Pain and Stress Inform the Work, But Not Always Right Away, and Only If You Survive

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It may not seem like it at first, but this post is about coping with the tremendous, unprecedented pressure to produce and sell that all but the most established authors face these days. Specifically, it’s about coping with those pressures on top of other, even larger pressures, particularly when you’re an indie author in the early stages of your publishing career. So please bear with me: I’ll circle back around to this, I promise.

My favorite mantra for coping with pain, stress and the general asshattery and douchebaggery of others when it occurs is, "It informs the work. It informs the work. It informs the work." Sometimes I have to say it through gritted teeth, but it’s true: the most painful and troubling experiences of a writer’s life combine to fill a well of personal truth from which the writer can draw to lend authenticity and heft to his fiction. But like a fine wine or artisnal cheese, those experiences usually need to age before they’re ready for public consumption.

It’s only through the passage of time, and accumulation of new experiences and outcomes, that the writer gains distance, perspective, and a degree of objectivity that enables her to take something deeply personal and channel it into stories and characters that speak to others in a relatable way. And I’m not just talking about fictionalized memoirs here, I’m talking about dealing with the broad themes of loss, pain, denial, longing, failure and all the other negatives that challenge us as human beings, in fiction.

Writers are a sensitive lot by nature, and many of us are living through dire times. Some of you who are reading this post have recently suffered a job loss; some have been out of work for a year or longer. Some are losing—or have already lost—their homes to foreclosure. Some are coping with the loss of a loved one, divorce, a health crisis…or maybe even two or more of these major life traumas simultaneously. Some are just barely keeping the bill collectors at bay while living on a steady diet of ramen noodles and peanut butter. One day, the survivors will look back on these dark times and see them for the growth experiences they were. But not today, and not if they don’t survive.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m not producing one or two novels a year, as so many indie authors are advised to do if they wish to build up the kind of back catalog that’s necessary to truly make a living as an indie author. Some ask why I’m no longer a familiar face at writer conferences and events. Some wonder why they’re seeing more images and updates of my craft projects on Facebook than of my writing projects, and why I just generally don’t seem to be "working it" as an indie author, and haven’t been for some time. Well, I’ll tell you.

I came out of the chute like gangbusters back in 2007, when "self-publish" was still a dirty word. I got my books and myself out there, I launched and nurtured Publetariat.com, I became active with social media, I networked, I got involved with online writer and reader communities, I spoke at writer conferences, I taught workshops, and more. I’d built up quite a head of steam and forward momentum when…

…the bottom fell out of my life.

In early 2010 I learned I had a breast tumor [I’m fine now, thanks for your concern =’) ]. Two days later my husband of 18+ years announced he was leaving me. This meant I’d also soon be unemployed since my job at the time was as Office Manager for a business my then-husband and I ran together. I’d left a career in Software Engineering some six years previous to help establish and run that business, so hopping right back into my former professional field wouldn’t be possible. Divorce also meant I might soon be losing the only home I’d ever owned, and had recently remodeled, and loved, since I most likely couldn’t afford the mortgage payment by myself.
 
It’s been over two years since the bombs dropped on me, and I’ve come a long way toward full recovery. But I’m not there yet. While the initial shock and emotional devastation are behind me, the fallout from these problems is still poking me with a stick on a daily basis, preventing me from establishing comfortable, secure new routines. In many ways, I’m still in survival mode. Surely all of these experiences will imbue my work with more depth and meaning than it’s ever had before. But not today. And not if I don’t survive.

Survival is job one, for all of us. If you don’t survive, you won’t be there to tell your stories when the crisis is over. If the pressures of your daily life are already pushing you to your limits as a human being, before you add the pressures of authorship, you need to step back. Give yourself permission to delay, though not abandon, your dreams. If you don’t, drive will turn into despair. Hope will turn into bitterness. The urge to create will turn into an urge to destroy.

For someone in survival mode, every bit of effort, time and money spent is a high-stakes investment, because there’s so little of those commodities available to such a person. Where entering a contest, submitting a manuscript, or publishing a new book would’ve been an event of nervous, but hopeful anticipation in the past, when you’re in survival mode these things become acts of desperate need. Rejections that would’ve been difficult, but manageable, before are crushing to someone in survival mode. Not only is it impossible to create your best work, you lack the emotional wherewithal to understand and accept it when others don’t respond well to your sub-par efforts. It becomes a downward spiral of fear, rejection and increasing desperation, all of which serves to further delay your eventual recovery and ability to come at authorship from a place of renewed strength and perspective.

Building a career as an author is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re exhausted as you stand on the blocks, before the starting gun has even sounded, there’s no way you can hope to win that race. Do what you need to do to survive, so that someday, you can once again thrive.


This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

5 Mistakes of New Fiction Writers

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However many books on writing we read, and however many novels we have consumed in our genre, there are still things that we get wrong as new novelists.

I know I fall into these traps. I also reviewed a friend’s manuscript the other day and found myself telling him exactly the same things.

So I thought you might like to add your thoughts as well since we can all learn from each other. Please do leave a comment [on the original post] with your top mistakes of new fiction writers.

This is not an exhaustive list, but just some obvious things that, if fixed, may transform your manuscript. Aspects may also vary by genre.

(1) Show, don’t tell.

Now I know why editors and publishers say this over and over again. It really stands out in a manuscript when you read with a fresh eye. If the Nazis are marching into a French village, don’t report the event in third person. Instead, relate the event from the point of view of a character in the crowd. Make it personal and show their reaction to the event by their behavior. Deep, interior monologues can be replaced with characters doing something or saying something.

(2) Consistent Point of View (POV)

I don’t think I really ‘got’ point of view until I paid for my first professional edit. I jumped into the heads of the different characters within one scene which can be confusing for readers. Yes, some writers do it but it’s best to get POV sorted before you start playing around.

POV is also easier if you think in terms of writing scenes. Each scene has a setting, something happens to advance the plot or reveal character, and there is a point of view. Who is telling the story? Then be consistent within the scene, or if you change heads, then only do it once. There’s no exact science to this, but there are some conventions that make it easier for the reader.

For more on story engineering, check out Larry Brook’s fantastic tips in this interview.

(3) Deliver on the promise you make the reader.

If there is a murder at the beginning, then we need to know who did it by the end. No matter if it is a massive 7 part series. The story arc in the one book needs to be complete. This is one of the reasons I personally don’t like serial books. I like my story to be encompassed in one book. I want the payoff of a good ending.

There needs to be coherence around theme, character arc, plot as well as delivering to the promise of the genre you advertise the book as. I’m writing action-adventure thriller, so I can’t spend half the book in one room pondering the world as a literary fiction author could. If you’re writing romance, there needs to be a happy ending. (Although apparently, a love story can have an unhappy ending in the vein of Nicholas Sparks!)

(4) Overuse of first names in dialogue

This jumps off the page as the sign of an amateur, and I am absolutely guilty as charged in my first novel. Read your dialogue out loud – with another person. Someone has commented on the blog before about reading it aloud to a recorder and then playing it back again. This is all time-consuming though. I notice this in a lot of indie books.

