Think

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

When Famous Author Promos Backfire

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This post by L.J. Sellers and Peg Brantley originally appeared on The Crime Fiction Collective blog on 2/7/14.

L.J.: You mentioned in our last conversation how much you liked Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series, and it reminded me that I’d recently encountered something surprising with that series. A promotional website posted a link on my Facebook page to the author’s short story, The Switchblade. (Which was odd and made me wonder if his publisher had hired them.)

More important, I went to Amazon to check out the short story and discovered that it has almost all one-star reviews. I was stunned! I read several, and they all have the same complaints: The story doesn’t have a real conclusion, and the ebook serves mostly as a promotion for Connelly’s next book, The Gods of Guilt. Both the short story and the novel are selling well, so was it effective? And even so, was it worth alienating some readers?

 

Peg: My guess would be no, soooo not worth it. I have become a huge fan of Michael Connelly and have to wonder what his publisher was thinking. By the way, while I’ve read a lot of mixed reviews on sites like DorothyL and For Mystery Addicts about The Gods of Guilt, but I enjoyed it.

But Connelly isn’t the only author who might be suffering repercussions from this new marketing tactic. I recently downloaded what I thought was a short story by Dean Koontz, another of my favorites. I was completely turned off when at some point (it was moving rather slowly for a short story) I figured out it was simply a marketing promotion for his next book. I never finished it. And it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

 

L.J.: Readers hate that! Which makes me wonder whether the author knew what his publisher planned and if he had any say in the matter. I like to think that he didn’t and that he’s not happy about the situation. I know that publishers sometimes encourage (pressure?) authors to write short stories as between-book promos. And sometimes they want their authors to participate in new programs and formats.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Crime Fiction Collective blog.

 

Playing with Permafree Books – The Results

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This post by Nick Stephenson originally appeared on his site on 1/9/14.

I’ve been experimenting with a permafree book over the last few weeks – admittedly, I’m a little late to the game, but with so many indie authors using this approach, I figured it was time to dip my toes in the water. I chose my shorter title, “Paydown” (a 95 page novella) as the guinea pig for this little experiment. The book has been well received, with a 4.2* rating on Amazon over 15 reviews at the time the title first went free. A few weeks later, reviews are still good, averaging 4.1* over 28 reviews. But I’m far more interested in measuring the ROI, so here’s the breakdown for y’all:

Price of Paydown prior to permafree = $0.99c
Average daily revenue for Paydown prior to permafree = $2.20
Average daily unit sales for Paydown prior to permafree = 6

Granted, I only had the book up for sale for 2 weeks before going free, but that gives you a rough idea. Essentially, for every day the book is free, I’m losing $2.20 off the bat (I figured I could live with that). So how did jumping on the permafreebie bandwagon help sales across my other titles? Here’s a lovely graph:

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes a breakdown of the sales figures, detailed analysis, and conclusions, on Nick Stephenson’s site.

 

A True War Story Does Have A Moral

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This post by Michael Carson originally appeared on The Hooded Utilitarian on 2/3/14.

“A true war story is never moral,” says Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried. “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, “ he continues, “then you have been made a victim of a very old and terrible lie.” A nice idea. I thought of it after finishing Ben Fountain’s novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Certainly I did not feel uplifted in the sense that I wanted to go and fight a war. But the story quite clearly had a moral, even if I couldn’t quite put the moral into words. Would this book be proscribed according to O’Brien’s ideal? Would O’Brien’s own book? Were they in fact true war stories or did fiction circumvent this requirement? For some time now, Americans have been caught in a frustratingly circular conversation about war movies and war literature (see here and here for examples of those using O’Brien to break the impasse). The debate is not so much pro-war versus anti-war, but the authentic versus the non-authentic, with each side accusing each other of the same lack of authenticity. I blame Tim O’Brien. A true war story is always moral. Encouraging young writers, young soldiers and young civilians to believe such amoral stories exist or might be someday written is a dangerous American tradition that we would be well advised to stop.

Though nominally a work of fiction, The Things They Carried obsesses over the idea of a true war story. One chapter – appropriately titled “How to Tell a True War Story” – goes so far as to layer successive, often contradictory, arguments as to what makes a war story true.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Hooded Utilitarian.

 

3 Book Marketing Projects to Tackle in 2014

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This post by Toni Tesori originally appeared on Duolit on 1/8/14.

This is my year.

No more excuses.

2014, I will OWN you!

Sound familiar?

