Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

The Woman Who Froze in Fargo: where is the line between fact and fiction, and just how strong is it?

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This article by Mike Powell originally appeared on Grantland on 3/18/15. While the piece focuses on two films, it certainly provides food for thought for any novelists who write fact-based fiction, or who work within a ‘this is a true story’ trope.

The new movie ‘Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’ tells the story of a Japanese woman on a quest for riches who was lured to the brutal cold of the Midwest by a Coen brothers film. The woman was real, even if the story isn’t entirely true. And it’s been told before, by a documentarian. So where is the line between fact and fiction, and just how strong is it?

n November 2001, an unemployed Japanese travel agent named Takako Konishi was found dead outside Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Nobody knew Konishi was a travel agent, or what she was doing in Detroit Lakes, only that she was young, pretty, and far from home.

About a week earlier, she had checked into a Holiday Inn in Bismarck, North Dakota. The morning after she arrived in Bismarck, a man had seen her wandering around a landfill and offered help. Konishi didn’t speak English, so the man took her to the police, where Konishi showed officers a crudely drawn map of a tree and a road and started repeating a word that soon everyone came to hear as “Fargo.”

Fargo: A city nearly 200 miles east of Bismarck on the border of North Dakota and Minnesota, best known for a 1996 Coen brothers movie in which a car salesman hires two men to kidnap his own wife for ransom. Things go wrong (things always go wrong in Coen brothers films) and one of the men ends up killing the other with an ax after an argument about a 1987 Cutlass Ciera, but not before the ax victim buries the ransom in a briefcase in the snow.

A story about Konishi emerged: Here was a woman who had traveled a very long way under the great misunderstanding that the movie Fargo was real. Only one of the officers at the Bismarck Police Department had seen the movie, which, incidentally, opens with a title card that reads: THIS IS A TRUE STORY.

 

Read the full article on Grantland.

 

Google+ Is Being Dismantled, And That’s A Good Thing

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This post by Nate Swanner originally appeared on Slashgear on 3/2/15. It’s being shared here because it should be of interest to the many authors who’ve used Google+ as the foundation and hub of their author platform efforts and web presence.

In a recent chat with Forbes, Google’s Sundar Pichai turned a few heads by noting Google+ would be considered as parts — not the sum of those parts. Rather than a social network, Plus would be a stream. And Photos. And Communications. Adding a bit of fuel to the fire was the subsequent dismissal/resignation of Dave Besbris as the head of Google+. Besbris took over for Vic Gundotra, who spearheaded Plus from inception. With a new boss in Bradley Horowitz, the circumstance around Plus might sound confusing. That’s because they kind of are.

The first thing to note is that Google+ isn’t going anywhere yet. It’s still Plus. Google has no plans to change that right now, regardless of how anyone considers it. You’ll still log on, and it’ll still be Google+.

Though Google isn’t saying Plus is dead, it was also never really lively. From the jump, it was dogged with a ‘ghost town’ moniker, and seen as just a bit too different to really latch on. Worse were those nearby streams, often full of people asking how everything worked, and being shamed by knowledgeable users or ignored. Plus was/is just weird.

 

Read the full post on Slashgear.

 

Which eBook Publishing Platform is Best?

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This post by Kristen Eckstein originally appeared on The Future of Ink on 3/13/15.

Before we get too deep into answering this question, know upfront this is like asking a mother of three which child is her favorite. Each platform comes with unique benefits and drawbacks.

Digital publishing is a huge all-encompassing world of everything from e-books and Kindle to video and teleseminars. For the purposes of this article’s length and my own personal expertise, we’ll stay focused on ebook publishing platforms. There are three primary platforms to publish an ebook: Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Apple’s iBooks (iPad).

 

Amazon’s Kindle

Kindle is the granddaddy (though still quite young to be a grandpap) of e-bookdom. To this day, the Kindle Store still holds the record for e-book sales—67% of the e-book buying market. While this number has fallen to Nook over the past couple of years (it was closer to 99%), it’s still a good chunk of the market share. When Amazon came out with the Kindle, it did a lot of things right:

 

Read the full post on The Future of Ink.

 

What the Art of Storytelling Can Teach Us about Marketing

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This post by Jason Kong originally appeared on The Book Designer on 3/11/15.

If you’re like many fiction authors, promoting your work does not top your list of favorite activities.