(5) Overuse of exclamation marks

Yes, this can be fixed by a proof-reader/ copy-editor, but sometimes the text needs to be rewritten as well as the excess punctuation removed. It’s trying too hard to communicate emotion to the reader, without showing it in the action or behavior of the character.

Tips on usage from The Perfect Write.

“Some experts feel that exclamation points are the sign of a lazy writer, or worse–an amateur. Whether the rationale for either opinion is sound or not, there are well-grounded reasons for both.”

Conclusion: we can all improve.

One of the marvelous things about being a writer is how we can keep improving. Every word we write can be a step towards improvement. The editing process is all about improvement, about making the book the best it can be. Get people reading your work and critiquing it. We have to keep learning and this is the only way.

What do you think the tell-tale errors of new fiction writers are? Please do leave a comment [on the original post].

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

How To Make Yourself Completely Insane in Three Easy Steps

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Okay so there are no real steps here. That’s just the title. I have a special talent for making myself bug-shagging crazy. I am not good at moderation. (Well, except with alcohol. Seriously 3-4 ounces of wine and I’m done. Thank GOD I have an ability to moderate drinking otherwise I’d be in a rehab center somewhere.)

Anyway… too much of almost anything makes me really depressed and anxious and neurotic. Lately I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to be more productive, largely because I feel this huge pressure to get enough work out there to maintain a living and to have a book “break out” because I have this completely neurotic and overwhelming fear of just “disappearing” and everything drifting so far to the bottom of sales rankings that nobody even finds it anymore. (even though this probably is NOT how it works.)

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I’m not saying it has to make me famous or get me on some kind of “list”, I’d be happy at this point for a book to get into the top 1,000 in the Kindle store and stay there for a few weeks, just enough to bump me up all across the boards enough that I can relax and fucking breathe.

And I know you can’t “plan” for a book to break out. A book either catches fire or it doesn’t. You can’t plan it, you can’t know what will make people sit up and take notice in large enough numbers for it to matter. But the more books you write and the stronger/bigger your backlist, the higher the odds raise just from a pure numbers perspective of something breaking out. The other factor is the learning curve. The more you write, the more you learn either overtly or sort of humming in the background, what works with books and your style and what doesn’t. What you excel at and what you’re not so great at. So each book (hopefully), gets stronger, and while it gets stronger, you’re putting out more books which keep raising your odds. (But when you’re in the trenches, believe me, it does not feel like that. It feels like a treadmill that will never reap the benefits you want.)

I rarely do whine fest posts like this, so bear with me. I put SO much pressure on myself. I’m not sure Olympic hopefuls put this much pressure on themselves. It’s a serious character flaw and it causes me more angst than I want to deal with, but I can’t help pushing. If things aren’t going great sales-wise, I push harder (i.e. work more, write more, publish more). If things are going great… I push harder… to capitalize on it more… because I know from experience that it won’t always be like that.

I’m not sure what magic or luck came together to get Mated so close to the top 100 in the Kindle store when it first came out (105), but at the time it seemed EASY. People were making a big deal about all three of my novellas being in the top three spots repeatedly of the Gothic romance section and high in the top 10 of other related sections and in my head it just wasn’t a big deal. Because it came too easy. It came so easy I didn’t know how hard it was and couldn’t appreciate what I’d accomplished until something happened to put me and my work in a more realistic place.

NOW I know how hard that is. NOW I know why people were going: “Holy crap, look where Zoe’s books all are on that list?” Gee, it would have been nice to be able to have truly appreciated it, THEN. Probably some people thought I was being modest, and certainly I wouldn’t have run around tooting my horn like I was the shit, because that is supremely obnoxious and as hard as it is to make a go of it in such a competitive industry in a crappy economy where people have a billion distractions and too many things to do to crack a book open in the first place… you just don’t gloat when you “get there” wherever “there” is. Because it’s fucking hard, and you can feel the pain of every other writer around you desperately wanting to be even where you are that you just don’t shit on people like that when you’re successful.

Jumping tracks…

I don’t understand how to back the fuck off and take a break, and it’s making me certifiably crazy.

This past week I decided I was going to write a book in a week. The book had been percolating for awhile, so why not. I’ll tell you why not? Because it’s INSANE. I wrote 30,000 words in 3 days. I don’t recommend it. I don’t think I ever want to do another 10k day. Unless I’m just in such a white hot writing heat and so excited about the book I can’t stop or slow down. But to say: “Okay, this is my quota today” and do these crazy, draining, grueling days. No. Never again.

I have to bring some sanity back into my life. So yeah, it’s cool and awesome that I wrote 10k words 3 days in a row. I’ve never done that before, and unless it’s at gun point, I’m never doing it again. I’m going back to my normal 2,500 word days that don’t feel like they are sucking the life right out of me when I do them. I may write more if I feel like it, but it surely won’t be the quota. Know how many words I’m writing today? 2,500. Unless I just feel wildly inspired. Because otherwise it’s too much stress and pressure. And if I’m not in the right place emotionally, I’m going to write a truckload of shit anyway.

I believe strongly that the muse doesn’t show up unless you do, but at the same time, you can’t just grind out huge huge word counts (unless you’re some kind of prolific writing savant), without there being a strong psychic cost for that.

And speaking of breaking out… (Sort of jumping back onto the first track) Judging from what my betas are saying, Life Cycle has a strong potential to break out… BUT… there’s a hurdle… there are 3 books before it in the series. New people have a giant hurdle of time commitment with me and my books to jump before they get to the magical potentially break out book (and when I say break out, again, I don’t mean riches and fame. I mean a book that really catches on strongly and gets me back into the top 1k again and bringing my backlist with it.)

So Life Cycle HAS to be able to stand alone. Which is what I’ll be working on in edits. The problem with this series is that I have basically done everything I can think of to KEEP it from breaking out. (Not on purpose.) Book 1 (Blood Lust) is a series of 3 novellas which in itself is problematic because it’s confusing to people. People who hate novellas aren’t going to want to read what is basically a novella anthology as the first book to bring them into a series. People who love novellas and hate novels won’t stick around for book 2.

Book 2 (Save My Soul) is problematic in its own way because at times it feels like a totally different series. Things don’t really start coming together for the whole world until book 3. Plus some people may be turned off by some of the Catholicism (even though I am far from promoting traditional religion in my work) that forms part of the backbone of the world. And those who ARE Catholic or Christian might be turned off because again… I’m not promoting it… I’m twisting it in my world (not in a malicious way, but hardcore religious people probably wouldn’t see it like that). Others may feel the title “Save My Soul” implies the book is in first person. Which it’s not.

Book 3 (The Catalyst) is much stronger than the first two books (not that I think the first two are bad… it’s just that writers grow the more they write, generally). But, it doesn’t exactly “stand alone”. I tried, but there’s too much backstory to give it all to you in the book. And it’s too much backstory that’s necessary to the front story.

That brings us to book 4 (Life Cycle). I think it’s a really strong book. The strongest in the series. And I know fans of the series have been WAITING for Cain and Tam. If it can stand alone, I think it’s a strong enough hook to bring in a lot of new readers and hook them back into the first 3 books. But if it’s not, I feel like the series is pretty much dead in the water. I’ll finish it, of course, if for no other reason than *I* love it, but after Life Cycle, I can’t bring myself to keep hoping it will break out in a bigger way.

