Think

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

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

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This post by Maegan Beaumont originally appeared on Inkspot on 5/26/14.

We all have them: brilliant story ideas.

Sometimes, they come to us fully formed. You see every facet clearly—who your protagonist is, the trouble he or she faces. What they will do to dig themselves out of it… the trouble they meet along the way. Sometimes, it’s just a flash. Something you see or hear triggers a thought. That thought leads to another… and another… until the idea takes shape and you’re left with no choice but to write it out.

And other times that something you see or hear burrows into your brain. It niggles and nags. It refused to be pushed aside—demands to be written.

So, if these ideas take all the time and trouble to bring themselves to our attention, to demand that we listen, why is it that sometimes they have the audacity to be unable to support the story we so desperately want to write? Why is it that they fall apart half way through the novel?

I hate to say it, but… it’s not the idea you should be blaming. It’s you. You’re probably the reason things aren’t working out the way you’d planned them to. The idea didn’t fall apart. You probably broke it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Inkspot.

 

Try Harder or Walk Away: The Decision.

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This post by Rebecca Lammersen originally appeared on elephant on 6/23/12. While it has a spiritual (though non-religious) bent, those who are struggling with the decision between continuing on their current path toward success in authorship and changing course may find it offers some helpful food for thought.

“One of the hardest decisions you will ever face in life, is choosing whether to try harder or walk away.”
~ Anonymous

Try harder or walk away—this is the only choice we make in every moment of life. We either try harder or we walk away from being present, loving ourselves, loving another, pursuing our passions or completing a task. We choose to continue doing, thinking, saying, listening, eating and being what we are, or we break up with it.

There is only one way to do everything, completely or not at all. If we half-ass life, we cheat our truth, stop growing, we suffer.

Imagine if an architect half-assed plans for a building, or an aerospace engineer half-assed the construction of an airplane. The building couldn’t stand on its own and the plane couldn’t fly. We are the architects of our lives. We have to devote entirely to our project or walk away from the drawing pad until we are willing to do the work.

The choice to stay or leave, determines whether we free ourselves or we suffer. How do we make the “right” decision?

We learn how to discern between the doubt of the mind and the surety of the spirit.

The discernment is in the volume. The mind is loud and the spirit is quiet.

 

Click here to read the full post on elephant.

 

The Case Against Beta Readers

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This post originally appeared on Popular Soda on 6/3/14.

Beta readers are treated like a necessary step in the self-publishing process. But are they worth it? Essentially, you’re turning over the development of your story to a total stranger. That is, if you can even find a beta reader who actually finishes your work and provides useful feedback.

Here are some of the most common problems with using beta readers:

 

You don’t know who they are

Anyone can claim to be an experienced editor offering beta reading for free. They’re not all lying, but they’re not all telling the truth, either. Personally, I’ve encountered several people who claimed to be professional editors in one thread, then admitted their lack of experience in another. Don’t count on the qualifications of someone hiding behind a screenname.

 

They don’t know what you’re capable of

Beta readers can’t push you to be your best, because they don’t know what your best looks like. I have a small group of close writer-friends who serve as my beta readers. If they find something they don’t like, they just write “Really?” and I go back and rework it. You simply can’t have that level of familiarity and understanding with someone who’s never read your work, barely knows your name, doesn’t understand your style, and has no idea of your goals.

 

Click here to read the full post on Popular Soda.

 

“Ignore the inner demon that tells you you’ll never be as good as Zadie Smith”

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This post by Ted Thompson originally appeared on Salon on 6/6/14.

Acclaimed debut novelist Ted Thompson on revision, writing good sentences vs writing a novel, and just keeping on

On a scale of 1 to 10, how “good” was your submission draft in your own opinion? Did you feel it was exactly the story you were trying to tell, or was it just “good enough” to send out? I feel like I could spend the rest of my life revising my book, and it would never reach an 8. *sigh*

Ah, a question that is near and dear to my heart. Thank you for asking this.

Before I get to me, I think there are a couple of things going on in your question that are helpful to sort out. The first is the question of how “good” my novel was before it went out, on a scale of 1 to 10, which seems to me a different thing from the second part of the question, which was if I felt it was exactly the story I was trying to tell.