Various marketing tasks may seem foreign and difficult. Perhaps you feel hamstrung by a lack of knowledge or confidence. And to top it off, you’re under extra pressure knowing you have to sell to succeed.

The good news? Your perception of marketing is probably worse than the reality. Just because you don’t have an MBA doesn’t mean you’re at the bottom of the learning curve. In fact, you’re in better shape than you realize, thanks to one clear advantage.

Your ability to tell a darn good story.

Yes, it’s true: being a fiction writer makes you a better marketer. All that storytelling experience not only helps you create a better product, but ultimately helps you promote it.

Let’s take a closer look as to how.

 

1. Only the right readers matter

Your words come from a certain perspective, and take place in a particular world. Not everyone will want to be part of what you created.

That’s fine. In fact, that’s great.

Why? Your writing is meant for you, and others like you. There’s no use worrying about those that don’t get it.

 

Read the full post on The Book Designer.

 

The Difference Between “Flawed” Characters and “Too Dumb to Live”

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 3/9/15.

Which is more important? Plot or character? Though an interesting discussion—sort of like, Could Ronda Rousey take a Klingon with only her bare hands?—it isn’t really a useful discussion for anything other than fun. To write great fiction, we need both. Plot and characters work together. One arc drives the other much like one cog serves to turn another, thus generating momentum in the overall engine we call “STORY”.

If we goof up plot? Readers/Audiences get confused or call FOUL. Watch the movie Ouija for what I am talking about *shakes head*.

Goof up characters? No one cares about the plot.

New writers are particularly vulnerable to messing up characters. We drift too far to one end of the spectrum or the other—Super-Duper-Perfect versus Too Dumb to Live—and this can make a story fizzle because there is no way to create true dramatic tension. This leaves us (the frustrated author) to manufacture conflict and what we end up with is drama’s inbred cousin melodrama.

If characters are too perfect, too goody-goody and too well-adjusted? If they always make noble, good and professional decisions? Snooze fest.

Again. Bad decisions make great fiction.

 

Read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

How Authors Can Build Their Audience on Instagram

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This post by Adrienne Erin originally appeared on Duolit on 7/14/14.

One of the fundamental rules writers strive to follow is “show, don’t tell.”

While this is meant to prevent clunky exposition (or the dreaded exposition monologue), it’s also a great piece of advice for the modern writer on social media. Although it might seem more natural for authors to flock to word-based sites like Twitter to promote their work or build their fan base, an image-based site like Instagram can also serve as a great promotional and relational tool for writers.

Here are six ways writers can harness the power of Instagram to build their audience:

 

Find a Brand New Audience

Each social media platform attracts a unique audience. While there will always be some crossover (from Twitter users to Facebook users, and Facebook users to Instagram users), the fact remains each site meets a different need and will therefore have a different user base.

 

Read the full post, which includes five additional Instagram strategies and details of each, on Duolit.

 

Writer’s Lament: “O’, Writing!”

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This post by Chris Jane originally appeared on chrisjane on 3/17/15.

It’s not hard to imagine a young Dorothy Parker sitting at her Catholic school desk, an arm curled around her paper so the teacher and the girls sitting nearby can’t see what she’s writing (definitely not the assignment).

Or Hunter S. Thompson at his school desk, but without an arm covering his work. Just writing whatever the hell he wants to write.

When I started writing at around twelve years old, it was on my bedroom floor after having read a certain number of magazines with single-page stories on the final page. I decided, “I bet I can do that.” A few hours, three cursive pages, and one or two strikethroughs later, I found the submission address on the back of the magazine and sent in my (absolutely terrible) story.

I don’t remember waiting for a reply, nor being disappointed when nothing came in the mail. What I do remember thinking is, “Woah. I want to do that again.”

Twenty-eight years later (or, about two weeks ago), I’d be sitting behind a laptop in a Barnes and Noble Starbucks and working on book number three when I’d look up and notice the shelves and shelves (and shelves) of books — none of them either of my first two — on the other side of the cafe railing.

How many books, 99% I’d never heard of, were on those shelves?

 

Read the full post on chrisjane.

 

How to Develop a Bestselling Book Idea

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This post by Penny C. Sansevieri originally appeared on PR Toolkit on 8/21/14. Note that it is geared to writers of nonfiction.