Which is why it’s very good that I’m going to start a new series. I’ve learned a lot about what to do and what not to do when writing a series, plus my writing has grown stronger. (And lest anybody think I’m an egomaniac here, this is the judgment and commentary of OTHER people… not me sitting around going: “Oh look, I just get more and more awesome each day.”) So the solution is simple, start a new series. I think the concept for the new series is strong, but I have some details left to fill in before I start.

But of course ALL of this stresses me out. As hard as it is, I have to stop caring how well a book does. The one drawback to self-publishing (even though I love what I do, don’t misinterpret this.)… is that it’s extremely hard (unless you have MPD), to be those two TOTALLY different people… the business person who has to care about sales and numbers and promotion. And the writer… the person who CAN’T care too much about that or the work will suffer and they’ll go insane.

You can probably put two and two together at this point and realize why so many writers have substance abuse problems. If writing and publishing fiction won’t drive you to drink… nothing will. At least I win that one consolation prize. I just have to bring the alcohol moderation into the rest of my life and I’ll be golden… at least from a mental health perspective. And maybe from a general career perspective as well, since it’s usually when you stop clinging and fighting so hard that things open up and flow. I should at least try to test that theory. The first step is going back to a reasonable word count and chilling the fuck out.
 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

Is A Self-Publishing Backlash On The Way?

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This post, by Henry Baum, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review on 3/2/12.

It’s been a good run.  2011 was the year when self-publishing broke open with the successes of Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and JA Konrath.  The stigma is gone.  No one thinks a self-published book is bad just because it’s been self-published.  But people are creative – there are some out there who actively want to dislike self-publishing, and will look for reasons to criticize.  There are also plenty of people who still want to believe in the validation of a traditional publisher: if an agent and editor like it, I must be good.  So now the stigma is not: self-published books are bad, but self-published books are hard to sell.

This post is so wrong it’s almost not worth linking to, but it’s an interesting sentiment with a provocative title: Self-Publishing is Over –

I’m not saying self-publishing doesn’t work. The fact that I’m spending my days building a 40′ ocean going catamaran is proof that it does, or at least that it did for me.

I am saying that it takes a very particular sort of person to do it, and that person has to be comfortable with the idea that they’re going to spend upwards of 75% of their time and effort doing things they (probably) regard as secondary to the creative act, and that there’s no (longer) special reward for undertaking the effort. The chances of your work being embraced by the market are not higher than going the tradition route; the return on your investment of time and effort (and in the case of movies, money) is not higher than going the traditional route.

And self-distro is certainly not the (much hyped) solution to the chaos and uncertainty that reigns in music or movies or publishing. It’s simply another route that might work, but probably won’t.

Perhaps with all the hype about self-publishing’s successes, people have gotten the impression that self-publishers think it’s easy to make it rich. But most know that self-publishing is hard.  That doesn’t make it “over,” just…hard.  As is releasing any book.  And the argument’s so old but – traditionally published writers need to do a lot of work they didn’t used to do as well: social marketing, arranging book tours, etc.  All publishing has elements of self-publishing.

That post was responding to another in The Atlantic:

One of the illusions most common to writers — an illusion that may make the long slow slog of writing possible, for many people — is that an enormous audience is out there waiting for the wisdom and delight that I alone can provide, and that the Publishing System is a giant obstacle to my reaching those people. Thus the dream that digital publishing technologies will indeed “disintermediate” — will eliminate that obstacle and connect me directly to what Bugs Bunny calls “me Public.” (See “Bully for Bugs”.) And we have heard just enough unexpected success stories to keep that dream alive.

 

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

Why The Deepest Lessons Take Time To Absorb

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This post, by John Caddell, originally appeared on the 99%: Insights On Making Ideas Happen site. While the article takes business ventures as its subject, the advice in it can be helpful to those dealing with failed books and other creative projects, as well.

As the expression goes, "hindsight is always 20/20." But how long does it take to get that 20/20 perspective? Here’s what Jerome Chazen, the co-founder of fashion house Liz Claiborne, told Knowledge@Wharton about the biggest mistake of his long career at the company:
 
With the benefit of hindsight, I would have worked harder to moderate our growth. I think we allowed the growth potential to overtake the company instead of us being in charge of it. It’s a hard thing to explain. But you know, it was so exciting, for me anyway, to report better and better numbers, especially after we went public. I mean I loved it. I loved those quarterly [numbers] that were up 20% or 40%, whatever. I think, looking back now, that I got carried away, that we should have done things more moderately.

 
Liz Claiborne went public in 1981. Thirty years later, Chazen had learned the lesson that his excitement over making quarterly numbers was not in the long-term best interests of the company.
This kind of time lag in learning from a mistake is not unusual. For the deepest lessons an individual can learn, it’s required. Only with the passing of time can the intense emotions (positive or negative) of an event fall away and allow us to recognize mistakes and our contribution to them.
Not every mistake takes 30 years to absorb. Small oversights, process errors, results of projects or experiments can be evaluated hours, days or weeks after completion. Failures of these types result from lack of knowledge, routine human error, or poor assumptions.

But with another class of mistakes the stakes are much higher – the setbacks and failures that derail your future plans or call into question your self-image. These are the ones that occur because of your deepest weaknesses and flaws. For this reason, we prefer to avoid thinking about these mistakes, or to attribute them to circumstances out of our control.
 

I’ll share a personal example. I started my own consulting business in 2006. I expected that all the people who’d benefited from my expertise in my 20-year career would come calling as soon as I hung out my shingle.
Yet it took me seven months to land my first client. A little while later I got a second, who sustained the business for two more years. When that project ended, I couldn’t replace the lost revenue. I realized I couldn’t make a go of it, and took a corporate job. I spent my first year as a salaried employee in complete denial. Any incoming call or email tempted me to jump right back into consulting. I blamed the failure on any reasonable factor – the poor economy, the structural changes in my industry, a dispute with my former company.
All those factors contributed to the situation, but dwelling on them was beside the point. It wouldn’t change anything going forward. I had to understand what I could have done differently, what I should do differently next time.

 

Read the rest of the article on 99%.

How Can We Get Artists Paid On The Internet? A Chat With David Lowery

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This article, by Maria Bustillos, originally appeared on The Awl on 6/21/12. Note that while it focuses on digital music piracy, the issues in it, of perceived value, piracy, intellectual property rights and the need for artists to earn a living, are equally applicable to ebooks.

Little did I realize, when I popped over to the Urth Cafe on Beverly a few days ago to talk with the musician David Lowery about artist compensation in the music business, that within the week he would be at the center of one of those "Media Firestorms." Founder of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, Lowery is a big, charming, voluble, bearded ginger who natters as fast as I do; he also has a mathematics and programming background and knows a lot about amateur radio, and is a big dork. We had a marvelous talk about the above-named topics over coffee. I’d become interested in his recent work and activism after reading a post on his blog, Trichordist, "Meet the New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss," about the failed promise of "disintermediation" and Internet distribution in the music business: "I was like all of you. I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists. I still do but I’m less sure of it than I once was. I come here because I want to start a dialogue. I feel that what we artists were promised has not really panned out."