For me, I’ve said before that I knew when my novel went out on submission that it wasn’t quite done, but I think that’s maybe a little misleading. In my case it was less an issue of it being good on a scale of 1 to 10 (good to who exactly?) than of feeling as though the book hadn’t yet expressed what deep down, under all of my uncertainties and anxieties and doubts, I knew it could.

 

Click here to read the full post on Salon.

 

Michael Crichton’s Method for Plotting Out a Story

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This post by Woelf Dietrich originally appeared on his Wo3lfMad site on 6/11/14.

I’m generally a pantser. My words tend to zigzag behind my thoughts as they try to keep up. When I reach a plot point or scene where I’m unsure of the direction I stop and take a short walk, or I go through my research again. Sometimes a walk is enough to dislodge what is stuck, or, if I’m lucky, I might end up with a new idea, and other times I have to wait a day or more. When I start a story I begin with an idea only, a premise that interests me, and build on that. Research for me usually happens early on in the writing process, after I already wrote a few chapters. Like starting a car and then letting it idle to warm the engine.

Having a detailed plot outline is new to me. I’ve never written a complete, full outline where I parse all my research and plot lines, well, not until I began on The Morrigan. I knew how I wanted the story to end and I knew another book would follow it, and because of Seals I had the mythos already down, but I wasn’t sure how the character arcs would meet. I had snap shots in my head of scenes I wanted to use.

It meant an outline had to be created to help me tell the story without leaving gaping potholes. Thus, I began constructing a series bible for The Guardians of the Seals. All my characters are described therein along with their backgrounds, a generous plot description with various options for future use, and a précis on how the research connects to the narrative.

During the actual writing process I would jot down ideas that came up or record significant developments that were new and unplanned. This way I kept the bible updated and ready for future books and it saved me time. Even now, when I do revision, I only have to check the bible if I forgot the name of a street or building, or Sebastian’s original family name.

Writers use many ways to help them sort the plot. The index-card method is one those ways and quite a few successful authors rely on this method. Which brings me to Michael Crichton.

 

Click here to read the full post on Wo3lfMad.

 

Is Amazon Good For Books? and other dumb questions

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This post by Robert Kroese originally appeared on his site on 6/10/14.

I finally got around to reading George Packer’s article in the New Yorker entitled “Cheap Words: Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?” yesterday. Spoiler alert, in case you haven’t read the article: Packer doesn’t answer the question. In fact, he doesn’t even really address the question. Most of the article is taken up with head-shaking reminiscences of Amazon’s ruthless business practices, its treatment of books as “widgets” rather than the lovingly birthed children of the tortured souls of artists, and a few anecdotes about poor working conditions in warehouses (another spoiler: warehouses, by and large, are not fun places to work). Finally, in the concluding paragraphs, Packer gets around to the question at hand:

Several editors, agents, and authors told me that the money for serious fiction and nonfiction has eroded dramatically in recent years…. These are the kinds of book that particularly benefit from the attention of editors and marketers, and that attract gifted people to publishing, despite the pitiful salaries. Without sufficient advances, many writers will not be able to undertake long, difficult, risky projects.When consumers are overwhelmed with choices, some experts argue, they all tend to buy the same well-known thing….

These trends point toward what the literary agent called “the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.” A few brand names at the top, a mass of unwashed titles down below, the middle hollowed out: the book business in the age of Amazon mirrors the widening inequality of the broader economy….

 

Click here to read the full post on Robert Kroese’s site.

 

10 Things You Should Never Say to a Novelist

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This post by Josie Brown originally appeared on her Author Provocateur site on 6/9/14.

I’m being serious.

Okay, here goes:

 

1. “I’d write, too, but I can’t stand the thought of all the trees I’d be killing.” 

Yes, I’ve heard this one. My response back then was, “Don’t worry. You won’t sell enough books to raze a sapling, because your pub house won’t push you that hard to begin with.”

Today, I’d add, “And besides, most books are digital, so you can’t use the tree-killer bullshit as an excuse not to write anymore.”

 

2. “I’d write, too, but I just can’t make the time.”

Good. Stay busy. The world doesn’t need anothor author. Here’s a hint: It’s not a hobby. It’s a profession.