The ringing in of a new year forces us to think about what we’ve achieved in the past twelve months — and how we can do things a bit better this time around.

After the fireworks die down and the champagne stops bubbling, we sit down and make those dreaded…you guessed it: New Year’s Resolutions.

The funny thing about resolutions, though? Their success could be determined by a simple coin flip!

That’s right, less than half of us will actually stick to our resolutions — and that means half of our author friends will end the year no better where they started, which makes us mega-sad. But why does this happen?

You start out with good intentions, right? January 1st brings with it plenty of motivation, but it is darn near impossible to keep up that drive for twelve months. To actually accomplish our goals, we need to add something else to our awesome motivation:

Motivation + [Focus] = WIN!

That’s right, Focus. Motivation without focus is like deciding to go on a road trip, but accidentally leaving the map and smartphone at home. You might eventually reach something really cool, like the Jimmy Carter Peanut Statue…but, without a plan, you’re likely to turn around after an hour or so when your trip starts feeling like a waste of time and gas.

Let’s be real: choosing where to focus your marketing attention is hard. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone just told you what you should do to promote your work?

Ta-da!

3 Book Marketing Projects to Tackle in 2014

 

Click here to read the full post on Duolit.

 

Book Publishing May Not Remain A Stand-Alone Industry And Book Retailing Will Demonstrate That First

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This post by Mike Shatzkin originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 1/29/14.

You are missing some good fun if you don’t know those AT&T commercials where the grown-up sits around a table with a bunch of really little kids and asks them questions like “what’s better: faster or slower?” There always seems to be an obvious “correct” answer. Those kids could answer some important questions about ebook retailing in the future like these:

“What’s better? Selling just ebooks or selling ebooks and print books?”

“What’s better? Selling in just one country or in all countries?”

“What’s better? Selling just books or selling books and lots of other things too?”

“What’s better? Having one way to get revenue, like selling books with or without other stuff, or having lots of ways to get revenue so that books are only a part of the opportunity?”

And the answers to those simple questions, so obvious that a 5-year old would get them right, explain a lot about the evolving ebook marketplace and, ultimately, about the entire world of book publishing.

Book retailing on the Internet, let alone an offer that is ebooks only, hardly cuts it as a stand-alone business anymore. The three companies most likely to be in the game and selling ebooks ten years from now are Amazon, Apple, and Google. The ebook business will not be material to any of them — it is only really close to material for Amazon now — which is why we can be sure they will see no need to abandon it. It is a strategic component of a larger ecosystem, not dependent on the margin or profit it itself produces. And the rest of their substantial businesses assure they’ll still be around as a company to run that ebook business.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Shatzkin Files.

 

10 Creative Ways to Challenge and Improve Your Writing

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This post by David Eagle originally appeared as a guest post on Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen’s Quips and Tips For Successful Writers site on 7/6/13.

My writing skills improved dramatically when I freelanced for Reader’s Digest, because the editor would go over every sentence with me. She’d call me up and we’d analyze my articles – and I’d learn what Reader’s Digest readers were looking for, what editors want from writers, and even how to pitch future articles.

Most editors don’t have the time to do this – I was one lucky writer! Though it was painful at times, I have to admit.

Anyway — in this article, you’ll learn several ways to improve your writing skills. It’s written by David Eagle, on behalf of the GKBC Writing Academy.

Here’s the one very important thing I’d add to his tips: EDIT your writing. Don’t just write stuff and file it away. Find someone who writes better than you – better yet, find an editor – and get him or her to tear apart your writing.

10 Ways to Improve Your Writing

Guest Post ~ David Eagle

I work as a freelance writer, creating content for various clients. I also have a blog on my website that I’ve been writing since 2009, which allows me to experiment and develop as a writer in a more unstructured environment.

Like any skill, the more you practise at writing the better you become. I’m going to share with you ten tips that you can use to improve and challenge your writing. These are free, simple and fun things that you can start doing right away…

1. Pick a Word
Open a dictionary at random, take the first word you see and write about it. What feelings and emotions does it evoke in you? This is a great way of inspiring new and original ideas, and adding new words to your vocabulary.

2. Play a Wikipedia Game
Wikipedia has a “random article” feature in the left column of its homepage. Hit the link and let it decide your fate! Try writing about whatever subject it randomly selects. This is another a great way of stepping out of your comfort zone, writing about things you probably know very little about which also helps develop your research skills.