Just days after our talk, though, came a blog post by NPR intern Emily White, in which she admitted that, though she has a music library of over 11,000 songs, she has only ever bought like 15 CDs, and Lowery’s incandescent response. So much for my sobersides examination of intellectual property issues! The whole internet is still on fire with this story. When I wrote Lowery to exclaim over the fallout, he responded, "We usually get a few thousand reads a day on our blog. And I mean a few, like 3k is a good day. Sometimes we will get these crazy viral things for a few days, the way ‘New Boss’ did. But this Letter to Emily is totally off the charts. Like half a million reads in 24 hours."

Dear Media, what a dog’s breakfast you have made of this Firestorm. The dialogue between White and Lowery is not a fight. These alleged adversaries are in agreement with respect to the only significant point at issue—that musicians should be able to make a living, and they can’t in the current circumstances. Let’s extend the conversation from there.

KIDS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS

White’s original post opened with a response to an NPR colleague, Bob Boilen, who’d just consigned his music collection to the cloud; 25,000 songs, 200GB of reclaimed space on his hard drive. Big deal, said White; because she didn’t live through the transition between physical and digital music, storing music in the cloud seemed to her like a small step, rather than a large one. Fair enough. Then the surprises began. She wrote:

As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I love. I can’t support them with concert tickets and T-shirts alone. But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded, and performance royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going back to the artist than the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?

Lowery’s response was both exasperated and gentle, teacherly (in fact he is a teacher, in the Music Business program at UGA). He is over twice White’s age and had no compunction about assuming all the authority of maturity and experience. He pointed out that the same kids who pay uncomplainingly through the nose for iPods and bandwidth on which to play music suddenly get all dodgy about paying for the music itself.

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.

You are doing it wrong.

It is a bit surprising to hear a 20 year old say so blithely what "my peers and I" will or will not pay for, as if they weren’t already obediently paying without objection for what they’ve been told to pay for, which is iPhones. In fact, White’s generation in general has raised more or less zero opposition to their corpocratic bondage. But it’s also quite plain that Emily White has finally figured out (as she’s "grown up," she says) that she wants musicians to make more money. David Lowery wants the same thing!

 

Read the rest of the article on The Awl.

What E-Publishing Means to a Country Boy

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This post, by Stant Litore, originally appeared on New Wave Authors on 6/21/12.

Bea over at Writing Off the Rails asked me a few days ago what digital publishing, indie publishing, e-publishing, etc., means to me. That made me sit back and think a moment, because it means a lot to me. And not just what you’d expect. Here’s the answer I came up with.

It means all bets are off.

For the first time in quite a while, writers have options. A writer with a fantastic story, some marketing chutzpah, and the self-discipline of an old workhorse can take a decent shot at self-publishing, and that’s been good for a number of novelists. It’s a long shot, but thanks to the rapid growth of the e-book market and the ease of connecting writers and readers via the Internet, it’s far more feasible than it has been in the past.

Another thing that’s exciting to me is the new species of publishers emerging. Some of the small presses are not only entrepreneurial but also give their writers a fair deal, which is something that hasn’t really been the norm among large publishing houses since the 1950s.

And there are the Amazon imprints – Montlake, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and the others. These not only offer a fair deal but a very powerful marketing engine, and they’re run by innovative people who invest in the author-editor relationship. They’re bringing good work out and they put their weight behind it – not just behind one or two titles they’re banking everything on, they put their weight behind all their books. I’m impressed by that. 

All of this means that a good writer has a better shot at making a living than has been the case in quite a few decades.

That’s a good thing.

But what the e-book market and the digital publishing phenomenon really means to me is bigger than that. Much bigger.

 

Read the rest of the post on New Wave Authors.

12 Most Striking Tendencies of Creative People

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This post, by Kim Phillips, originally appeared on the 12most site on 3/13/12.

Ever wonder what makes those wacky, creative types tick? How is it that some people seem to come up with all kinds of interesting, original work while the rest of us trudge along in our daily routines?

Creative people are different because they operate a little differently. They:


1. Are easily bored

A short attention span isn’t always a good thing, but it can indicate that the creative person has grasped one concept and is ready to go on to the next one.

2. Are willing to take risks

Fearlessness is absolutely necessary for creating original work, because of the possibility of rejection. Anything new requires a bit of change, and most of us don’t care for change that much.

3. Don’t like rules

Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken. They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs freedom in order to work.

4. Ask “what if…”

Seeing new possibilities is a little risky, because it means that something will change and some sort of action will have to be taken. Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.

5. Make lots of mistakes

A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony. Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.

6. Collaborate

The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one. Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.

 

Read the rest of the post on 12most.

About that Algorithm

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This post, by Jennifer Becton, originally appeared on the Indie Jane site on 6/15/12.

I’m going to state up front that I haven’t drawn any solid conclusions by the end of this post, but the information contained below about more changes to Amazon’s algorithm is important for indies to know.

Price matters.

One of the advantages indie authors have over our traditionally published counterparts is that we can choose to sell our ebooks very cheaply. Setting a price of $.99 has proven not only a great deal for readers, but writers still earn 35 percent of the list price, which is much more than what authors of traditionally published ebooks receive.

The $.99 price point has also been a wonderful tool for breaking into a large market and competing successfully against established names. In fact, the $.99 price is part of the strategy I used to propel Absolute Liability to the Top 100 last summer. It is less likely to work now though, and this frustrates me a bit because it removes a tool from my toolbox.

What’s changed?

Amazon’s algorithm. [Insert scary music]

Heretofore, the list price of a book had no bearing on popularity and rank. Now it does. Some bright authors at Kindle Boards figured it all out. There’s a podcast here, and articles here and here to break it down for you. The gist of it is this: if you price at $.99, you must sell more copies to be ranked comparably to those selling at higher prices. The KBers haven’t figured out how things are weighted exactly, and the whole thing is all still a bit hazy to me.

However, this explains why some Indie Janeites’ sales have not produced the results we expected. For example, I recently lowered the price of both my Southern Fraud Thrillers to $.99 and $1.99 respectively. I sold more books, but my rank did not improve at the rate I expected based on the number of sales; therefore, my visibility did not improve and I did not end up reaching as many readers as I’d hoped, meaning that I got less value out of my sale than anticipated. (Value meaning additional reach, and not necessarily additional dollars.)

 

Read the rest of the post on Indie Jane.

Book Dedications To Spur Your Imagination

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I was always fascinated by book dedications. Unfortunately, most books don’t have them. And many of the books that do have one, the dedication is usually too simple and cryptic to understand. But luckily, some dedications will give you a peek into the life of the author. They will give us a slight hint at a personal story or relationship that we will probably never get to learn more about.

Despite that, I always enjoyed finding a book dedication that made an effort to honor someone that had an impact on the author’s life. But, at the same time, it is especially nice to find a dedication that can also reach out to me and make an emotional connection. Here are a variety of book dedications that will help you to start to formulate your own.

Dedication (appreciation, hope)

We dedicate this book to healthcare professionals everywhere who have dedicated their life to helping those in need; and,

To healthcare students who do not yet realize the potential and importance of the career they have chosen; and,

To our students all over Long Island and New York City (and those that have spread out over the 50 states), and our readers all over the world, that work every day at making their career a success and our world a much better place in which to live; and,

Finally, we dedicate this book to you all with our love, appreciation, and thanks for allowing us to be a part of your lives.