With so many people jumping on the publishing bandwagon, it’s clear that anyone can write and publish a book these days. But there’s a difference between writing a book versus writing a book that will sell. Once you understand how to use keywords and research to your advantage, you can create a bestselling book, in particular, a book that will be a hit on Amazon. Here’s what you can do:

 

Where can you find ideas?

It starts with keywords. There are people who understand Search Engine Optimization to such a degree that they write books based on the most popular keywords that were top searches in Google. Why? Because those keywords are proven sellers. I don’t recommend this as a strategy for your book, but it does illustrate how important it is to write on a topic that already generates interest. This approach can help you resolve the following issues for your own book:

Book topic: You want your book to respond to the needs and questions of your audience. What do they want to know? How can you help them achieve their goals? You might not have to completely overhaul your original idea, but you can tweak your focus to respond to readers’ needs. And, since book production is a much faster process these days, you can respond to hot topics and trends quickly.

 

Read the full post on PR Toolkit.

 

Authors: Give Success A Try, But Don’t Let It Spoil You

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This post by Robert Chazz Chute originally appeared on his site on 2/28/15.

I love talking to people on the way up. Striving for excellence, many authors manage to stay humble and helpful and fun to be around. Nobody knows everything yet and, contrary to what you’ve been told, not walking around in God’s presence is easy on the nerves. Then there are those who think they are gods on Earth.

1. My son was sick on the day a popular author came to his school. The kid was disappointed that he was too ill to attend so, while on a Kleenex box run, I went to the school in search of an autograph for him. The author’s mood could best be described as pissy. He’d visited too many elementary schools and he obviously felt the event was beneath him. He had forgotten what it was like to aspire to his position.

Suggestion: Remember when you imagined one of the perks of authorship was signing a book and inspiring a young reader? If you’re not happy to be where you are, do what everyone in retail does: fake it and smile or don’t do it.

 

Read the full post on Robert Chazz Chute’s site.

 

Stacey Jay, Crowdfunding, and the Business of Publishing

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This post by Livia Blackburne originally appeared on her site on 1/7/15.

So I usually don’t jump in on internet kerfuffles, but  the recent blowup over Stacey Jay’s kick starter really caught my attention.  The short version is that author Stacey Jay started a kickstarter for her next YA novel after her publisher declined to buy it.  She factored in living expenses as part of the money to be raised, and got a lot of blowback for that choice, so much, in fact, that she ended up canceling the Kickstarter and apologizing.

I’m not the only person to weigh in.  There’s a Roundup at Bookshelves of Doom. And I particularly liked the response written by Chuck Wendig and Laura Lam. So I’ll just share a few thoughts.

 

1. What is the biggest cost of writing a book?

My dad, a lifelong businessman, once asked me what my biggest cost was for a self publishing project I was planning. I started quoting a rundown of editing costs, cover artist quotes, etc, but he stopped me halfway and said, “No Livia, your biggest cost is your time.” And of course, he’s right. This is business 101, but somehow for writers, the idea of time being a valuable thing is counterintuitive.

 

Read the full post on Livia Blackburne’s site.

 

Protecting Your Copyrights Online

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This post by Susan Spann originally appeared on Writers In The Storm on 3/13/15.

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi refers to Mos Eisley spaceport as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” and adds, “we must be careful.”

Obi-Wan’s wisdom applies to the Internet too.

Regardless of your publishing path, if you write for publication, you should take steps to protect your copyrighted work against Internet-based infringement.

Today, we take a look at how to do that. While no single post can cover all of the ways to protect your work online, here are some tips on things all authors can do to protect and enforce their copyrights:

Perform Regular Copyright / Infringement Searches. Every author should search the Internet regularly (at least once a month) for: (a) the author’s name, (b) the author’s published titles, and (c) any other words, phrases, or marks which might reveal infringement or illegal copying of the author’s work. For example, my searches include “Susan Spann,” “Shinobi Mystery,” and the titles of each of my published works (as well as “Flask of the Drunken Master” which doesn’t release until July. Using quotation marks around the search terms returns only those results which contain the exact phrase within the quotes.

Internet searches are important even if you also use Google Alerts or another monitoring service. While effective, automated alerts don’t catch all infringement, and can’t be relied upon to screen for all uses of an author’s work on the Internet.

 

Read the full post on Writers In The Storm.

 

How I Became An Indie Author: Helen Harper

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This article by Helen Harper originally appeared on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog on 3/4/15.