3. Look Around You
Observe and write about what’s going on around you. I get so many ideas just from conversations I’ve overheard in restaurants, on buses or on trains. If you are looking to write fiction then observing situations and characters around you is an excellent exercise. Just don’t get caught staring intensely at people as you write derogatory things about them in your notepad! I am not taking responsibility if you end up in hospital.

 

Click here to read the full post on Quips and Tips For Successful Writers.

 

On Plot

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This post by S. Andrew Swann originally appeared on Genrewonk.

What is a “Story?”
(SF or otherwise.)

A character with a problem.

Every story is about a character trying to deal with some sort of difficulty. Characters who have happy lives, who are content with their lot, and who have achieved their goals are not good fodder for fiction. The people we read about are people in trouble.

The central problem.

Most genre stories can be thought of as revolving around some central problem, or problems. The central problem(s) can be considered to be, in some sense, what the story is “about.” Will the mystery be solved? Will the protagonist survive? Will the rebellion succeed?

Begin with a crisis…

Whatever the length you’re dealing with, short story or novel, you want to begin with a character in crisis. The reader should find characters in difficulty within the first chapter, the first page, and ideally, the first paragraph. Structurally, it may not be possible to have the story’s main problem begin on the first page, but every story should begin with some problem, often with the first line.

…end with a resolution.

If the story is organized around a single central problem, it ends naturally when you’ve resolved that problem. If the story deals with a series or complex of problems, it ends when the last problem is dealt with, or when all the problems identified as most important are solved. A story can persist as long as there are problems to deal with.

 

What makes a Story SF?

 

Click here to view the full post, which includes a thorough analysis of not only plotting but also characterization and pacing, on Genrewonk.

 

Authors' Sleep Patterns and Productivity

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This post originally appeared on ShortList.com on 1/28/14.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and a better author. Wait, that’s not right.

The influence of daily routines on creative output has always been a mild obsession of Maria Popova, a New York-based Bulgarian writer and blogger.

Such was her interest in successful writers’ sleep habits that she commissioned illustrator Wendy MacNaughton and information design team Accurat to create this rather superb infographic, charting authors’ sleeping patterns and their literary productivity.

Having researched each author’s wake-up time from journals, biographies and interviews, the chart illustrates their preferred hour of rising with a clock-like marker. The author’s productivity is indicated with a small count for each of their books, poems or works, adjacent to the time. Literary awards are indicated with a coloured smudge around the author’s portrait. The writers are ordered according to their hour of rising.

It makes for an interesting read, demolishing any notion that there’s a ‘perfect hour’ to rise. We’re all for adopting Charles Bukowski’s approach to mornings…
 

Click here to view the infographic, along with instructions for how to read it.

 

How to Write 2000 Words a Day

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This post originally appeared on the WriteAnon blog on 3/14/11.

The last few weeks, I’ve been trying to write 2000 words or more each day. I’ve found there are a few things that have helped me be successful.

 

1. Don’t sit down to write 2000 words at once.

I’ve found a lot more success when I focus on writing a scene or much smaller goal, like 100 words. I can write 100 words in 3-5 minutes. At that pace, it will take 1-2 hours to write 2000 words. However, blocking aside 1-2 hours seems hard, while blocking a few 30-minute chunks makes it a lot easier. With 30 minutes at lunch, 30 minutes before dinner, and 30 minutes before bed, there are one-and-a-half hours right there. I can usually find the extra time somewhere else (generally a little longer at night).

 

2. Focus on scenes, not word counts

Each of my scenes tends to run from 1000-3000 words. By focusing on completing a scene, I take the pressure off just filling out my word counts, and can focus on completing scenes. The word counts tend to flow after that.

That being said, if I’m stuck, I’ll fall back to just trying to write 100 words. Small goals are easy to achieve.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes four more specific strategies, on WriteAnon.

 

Written Off: Jennifer Weiner's Quest For Literary Respect

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This profile by Rebecca Mead originally appeared on The New Yorker on 1/13/14.

Early one morning in November, five hundred clinicians gathered at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott for the twenty-third annual Renfrew Center Foundation conference, devoted to the understanding and treatment of eating disorders. The keynote speaker, Jennifer Weiner, the best-selling novelist, was there to offer a personal perspective on weight issues, with a talk entitled “The F Word: On Growing Up Big, Speaking Out Loud and Raising Betty Friedan Girls in a Britney Spears World.”