Dedication (honor, reverence)

We dedicate this book to those who lost their life on 9/11/01;

and also to those who have given their life in the Global War Against Terrorism.

Publisher’s Dedication (hope, encouragement)

This book is dedicated to every person, young and old, employed and unemployed, educated and uneducated, that dreams of becoming financially independent and building a happy, successful, and rewarding life, but is too intimidated to take that first step.  It is the hope and dream of the Dickson Keanaghan family that this book might be that first step.

The Dickson Keanaghan Family

Long Island, New York, 2010

Dedication (predictable, sentimental)

I dedicate this book to my wife, Michele, who has been my partner in life and business, since 1984.

Dedication (sentimental)

To my wife Michele – it’s a privilege to share my business, life, and love with you.

To my children Eric and Erin – your growth provides a constant source of joy and pride.

Dedication (explanation, friendship)

To Mom, who pushed me to “do”;

To Dad, who loved me even when I didn’t;

And to Mary, who after 35 years has given me unconditional friendship and love.

Dedication (general, simple)

This book is dedicated to the mentors, friends, and family of Dickson Keanaghan:

John Doe, Jane Smith, Bob Squarepants, Jennifer Johnson, and Peter Pickles.

Dedication (hope)

To my children Eric and Erin, who will inherit this world and make it a much better place.

Dedication (predictable, simple)

To the reader . . .

I hope that you have at least half as much fun in the reading of this book as I’ve had in the writing.

Dedicated To (name dropping)

Capote, Talese, and Wolfe: They had the courage to break away and report the world to us in words more vivid, more dramatic, and more accurate.

Dedication (friendship, respect)

For Oliver Wendell Holmesian, Jr.: My law partner and cherished friend – an attorney of superb skill and perfect integrity, a trusted confidant, and a real mensch without whose encouragement, emotional support, good advice, and good cheer, none of my books would have been written.

Dedication (humorous)

To Evelyn Woodwind, whose suggestions made this a much better book than it might otherwise have been; And to Roberto Boscoe, who taught me most of what I’m now teaching, with apologies for beating him to the punch with this book.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Book Review: "Now All We Need Is A Title" by Andre Bernard

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Great concept. Very interesting, entertaining, amusing, and informative.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I found it fascinating to read about some of the behind-the-scenes workings of how many of my favorite books finally arrived at their title. It was very amusing to see the back-and-forth struggles between editors and authors over a book’s title. Although not a how-to book, this small, short, amusing book will certainly appeal to every writer and editor.

The book discusses over 100 different famous books of fiction, such as Jaws, The Great Gatsby, The Maltese Falcon, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how their title came to be. One of my favorites is the story of Gone With The Wind. It was first called Pansy, then changed to Tote the Weary Load, and then to Tomorrow is Another Day.

Bernard’s book also has great advice, sprinkled throughout the book, from authors and editors about choosing a title. One of my favorites is a quote by Walker Percy: “A good title should be like a good metaphor; it should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.”

Some historic literary facts are also given for many of the titles. One of my favorites is the story about Lewis Carroll being the first one to suggest to his publisher that the dust jacket carry the title of the book. Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark became the first book to be published with a printed jacket.

In Bernard’s Introduction, he says that this book is an “. . . an anecdotal account of how some of the most well-known book and play titles come to be. It is not meant to be a comprehensive compendium of every catchy title, but rather a lighthearted look at a struggle that has bedeviled writers for centuries.”

As an author and publisher I can really appreciate how important a title can be to the financial success of a book. Nowadays, a title must not only be catchy, but also be key-word-rich, and search-engine-friendly if you have any hope of it being found on the internet. The proper title is essential if you want your publication to stand out from the huge number of publications that are published every day. If you are an author or publisher, you will certainly know that a good title is an essential part of a successful marketing plan for any publication. In Bernard’s book you will read about very famous authors going through the same (but on a much less sophisticated level) agonizing process that we authors and publishers go through today. Nowadays, developing the best title is even more important than it was when most of the books discussed in Bernard’s book were written. But it was still very interesting to see how these famous authors and big-name publishers dealt with this important process.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Book Review: "The Public Domain Bible" by Andras Nagy

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Great insightful advice for the novice publisher.

I really enjoyed reading Nagy’s book. It is an easy to read and comprehensive guide on how to republish public domain books as a way to get started as a self-publisher. There is a heavy emphasis on starting and running a self-publishing company on a very tight budget. There is plenty of practical advice and resources for doing this. It was very helpful to read about how, what, and why Nagy republished books that are in the public domain. This is a practical how-to book that will appeal to every budding entrepreneur looking for a way to enter the world of publishing. I wish that I had found this book before I got started as a publisher of public domain books. I had to discover all of this information on my own by doing a lot of research over a long period of time.

One of my favorite pieces of advice appears early in Nagy’s book when he recommends that a novice publisher should choose a genre that they know something about. It should be a subject that you already love and can easily see yourself devoting time and money to. Nagy suggests, “If you wish to publish classical literary works, you should be reading and studying your genre. If you like poetry, perhaps that genre is to be tried first.”

Nagy gives us another great piece of advice when he stresses that we should consider adding original content to the out-of-copyright book. This will add value to the final book. This added content, such as “editorials, footnotes, and illustrations,” will help make it easier for your readers to understand the content of the original book. It will also help the buyer choose your “value added” edition over all the others that are available for sale that do not have the additional content.

In Nagy’s Foreword, he explains that “The cornerstone of using public domain information is to creatively build upon existing ideas and works of art.” “With some fresh ideas, and using this book, anyone can do what I have done on a shoestring. There are many aspiring authors who find it comforting to run a publishing company while working on their own creative literary urges.”

As a publisher of public domain titles, I can personally testify that Nagy’s information and advice can work. My wife Michele and I own and manage a medical training company here in New York. Most of our students are nurses. We realized that many of them, especially the younger ones, had never heard of, or read the works of, Florence Nightingale. So we decided to republish Nightingale’s most famous book, Notes on Nursing. We added quite a lot of new content to make the book much easier to understand and use. We like to say that we made the book “student friendly and teacher friendly”. We added a foreword, section headings, focus questions for each chapter, a glossary, Nightingale quotes, an index, footnotes, and a list of additional sources. The book was well received and has become mandatory reading in many colleges throughout America. We like to think that our book played a small part in the tidal wave of renewed interest in Nightingale.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Books In The Age of the iPad

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This post, by Craig Mod, originally appeared on his site in March of 2010, but it’s as relevant as ever today.

Print is dying.
Digital is surging.
Everyone is confused.

GOOD RIDDANCE.

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.
The airport paperback.
The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dregs of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

Once we dump this weight we can prune our increasingly obsolete network of distribution. As physicality disappears, so too does the need to fly dead trees around the world.

You already know the potential gains: edgier, riskier books in digital form, born from a lower barrier-to-entry to publish. New modes of storytelling. Less environmental impact. A rise in importance of editors. And, yes — paradoxically — a marked increase in the quality of things that do get printed.