 

3. “Why don’t you kill off your series’ villian?” Because then I wouldn’t have a series. And if I don’t have a series, I don’t have the rent money. I’ll make you a promise: when and if he quits paying the rent, I’ll quit writing about him.

 

Click here to read the full post on Author Provocateur.

 

7 Things the Most-Highlighted Kindle Passages Tell Us About American Readers

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This post by Jospeh Stromberg originally appeared on Vox on 5/30/14.

Conventionally, the most common way of gauging the most popular books in America has been looking at the New York Times’ bestsellers list.

But as we shift from reading on paper to screens, there’s an interesting new option: Amazon’s lists of the most-highlighted passages and most-highlighted books on Kindles around the world.

When you read on a Kindle, you can highlight passages, the same way you might highlight text in a physical book. The passages you highlight are all collected in one place, accessible either on the reader or a computer.

But Amazon also collects data on what its readers highlight most. The resulting most-highlighted lists are a fascinating record of reading as a whole.

There are some limitations to the data: it’s only for people who read on Kindles, and use them for highlighting. The data is extremely heavily skewed towards American readers (Amazon isn’t saying whether they include international data, but it looks like they don’t). And some books don’t lend themselves to highlighting quite as much, which is why many of even Amazon’s bestsellers don’t appear on the lists.

But it’s also true that some books get bought and end up on bestseller lists, but aren’t actually read — whereas these lists are a terrific record of what we might nowadays call reader engagement. They reveal not just what books are read, but what part of books are read — and even tell us a little about what people are thinking about as they do their highlighting.

Here are seven things the lists tell us about Americans reading today.

 

Click here to read the full post on Vox.

 

6 Reasons To Write A Short Story

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This post by Julie Glover originally appeared as a guest post on Writers In The Storm on 5/30/14.

As a novel reader, I always believed I was meant to write full-length books. Yet I find myself entering the self-published market with a collection of short stories instead.

I wrote the first one on a lark—merely a story premise I wanted to get out of my system. But I liked the result so much, I started another. And then I got hooked, eventually completing six young adult paranormal shorts.

6 reasons you might consider writing a short story:

 

1. Writing short stories hones your skill for writing lean—a skill that will help you craft more effective scenes in a novel.

The limited space of short stories requires the writer to stick to what must be included and leave the rest behind. Mastering storytelling in short form can help you see your novel in a different light.

After working on short stories, I returned to edits on my book and suddenly recognized sections and scenes that didn’t pull their weight. Now that I better understand how to pack punch into a shorter word count, I can transfer that skill to writing longer fiction and create a more power-packed novel.

 

2. Short stories appeal to the our fast-paced lives.

It’s tempting as authors to expect everyone to be voracious readers like us, toting around thick books or an entire library on our e-reader. But today’s world is fast-paced, and many people simply don’t have time or make time to read a full novel. They might, however, be able to get through a short story and satisfy their urge for fiction.

A short story can be read on the subway or bus to work, while waiting to be seen in a doctor’s office, or in those few minutes to yourself at night before you crash into sleep.

Shorts appeal to our overfull schedules and keep readers reading.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writers In The Storm.

 

Writer Victory!—Yearning, Empathy, & How Political Correctness is Killing Diversity in Literature

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 6/4/14.

After deviating last week, today we tackle the final letter in our Writer Acrostic. Thus far, we’ve covered: V is for Voluntarily Submit. Anticipate trials and challenges and understand there is far more strength in bending than breaking. I was for Identify Problem Areas. We can’t fix what we fail to acknowledge. Our profession hinges on us writing better today than we did yesterday. C was for Change Your Mind. We can only achieve what we can first conceive. Make your mind and set it and keep it set.

T was for Turn Over our Future. When we let go of things we can’t control, we’re far more powerful to drive and direct that which we can. R was for Remember Writers are Magicians. This isn’t a hobby or “playtime.” Our society is only as evolved as the artists who drive the change. Show me a country without writers and I’ll show you a country doomed.

Y stands for Yearning. Natural talent has very little to do with being a great writer or a successful writer. We have to want the dream. I can teach you guys structure, technique, POV, etc. but I can’t do the work for you. You have to want it.