The Renfrew foundation’s Web site described Weiner’s 2001 début, “Good in Bed,” now in its fifty-seventh printing, as “the first ‘chick-lit’ novel featuring a large protagonist.” The character, Cannie Shapiro, established the template for a number of Weiner’s subsequent heroines: clever, quippy young women whose dress size tends to be well into the double digits. Her characters navigate the perils presented by lacklustre boyfriends or disappointing husbands, slender mean girls, dysfunctional families, and self-esteem issues. “Nobody’s going to date me looking like this,” Cannie tells the tall, handsome, kindly doctor who interviews her for a weight-loss study. “I’m going to die alone, and my dog’s going to eat my face, and no one will find us until the smell seeps out under the door.” Despite their travails, Weiner’s heroines arrive at happy endings that defy cultural prejudices while upholding the implausible conventions of a Hollywood romantic comedy. (Cannie’s tall, handsome, kindly doctor falls madly in love with her.) Weiner’s second novel, “In Her Shoes,” was actually made into a romantic comedy, in 2005; it starred Toni Collette, as the brainy, full-figured heroine, and Cameron Diaz—featured prominently on movie posters—as her skinny, feckless sister.

Weiner, who is forty-three, was outfitted as if for a cocktail party, in a scarlet sleeveless dress and nude stilettos. Her makeup had been applied, before dawn, by a professional; her long, dark-brown hair was loose and shiny. She looked pretty and polished but approachable, like a co-host on “The View.” Weiner, who has a degree in English literature from Princeton, is cognizant of the expectations that attend a writer of commercial women’s fiction. “Handbags are important signifiers,” she told me. (Lately, she has leaned heavily on an orange Givenchy tote.) Her outfit projected confidence, but it also gave her an opportunity to reveal a winning vulnerability. After ascending the podium, she began, “Good morning, Renfrew Center clinicians and therapists. Or, as I have been affectionately referring to you in my head, the people I don’t need to wear Spanx for.”

 

Click here to read the full profile on The New Yorker.

 

Start Writing Your Novel Now

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This post by Lovelyn Bettison originally appeared on her blog on 12/6/13.

It’s come to my attention that a lot of people want to write a novel. It seems like most people think they’ve got a book in them, but for some reason they just haven’t gotten around to writing it.

There are a lot of excuses for not sitting down and actually getting to that novel you’ve always dreamed of writing, but this post isn’t about excuses. I don’t want to hear any of those. Many writers have gotten up a few hours earlier than usual to write in the morning before heading out for work. Many have burned the midnight oil after work to write the book they always dreamed of writing.

Walter Mosely wrote his novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, whilst working full time. I heard an interview with Toni Morrison in which she described handwriting The Bluest Eyes on a legal pad with her baby in her arms. If you really want to write a book you will find a way to make it happen. If it is important to you you’ll make time for it.

Here are some tips to get you started.

Make a commitment to write everyday. Writers write. You can’t call yourself a writer if you don’t. Give yourself an allotted amount of time, whatever you feel like you can set aside: an hour, thirty minutes. Whatever you feel like you can do is fine. Sit in front of your computer, with the internet off preferably, and write something. Write anything at first. This is just to get you used to writing.

Even if you only come up with a couple of sentences that’s fine.

 

Click here to read the full post on Lovelyn Bettison’s blog.

 

The Tipping Point (E-Commerce Version)

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This post by Jeff Jordan originally appeared on his site on 1/15/14.

The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to discount tremendously to drive sales. The other talked about how an enormous late surge in packages coming from e-commerce companies overwhelmed the capacity of UPS and, to a lesser extent, FedEx, and caused many of these packages to arrive after Christmas.

But, to me, these two stories are not at all separate, they simply reflect different sides of the same narrative: We’re in the midst of a profound structural shift from physical to digital retail.

The drivers of this shift are simple:

• Online retail has strong cost advantages over its offline counterparts and is rapidly taking share in many retail categories through better pricing, selection and, increasingly, service.

• These offline players have high operational leverage and many cannot withstand declining top-line revenue growth for long.

• The resulting bankruptcies of physical retailers remove competition for online players, further boosting their share gains.

So, how has this shift been playing out? Recent data suggests that it’s happening faster than I could have imagined.

The U.S. Census Bureau publishes what I consider to be the most accurate figure on e-commerce penetration in the U.S. It reports that e-commerce penetration of total retail sales in the U.S. was around eight percent in 2012. But, as I’ve blogged previously, this aggregate figure seriously underestimates the impact of e-commerce in large sectors of the retail landscape. Let’s unpeel the onion and look at the next level of reporting from the Census Bureau, where it segments the retail landscape into six large categories of goods. It’s at this level that things start getting more interesting:

 

Click here to read the full post (which includes charts) on Jeff Jordan’s site.