From 2003-2009 I spent six years trying to make beautiful printed books. Six years. Focused on printed books. In the 00s.

And I loved it. I loved the process. The finality of the end product. I loved the sexy-as-hell tactility of those little ink and paper bricks. But I can tell you this: the excitement I feel about the iPad as a content creator, designer and publisher — and the potential it brings — must be acknowledged. Acknowledged bluntly and with perspective.

With the iPad we finally have a platform for consuming rich-content in digital form. What does that mean? To understand just why the iPad is so exciting we need to think about how we got here.

I want to look at where printed books stand in respect to digital publishing, why we historically haven’t read long-form text on screens and how the iPad is wedging itself in the middle of everything. In doing so I think we can find the line in the sand to define when content should be printed or digitized.

This is a conversation for books-makers, web-heads, content-creators, authors and designers. For people who love beautifully made things. And for the storytellers who are willing to take risks and want to consider the most appropriate shape and media for their yarns.

Defined by content

For too long, the act of printing something in and of itself has been placed on too high a pedestal. The true value of an object lies in what it says, not its mere existence. And in the case of a book, that value is intrinsically connected with content.

 

Read the rest of the post on Craig Mod’s site.

Kindle Nation Daily’s Letter to the Department of Justice in the DOJ eBook Price-Fixing Lawsuit Against Apple and Five Publishers

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This is a reprint of a post written by Stephen Windwalker, from the Kindle Nation Daily site, and is reposted here in its entirety with his permission.

([Kindle Nation Daily] Editor’s Note: As we have mentioned before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the five original “agency model” publishers charging them with a massive price-fixing conspiracy in violation of federal law. The DOJ Antitrust Division and the court wants to hear from members of the public during a 60-day comment period on the lawsuit which expires June 25, and what follows is my letter to the court. Please see this post for instructions on how to submit your comments. –Stephen Windwalker.)

June 18, 2012

Via Priority Mail

John Read, Chief
Litigation III Section
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
450 5th Street, NW, Suite 4000 Washington, DC 20530

 

Dear Mr. Read,

I am writing to you both as an individual citizen, reader, author, and former independent bookstore owner, and also as the founder of  the Kindle Nation Daily website, one of the largest active communities of ebook readers and enthusiasts. Along with tens of thousands of other avid readers and thousands of other authors who are associated with the Kindle Nation Daily community, I am keenly interested in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) civil antitrust action (United States v. Apple, Inc. et. al., Civil Action No. 12-CIV-2826) against Apple, Inc., and five of the largest U.S. book publishers (defendants). My purpose in writing this letter is to share and underline several points that I believe should be central points of emphasis for the DOJ and the courts as this case proceeds and legal remedies are considered.

My single most important point is one that I am sure the DOJ and the court understands well, but which appears to be a matter of confusion for many others: the major parties in this case are the six defendants (Apple and the five publisher defendants) and the DOJ, which is empowered here to act on behalf of consumers. While it ought to be obvious that this is so, and that the alleged collusion has robbed tens of millions of dollars from American consumers and denied them the opportunity to read millions of other books that they deemed they could not afford, many who have commented on this case have tried to shift the focus, from this irreparable harm to consumers, to the consequences of judicial action for other interested entities who are not parties to the case, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and countless other booksellers, authors, literary agents, and other intermediaries and players in the book business. As recently as today the headline in the New Yorker’s coverage of the case demonstrates this confusion: “Paper Trail: Did publishers and Apple collude against Amazon?” Of course it would be naive not to recognize the importance of the case to these players, but to seat them at the table as parties is to miss the point of the irreparable harm to consumers.

In an effort to place the primary focus where it belongs, I would like to offer the following points and perspectives:

 

1. By colluding to raise new-release ebook prices by 30 to 100 percent, the defendants have caused irreparable harm to millions of readers of all ages, including public school and college students and other children, families, and people of limited means who bought ebook readers or downloaded free Kindle apps based on the affordability of ebooks before the defendants imposed the agency model. Prior to the launch of the Kindle it was widely believed that reading was on the decline in the U.S., as noted by the late Steve Jobs when he declared early in 2008 that the Kindle was a flawed concept “because nobody reads any more.” Among the reasons for the decline of long-form reading were rising prices for new hardcovers and paperbacks, the closing of many public library branches and bookstores, and the diminishing selection of physical books offered to the American public through existing distribution channels. The launch of the Kindle in 2007 and the fact that Amazon made Kindle apps free for anyone with a smartphone, a computer, or a Kindle meant that any reader could have a well-stocked bookstore at their fingertips just about anywhere in the U.S. and beyond. The Kindle platform succeeded because of its catalog, convenience, competitive pricing, and Amazon’s customer base and unflinching commitment to the platform, and its success has helped to fuel a resurgence in reading that is bridging the digital divide across class and age lines. The Kindle store pricing that some of the defendants and other Amazon critics demonize as “predatory” has had a wonderfully positive effect on this resurgence in reading, and has social, economic, and cultural value far beyond anything that would be achieved, for instance, by propping up the defendant publishers or another player like Barnes & Noble.

 

2. Illegal collusive behavior must not be separated from the consequences of that behavior, either in the punishment of the behavior or in the remedies proposed. Many of the more thoughtful critics of the DOJ action have taken pains to state that they have no knowledge or legal expertise about the collusive behavior alleged by the DOJ, but such behavior and its objectives are and must remain at the center of this case: the DOJ alleges with an impressive recitation of evidence that the defendants participated in an unprecedented conspiracy to force retailers to raise their new-release ebook prices by 30 to 100 percent. If that’s what happened, the defendants must be punished and retailers must be allowed to restore competitive pricing. For the publisher defendants to claim no wrongdoing after they kept their corporate counsel out of the rooms in which the collusion allegedly occurred is, if the defendants acted as alleged by DOJ, an insult to the court and to all interested parties. When companies collude or conspire to raise prices to the detriment of consumers, they know full well that they are on thin ice. In this case, because of the defendants’ collusion, consumers paid tens of millions more than they would otherwise have had to pay for ebooks. In countless other cases they had to refrain from buying ebooks they hungered to read. Because of what the defendants did, they should not only have to stop doing it, but they should remain under close regulatory scrutiny (as spelled out in the proposed settlement) for years, and they should be required to pay tens of millions, and ultimately perhaps hundreds of millions, in actual and punitive restitution to consumers.

 

3. The U.S. publishing industry is fond of saying that “the DOJ doesn’t understand the book business.” However, the defendant publishers and their associated intermediaries and gatekeepers arrived in the 21st century very poorly prepared for the future either in their fundamental economic cost structure or in their commitment to invest in innovation. The industry’s major players do not deserve any fate other than that which a collusion-free marketplace holds for them. On the other hand, over the past decade, increasing numbers of authors, booksellers, publishers and others have combined innovation, the use of new technologies, and some risk-taking to circumvent what many feel has become a rather calcified literary-industrial complex and instead established new and profitable models for making more direct connections between authors and readers. In spite of the fact that readers are paying less for ebooks than they have paid in the past for print books, most of the authors of distinction who are taking a direct route to publishing are earning greater royalties than they would ever have received from traditional publishers. They have shortened the publishing timetables from years (or in some cases decades) to months or weeks. While traditional publishing players lament the costs, for themselves, of disintermediation, tens of thousands of others are clear winners in a world where intermediaries are no longer sheltered from the need to prove their worth. The defendants and their apologists have attempted to lock in the wastefulness and flawed economic decision-making of the industry and its intermediaries by passing their costs on to consumers in the form of the 30 to 100% price increases imposed by the agency model, but claims that DOJ should protect the intermediaries in the publishing world have neither a legal basis nor any value for the culture or the country. It would be more accurate for publishers to say that the DOJ “doesn’t understand our book business the way that we understand our book business.” That would be fair in a certain sense, but the truth is the publisher defendants’ focus on their own understanding of how the publishing business used to work has kept them from evolving and understanding how the publishing business works now, and how it may work for at least a few years in the future.