Over Memorial Day, Hubby and I watched Lone Survivor. There was a really neat quote in the intro: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Moderation is for cowards.”

 

A Writer’s Work is Never Done

Unless I’m sleeping, I’m always on the job. Even then, y’all should be privy to some of my dreams. Since my fiction involves a lot of complex science, it’s not uncommon for me to bolt up in the middle of the night with an A-HA! I make a joke that I do my best work while sleeping.

One of the reasons I tell writers NOT to start a writing blog is that teaching writing and writing are two completely different skill sets. Writers are not necessarily good teachers. In fact, I will go so far as to say some of the most brilliant authors I’ve ever met were dreadful teachers.

I remember being at Thrillerfest and one of the mega-authors (who I won’t name) had somehow been coaxed into teaching a class. This was a writer I…worshipped. BRILLIANT man.

I battled for a spot right in the center so I could take notes and learn all I could. The poor author, though? I was waiting for him to chew off his own leg to escape. He kept saying things like, “Well, I don’t know how I do it. I just…do it.” *looks at watch* *looks for fire exit*

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

Amazon vs Hachette and the Erosion of Author Solidarity

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This post by Mary W. Walters originally appeared on her The Militant Writer site on 6/7/14.

Writers need to remember that both sides are making more money from our talent than we ever can.

Like many other writers, I am caught in a sticky predicament when it comes to the battle between Amazon and the publisher Hachette, in that supporting what is growing into a cause célèbre for many traditionally published authors means diminishing our own work and reducing our (mostly paltry) incomes.

For those who have missed this story, Amazon has begun to delay the delivery of books by Hachette authors significantly, and to create impediments on searches for Hachette books on the Amazon site: apparently due to a dispute between the two companies over ebook pricing. (See the LA Times for details.) No less a celebrity than Stephen Colbert is now urging all of us to boycott Amazon in support of Hachette authors, of which he is one. The New York Times is outraged. So are many noted writers (Martin Gladwell and James Patterson are two, both also published by Hachette) and several writers’ organizations.

Those of us who are caught in the middle of this firestorm are primarily established writers who have chosen to go the self-published route for some or all of our new or out-of-print titles, and to use Amazon as our publishing partner. Typically, we ourselves have had books published with traditional presses in the past, and as a result we have strong connections (e.g., through membership in writers’ organizations) and even long-term friendships with other authors who are still published only by established presses. These presses include not only Hachette but all publishers who could receive similar treatment from Amazon in future, which is most of them. Solidarity is at stake here, and in a pre-self-publishing world, we would have easily and strongly stood together. Now, over this issue and several others related to it, such strength in unity is impossible.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Militant Writer.

 

Marketing Lessons from Mad Men

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This post by James Scott Bell originally appeared on The Kill Zone blog on 6/1/14.

On a recent episode of Mad Men, “The Monolith,” a huge IBM computer is being installed in the offices of Sterling Cooper & Partners. Don Draper, reduced to hack work as some sort of vindictive punishment, watches from his office.

A character named Lloyd is overseeing the installation. Taking a smoke break, Lloyd asks Don if advertising really works.

Don says, “It helps if you have a good product.”

Boom. All advertising wisdom and marketing strategy must ultimately be filtered through this one non-negotiable. You’ve gotta have a good product, a quality thing to sell.

This is as true for books as it is for Brylcreem. You can pour all the time and money you want into getting the word out, but that only gets you an introduction. To succeed people have to like your product enough to become a repeat customer.

So how do you know when you have a quality book? Here’s one way:

 

Click here to read the full post on The Kill Zone blog.

 

The War on Amazon is Big Publishing's 1% Moment. What About Other Writers?

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This post by Barry Eisler originally appeared on The Guardian on 6/4/14.

More people are buying more books than ever, and more people are making a living by writing them. Why do millionaire authors want to destroy the one company that’s made this all possible?

As an author of ten novels – legacy-published, self-published, and Amazon-published – I’m bewildered by the anti-Amazon animus among various establishment writers. James Patterson pays for full-page ads in the New York Times and Publishers Weekly, demanding that the US government intervene and do something (it’s never clear what) about Amazon. Richard Russo tries to frighten authors over Amazon’s “scorched-earth capitalism”. Scott Turow conjures images of the “nightmarish” future that Amazon, “the Darth Vader of the literary world”, has in store for us all. And “Authors Guild” president Roxana Robinson says Amazon is like “Tony Soprano” and “thuggish”.