It Shouldn’t Happen to an English Teacher

Everyone makes mistakes. Career-wise, one of my biggest was to step into a temporary Deputy Head position at the international school where I was teaching English. Five years ago it was a small start-up, and I took the job knowing that I’d have to retain all my responsibilities as head of department, as well as teaching, and the new requirements of senior management. The upshot was that for eight months, I didn’t have a day off. I worked weekends, holidays, evenings … all I did was work. And by the time May rolled around, I was burnt out and had nothing left to give. I needed something else.

 

Bored? Then Write a Novel…

There was nothing I wanted to watch on television. I’d been working so hard that I had few friends. And I couldn’t find any books I wanted to read – so instead I wrote my own.

Every evening I’d come home, grab a bite and write. I didn’t tell a soul about it. I was lost in the fantasy world of Mack Smith, a young woman living with a pack of shapeshifters in rural Cornwall. It was a little bit like being a superhero. By day I taught English, and by night I transformed into a crime-fighting, ass-kicking heroine! Sort of, anyway.

 

Read the full article on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog.

 

Alabama Investigating Possible Elder Abuse In Connection With Harper Lee’s New Novel

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This article by Sarah Kaplan originally appeared on The Washington Post on 3/12/15.

The news last month that Harper Lee would be publishing a second book was met with a brief blip of exultation followed by skepticism from fans of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Why would the 88-year-old author, a woman so publicity-averse she once compared herself to the reclusive Boo Radley from her novel, have agreed to the publication of a “Mockingbird” predecessor she tabled more than 50 years ago?

Many concluded that Lee, who resides in an assisted-living facility and is said to be in declining health, could not have knowingly consented to a new novel, entitled “Go Set a Watchman.”

Now, the New York Times reported Wednesday night, at least one complaint about potential elder abuse has been filed, and Alabama state officials are investigating the claims.

The Times report said investigators for the state’s Human Resources Department and the Alabama Securities Commission, tasked with preventing financial fraud against the elderly, interviewed Lee last month. They also spoke to employees of the facility where she lives, as well as to several friends.

 

Read the full article on The Washington Post.

 

Episodic Fiction is Finding a New Home on Kindle Unlimited

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This post by Michael Kozlowski originally appeared on GoodEReader on 3/11/15.

Indie authors are disrupting e-book publishing by writing episodic fiction. They are primarily distributing the titles through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle lending library. This is providing a financial boon to authors who write 60 page novels in a serialized manner. This method of writing is quickly becoming more profitable than simply writing a single feature length novel.

Serialized fiction first gained prominence in Victorian England and it first appeared in newspapers. It was practiced by such literary giants as Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy and Joseph Conrad. It fell out of favor in the last fifty years, but is now making a rebound, thanks to Amazon.

Things have been fairly static in self-publishing and traditional publishing for decades. An author writes a book and has it distributed through specific sales channels. They promote a single title and get paid when readers purchase it. Now we have Amazon picking up the tab when a book is read and the reader pays virtually nothing.

The Kindle Lending Library was first established in 2011 and allows members who opt into Amazon Prime to read one free book a month. This has proven to be a lucrative method for indie authors to garner sales. Kindle Unlimited is a similar program, but instead of a Prime membership, users pay around $10.00 a month and read as many e-books they want.

 

Read the full post on GoodEReader.

 

The Utility (and Trappings) of the Novel Outline

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This post by Jamie Kornegay originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 2/12/15.

I’ve been selling books for more than fifteen years and learning to write novels even longer. Of all the author readings and Q&A sessions I’ve hosted (and attended), one of the most common questions among beginning writers, even curious readers, is this: Do you start with an outline?

You’ve heard the pros and cons. An outline helps organize your thoughts and prevents you from spinning your wheels and traveling down dead-end storylines. The flipside, of course, is that constructing an outline boxes you in and limits the possibility of discovery, which is the most creative and rewarding part of writing.

First, it’s important to note that there are no ironclad rules to novel writing. Every writer works differently and stumbles upon his or her preferred method through trial and error. The novel, rather than writing advisers, should tell you what it needs.

The traditional term paper outline, with its Roman numerals and letters, is helpful to organize a finite amount of information, but a novel is more amorphous. I couldn’t begin to collect a novel’s potential in an outline, though I certainly understand the impulse. There’s something terrifying about the blank page and its stark white emptiness. What could you put there that anyone would want to read?

 

Read the full post on Writer’s Digest.