 

4. The U.S. book publishing and bookselling business has been undergoing enormous change and disruption for decades, but the book trades are not a public utility. It is not the role of government or the courts to prop up the industry or any of its players. It would be especially inappropriate for the government or the courts to manage the aforementioned change and disruption so as to punish innovators, provide life support for second- and third-movers or protect industry players whose demise may be imminent due to their lack of innovation or financial discipline. The number of independent booksellers has been in steady decline for decades and will almost definitely continue to decline for the next several years, regardless of the DOJ action. Over the 20-plus years since I owned an independent bookstore and was a member of the American Booksellers Association in the 1980s, there have been many bogeymen blamed for the demise of independent brick-and-mortar bookselling, including of course Barnes & Noble itself. Like Borders before it, Barnes & Noble may well go out of business in the next few years because of poor management of real estate costs and its late, second-mover entry into the two major growth markets for bookselling in the past 15 years, online bookselling and ebooks.  But the idea that the DOJ should be in the business of propping up Barnes & Noble by reframing the remedies in this case is as odious as it would be if we were to substitute the name of WalMart in the equation, particularly after Barnes & Noble has played as great — and some would say as “predatory” — a role as any other company in hastening the demise of independent retail brick-and-mortar bookstores over the past few decades. Nor should DOJ prop up independent booksellers, as much as we may lament their demise. Sadly, the focus on the various bogeymen blamed for these developments, and booksellers’ ideological opposition to the Amazons and others, has too often taken those booksellers’ focus away from the kinds of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking that have saved some bookstores and might, if in greater evidence, have saved far more. Nor is it true that even a single independent bookstore would be saved were the DOJ or the court to reframe its proposed remedies so as to save Barnes & Noble or to soften the impact for the defendant publishers.

 

5. The widely promulgated notion that the agency model has created a lush garden of innovation in the ebook business is patently untrue. The initial Barnes & Noble Nook was widely seen as a second-mover product that was very nearly dead on arrival when it was launched several months before the advent of the agency model. It began to gain traction only when the agency model guaranteed Barnes & Noble a 30% gross margin and freed it of any need to compete with Kindle Store pricing. By Barnes & Noble’s own public admission, the Nook might well have failed in free-market competition if it had not been for the agency model conspiracy. The primary Nook “innovation” advanced to date is the relatively minor enhancement of a front-lit glowing screen, and other elements of the Nook infrastructure such as the Pub-it authorship platform are barely distinguishable from previously existing elements of the Kindle infrastructure. Much and perhaps most ebook reading on the iPad and iPhone occurs in the Kindle environment, and Apple’s claim that the iPad and its search-unfriendly, thinly populated iBookstore are successful innovations is a fantasy: the primary success of the iBookstore has been that it made the agency model price-fixing scheme possible in the minds of the defendant publishers.

 

6. Many of the arguments against the DOJ’s action and proposed remedies are based on intense fear and loathing of Amazon, none of which is surprising in an industry which is both change-averse and especially well-connected to the chattering classes in the national news media. It is absolutely appropriate for the DOJ and other government agencies to continue to scrutinize Amazon’s behavior as a corporate taxpayer, as a direct or indirect corporate employer, as a gatherer of customers’ private information, or as a competitor in the national and global business marketplace. DOJ may well be justified in taking future action on one or more of these issues, but there is no basis for penalizing Amazon now because it is big, because it is an aggressive innovator whose success is based on disrupting existing business models, because it has shown a creative capacity to reduce consumer prices while still paying full wholesale prices itself, or because smart disintermediation allows it to pay an author a higher royalty for a $5 ebook sale than a traditional publisher would pay an author for a $25 hardcover sale. If at some point in the future Amazon uses its growing marketplace clout to squeeze authors or publishers, for instance, DOJ should not hesitate to haul the company into court, but such behavior cannot be presupposed, and indeed it would require such a radical change in Amazon’s business model that it would be immediately obvious to all.

 

7. Although Barnes & Noble attorney David Boies indulges windy, sweeping prose on behalf of “the national economy and culture, the future of copyrighted expression and bookselling in general,” he does not provide any evidence or argument that cultural and business trends that are already well underway would be reversed if the DOJ action were not taken. The bottom line in Boies’ argument is the bottom line for Barnes & Noble, a failing company that is choking to death on its own expensive real estate leases and its lack of innovation during the decade when its former primary position in the U.S. retail book business was overtaken by a much more innovative upstart competitor. In service of that bottom line, Boies wants DOJ to frame its actions so as to prop up and protect Barnes & Noble so that, for as long as it is able to hang on, it can wring as much profit as possible from its second-mover status in the ebook marketplace. But the bottom line for consumers should take precedence over Boies’ desire to keep Barnes & Noble on life support. Consumers who purchase and read ebooks have lost tens of millions of dollars because the defendants conspired to raise the prices of bestselling ebook new releases. The defendants’ behavior described in the court documents has been reckless, avaricious, and destructive — perhaps even to “the national economy and culture, the future of copyrighted expression and bookselling in general” — and the DOJ should not rule out the possibility of criminal prosecutions if facts warrant as this action proceeds. Finally, it is somewhat surprising that we must take pains to correct some of the utterly inaccurate notions with which attorney Boies has burdened the record in this case. Among the country lawyer’s tricks with which Boies has attempted to dazzle us are his claims that the American public opposes the DOJ action because Manhattan Senator Charles Schumer opposes it, or that authors oppose the action because Boies has offered up a quotation from Scott Turow, president of the notoriously litigious Author’s Guild, which has been on record in the past as opposed to public library book borrowing.

 

8. The proposal by some that fairness could be achieved via a decision to allow publishers to mandate uniform retail prices would be catastrophic for readers. Such a mandatory price-setting scheme would reward the colluders and would do more to maintain the outmoded status quo in the publishing world than other step that has been proposed. Worst of all, of course, it would allow the defendants to continue to steal tens of millions of dollars each year from the pockets of consumers.

