see it before I wasted all that time?

Do you have any ideas about how I can either 1. Stop being a pansy and just pick one and like it or 2. Discover which path is going to be the most satisfying BEFORE I write the wrong one?

Read the rest of the post on Jeremiah Tolbert’s site.

This post, by Christine Duncan, originally appeared on the Rule of Three blog on 4/27/09.

There are elitists in every area of life, and the mystery writing field is no exception. I thought I knew them all. I did know about the folks who thought you weren’t writing a real mystery unless it was (insert one) noir, a private detective novel or written in the style of the late great Agatha.

 

I didn’t think the people who were supposed to be my support system would turn out to be elitists–all under the guise of helping me. By now many of you know of some of the turmoil of the last year or so in some of the mystery groups to exclude from certain privileges those of us who are published by publishers who use print on demand print processes, or who do not give advances.

First we were told that our publishers had to be on some list of “accepted publishers.” To be truthful, I didn’t pay much attention then. My publisher is a legitimate royalty paying small press. They vet subs–taking only a small percentage, edit, use Baker and Taylor, take returns, the whole nine yards. And they were on the accepted list. I could have fought for the self-pubbed and excluded presses–but I didn’t. And now I’m sorry.

Then authors from print on demand presses were told we would not be on panels at certain conferences. When authors protested on the organization’s list, we were told that this wasn’t their decision, it was up to the organizers of the conferences.

When we pointed out the organization sponsored some of those conferences, they came up with a different excuse. This was done, or so they said, because people need to be wary of some publishers or even (Horror of Horrors!) self-publishing. The organization mustn’t seem to endorse these folks. There were other reasons, of course, but this is the one that stuck in my craw.

Apparently the organization doesn’t know that we’re all adults and can make our own decisions whether that be N Y press, small press or self-pubbing. Neither did they acknowledge that it used to be honorable to self-publish. Jane Austen, (see Michelle’s post last week) Mark Twain and Virginia Wolf all did and never suffered a stigma.

Then any discussion of the problem was banned from the organization’s listserv. It served no purpose they said. As my children would say with a roll of their eyes, “Whatever!” Many of us decided there and then not to attend [their] conferences and hope that our small (monetary) contributions would be missed.

Read the rest of the post on the Rule of Three blog.