These are strange things to say about a company that sells more books than anyone. That singlehandedly created a market for digital books, now the greatest source of the legacy publishing industry’s profitability (though of course legacy publishers are sharing little of that newfound wealth with their authors). That built the world’s first viable mass-market self-publishing platform, a platform that has enabled thousands of new authors to make a living from their writing for the first time in their lives. And that pays self-published authors something like five times as much in digital royalties as legacy publishers do.

I can think of at least several explanations for the strange phenomenon of authors – and an entity calling itself the calling itself the “Authors Guild” – railing against a company that sells so many books, that treats authors so well, and that has created so many new opportunities for writers. Basically: equating the various functions of publishing generally with the legacy industry specifically; blaming Jeff Bezos for technology; and experiencing judgment clouded by self-interest.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Guardian.

 

BREAKING NEWS: Media Still Sexist In Reporting of Romance Industry

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This post by Heidi Cullinan originally appeared on her Amazon Iowan blog on 5/2/14.

I write gay romance novels.

That statement contains three concepts: I write fiction. I write romantic stories. I write gay male protagonists. It is often assumed by my readership and my heterosexual peers that the greatest “shocker” in that list is that I’m a married female in the Midwest writing gay fiction. But the sad truth is that’s merely an eyebrow-raiser, usually begging the inquisitor to ask me more about why, and how that works. In fact, the “gay” factor in my declaration of what I do for a living is a buffer. Because when I say I’m an author, everyone gets excited. When I say I write gay fiction, everyone is intrigued.

When I say that I write love stories, noses wrinkle, and disdain is rampant.

The year is 2014, and we’ve come a long way, baby, but much as Cliven Bundy can tell you all about “the negro,” the international media and everyone at peace with our two-faced, condescending patriarchal culture, those romance novels are trashy bodice rippers. The men and women who read them write them, produce them, promote them, maintain a billion-dollar industry via them—they’re all silly, and sex-crazed, and if they aren’t fat spinsters in curlers eating ice cream in the middle of too many cats, they’re definitely that type of ridiculous person at heart.

Because today when it was announced that Harlequin Enterprises, who advertise themselves as “We Are Romance,” was sold to News Corp, we didn’t receive reporting on what such an unexpected, potentially industry-changing merger would mean, or what this did to the outstanding lawsuit against Harlequin. We didn’t get gravity and insight, or attempts at insight into what this might mean—not often, not overall.

 

Click here to read the full post on Amazon Iowan.

 

The Power of Not Enough

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This post by Nick Stephenson originally appeared on his site on 3/22/14.

I listened to an interesting podcast yesterday over at Rockingselfpublishing.com, featuring indie heavyweight Russell Blake. If you’ve got a spare 55 minutes, go have a listen – or check out the key points in the accompanying commentary – you’ll be glad you did. The podcast got me thinking:

How do we know when we have succeeded at something? How do we set realistic goals? More specifically, when it comes to selling books, how much is enough?

Russell cites James Lee Burke as a perfect example of getting exactly what you want out of this business. Burke writes in his own unique style, he doesn’t pander, and he has a solid, long-term sales record that most of us would give our right arms for. But, in Russell’s words, he’ll never sell like Dan Brown or James Patterson. But that’s okay. That’s not the point of what he’s trying to accomplish.

So what does this mean for the average indie author? In my experience, “enough” is almost impossible to quantify without some very clear (and achievable) goals. I remember, just starting out, when I’d be overjoyed to see 50 book sales a month. Then 100. More recently, 1,000, or even more on a Bookbub month. And, every month, I think to myself “this could be better.”

But how much better? Will I be satisfied with 2,000 sales a month? 5,000? 10,000? I realised I didn’t know where the line was. Although I’ve been lucky enough to see my work being read in all over the world (mostly in the US – thanks, guys!) I came into this game not expecting much – and, as a result, had no “end game” in mind.

 

Click here to read the full post on Nick Stephenson’s site.