 

9. Instead of innovating to become leaner, faster, and more profitable in the new world of publishing, the defendants decided to try to stop time by breaking the law. Faced with the fears that motivated the agency model conspiracy, publishers might have taken a different, more innovative path. They could even have followed such a path collectively without fear of violating anti-trust laws. When Amazon launched its new, disruptive ebook business model, beginning ever so slowly in November of 2007, publishers might have reimagined and restructured the book business with new, innovative, more efficient, and profitable roles for themselves. They might have created their own online retail outlets to offer their titles in Kindle-compatible ebook form. They might have worked with brick-and-mortar booksellers to bundle ebook and digital formats at handy little kiosks in every bookstore. They might have turned ebooks into the 21st century reincarnation of Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club, those 20th century behemoths that managed to sell millions of hardcover books for 99 cents each without creating any significant scare over the erosion of “the value of the book.” They might have tried to strip away the excess weight of unsustainable corporate costs and their reckless addiction to gamble huge advances for bestsellers, to rework their economics at new, competitive price points. They might have said, “We’re no longer going to pay for intermediaries that add no value.” They might even have pursued one of the collective strategies that they considered and rejected back in 2009, called Project Z or Bookish, to create a joint venture that would establish a new ecommerce platform to sell ebooks wholesale to retailers, or retail to the ebook-buying public.

 

10. Although neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble are full parties in this case, the DOJ and the court should impose one burden on both companies (and on defendant Apple Inc. and perhaps other ebook retailers) as part of the remedies associated with the actual and punitive restitution that defendants should be forced to pay to consumers. Specifically, the ebook retailers should be required to provide to all of their customers a detailed record of all ebooks that they ordered during the full period of the agency model from April 1, 2010 until the present date or beyond, in order for customers to qualify for the restitution payments due them.

I am grateful to the DOJ and to the court and all parties for your consideration of these matters, and I hope that all concerned will take these views into account in this case.

Sincerely,

Stephen Windwalker

Info Dumps, AYKB, and Other Author Intrusions

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This post, by Jodie Renner, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

When you’re revising your novel, be on the lookout for any obvious blocks of information or mini-lectures that you may have inadvertently wedged into the story here and there.

Author intrusions and info dumps come in various shapes and sizes, but whatever their form, they can be perceived as an obvious and clumsy attempt by the author to quickly impart some facts, clarifications, or personal opinions directly to the reader. It might even be considered lazy—it’s much easier to just insert a bunch of backstory in about a character in one lump than to find ways to artfully weave in that information through dialogue and thoughts, etc. But do we really need all that information on the character, anyway? Definitely not at the risk of turning off your reader, who’s just been wrenched out of the story to be filled in on details, opinions, or background info.

Or, say you’re really riled up about an issue that you feel people need to pay attention to. Maybe you want people to care about the environment more. Or stop eating so much junk food and exercise more. Or maybe you’re just passionate about something like gardening or Ancient Greece or figure skating or poodles or scuba diving. Should you use your fiction to convert others to your causes or enlighten people about your pet topics? If you do, proceed with caution! People read fiction for entertainment—to escape their boring or stressful life and get immersed in a fascinating story with great characters doing exciting things. If you really want to stop cruelty to animals or raise awareness about anorexia or talk about sailing or World War II history or French cuisine, make sure the info comes out in small doses, and in a natural way through a character who is passionate about that topic—and that it actually works for the plot and is believable for that particular character.

Some common types of author intrusions include:

Interrupting the story to explain facts or details at length to your readers

Readers like to stay immersed in the story, not be pulled out of it to be given a lengthy explanation of something as an aside by the author. This can include long, detailed explanations of a specific type of gun, for example, or stopping the story to describe in detail a castle or a family lineage or some historical facts or the customs of a different country or epoch. Yes, do your research, for sure. But pick and choose what you actually share with your readers, and blend the info in in a natural way, through dialogue, introspection and short expository (explaining) passages, preferably filtered through the viewpoint of the POV character.

Soap-boxing about an issue or cause

Maybe you’d like to increase consciousness about worthy topics such as the plight of whales or the lack of clean water worldwide, or unfair treatment of minorities, or lack of green spaces. You say, people really need to be made aware of the situation—we all need to sit up and take notice and do something about it! That’s true, but you could always write letters to the editor, or newspaper or magazine articles on the issue, or even blog posts. Or give talks at the library or to local groups. Or insert allusions to it here and there in your novel, as long as you have a character who is passionate about that issue and knowledgeable. It can work in small doses, as long as you don’t go on so long about it that it comes across as preaching. And it needs to fit naturally in the scene, with the character’s personality, politics and thoughts.

Giving the readers a history lesson or a lecture on a topic

Say you’re passionate about Aztecs and Aztec ruins and want to tell the world about this fascinating subject, so you decide to write a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of adventure story. You have a main character who’s an archaeologist, and because you can’t resist sharing your knowledge, you have this character giving impromptu detailed lectures on Aztec history to anyone who will listen. Not a good idea. Just drop in a few tantalizing tidbits here and there to pique your readers’ interest. If you get them curious enough, they can easily google Aztecs and find out a lot more on them. You could even add some info at the end of the story somehow, as an Afterword or Glossary or related links or whatever.

Dumping in a pile of backstory about a character

While it is a good idea to create background information on all of your main characters for yourself, be sure to avoid copying and pasting it into your story in blocks, like a mini-biography or a resume. I’ve edited novels where a new character comes onto the scene and the writer feels compelled to immediately write several paragraphs or even pages of background on that character, to introduce him or her to the readers. The problem with that is that the plot has just come to a skidding halt while you fill us in on this person. Secondly, why would we even care about all those little details when that character has just come onstage? Wait until we warm up to them a bit, then provide any pertinent info little by little as we go along.

For example:

Jessica heard her cell phone ringing. “Excuse me.” She grabbed it from her purse and flipped it open. It was her husband Richard.

Richard, who was 42, was an engineer for the city. He and Jessica had met while both college freshmen. Jessica was in Nursing and Richard was in Engineering, and they’d met at a dance arranged by the two faculties. They dated through college and married the year after they graduated. By then, Jessica was a nurse and Richard was an engineer. They waited a few years before starting a family…. yadda yadda.

 “Hi, Richard,” Jessica said into the phone. “What’s up?”

Does the reader need to know all that backstory? Probably not. Certainly not all at once, in the second between the ringing of Jessica’s phone and when she answers it. Any of it that you feel is necessary can be introduced gradually through dialogue, thoughts, and short exposition. Jessica can be thinking about her college days or chatting with a sister or friend, or Richard can be talking to a colleague or golf partner, or Jessica and Richard can be talking to each other. But still, make sure the info fits naturally and organically into the conversation, and doesn’t look like it’s been planted there by the author to get the info across to the readers. Which brings us to our last subtopic:

Info dumps disguised as dialogue: AYKB – “As you know, Bob…”

This is where the author has one person telling another a bunch of stuff they both know, just to impart that information to the reader. Here’s an exaggerated example, to illustrate:

 Ralph said to his brother, “As you know, Bob, our parents were both killed in a car crash when we were young, and we were raised by our grandparents.”

Readers today are too sophisticated to go for this type of heavy-handed information-sharing, and if you do it too often, it’s sure to lose you respect and credibility.

Or it can seem off even when it’s more subtle, as when one homicide detective says to another, “Serial killers have usually been abused as children, and their victims often have similarities.”

You get the idea. 

How about you? Just for fun, can you make up an obvious, AYKB dialogue for us? Use the comment boxes below and go for it!

Copyright © Jodie Renner, June 2012

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor, specializing in thrillers, mysteries and other crime fiction. For more info on Jodie’s editing services, please visit her website.