 

Does Digital Publishing Mean The Death Of The Author?

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This article by Richard Lea originally appeared on The Guardian UK’s Books Blog on 1/23/14.

We used to know what it took to be a writer – you had to publish a book. But electronic publishing is piling pressure on myths of the author’s life.

What’s the difference between making money out of books and writing books that people want to buy? Turns out it’s about 40% – if, that is, you believe this year’s Digital Book World (DBW) survey.

Only 20% of the 1,600 self-published authors surveyed, and just a quarter of the almost 800 writers with a traditional book deal, judged it “extremely important” to “make money writing books”. Shift the issue to publishing “a book that people will buy” and the figures leap to 56% and 60% respectively.

But of course, you say – this is literature we’re talking about. These authors have loftier concerns than the grubby business of making money. Art is their province. If they must consort with the commercial world to find an audience, then so be it. But heaven forfend they should be interested in something so base as raking in the cash.

Except, in the digital age this kind of logic just doesn’t wash. If all you’re interested in is finding an audience for your work, then electronic distribution allows you to find it without any connection to the marketplace at all. Write your masterpiece, stick it on your website, and sound the trumpets for the victory of Pallas Athene. Or, if what you’re really looking for is the grateful adulation of your adoring fans, stick it on Scribophile or WritersCafe and get ready to feel the love. These days the only reason for worrying about publishing “a book that people will buy” is to “make money writing books”.

 

Click here to read the full article on The Guardian UK’s Books Blog.

 

The Illusions of Traditional/Self Publishing & The Reality of Hybrid Publishing

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This post by Bob Mayer originally appeared on Write It Forward on 1/23/14.

There’s a lot of heated rhetoric regarding publishing being bandied about on-line lately. Some of it was generated by the CEO of Kensington putting himself out there with some posts that had a large backlash, but overall, people seem to be digging in and drawing lines.

These lines are more blurred than most acknowledge if we examine them carefully.

It would seem to break down with traditional publishing “vs” self-publishing. I’d like to point out where this isn’t the reality and also how Cool Gus deals with these issues as a ‘hybrid’ publisher with a focus on being agile and working as a unified team.

“We treat our authors so well. You need us!” This is the message that Kensington’s CEO recently stated on-line. I also just read an interview from the CEO of Random House/Penguin saying essentially the same thing. This should be amended to: “We treat our top 5% of authors so well.” I don’t know if these CEOs are simply out of touch, being BSed or what, but the vast majority of authors are treated as interchangeable parts at trad houses and even most agencies. Because the top authors are pretty much the only authors these CEOs interact with, they make the illogical leap that all their authors are treated exactly the same way. I’ve seen many current and former Kensington authors come out on various on-line mediums describing a less than great publishing experience, yet not a single author defend the CEO’s statements. I was published by Random House and sold over one million books under the Dell imprint. During my years there I received almost no marketing support and was essentially dumped as the market coalesced. It wasn’t personal. It was business. Reminds me of Denzel Washington’s character in Man on Fire: “It’s just business.”

“We own Author Solutions.” It would appear that RHP’s CEO does not understand the pure hatred for this company among authors. You want to make money off authors? You think that equals KDP? This goes to a deep misunderstanding about authors, especially those with experience.

The Death of the Midlist.

 

Click here to read the full post on Write It Forward.

 

Be Afraid

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This post by Andrew E. Kaufman originally appeared on The Crime Fiction Collective blog on 1/22/14.

Being a writer is like climbing the tallest peak in the world. We barely get to enjoy the victory, when someone straps us down, tears our shirts open, and tells the vultures to bring it on. Let’s face it: to be an artist is to be vulnerable. And perhaps a little unstable. We pour our souls onto the pages. We sweat. We cry. We scream a lot. We drink ridiculous quantities of coffee, but never enough to combat our emotional and physical exhaustion.

Not to mention, the brutal criticism, and really, there is no way to combat that. We read it, we cringe, and we may (possibly) throw some things (at least, I hear). After that, we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, taking what we can use, and throwing away the rest…that is, between the hysterical sobs, and guttural groans (also, of course, not a first hand experience). Other sides of our artistry are a bit less brutal and far more enjoyable. If we do it right, we get to create worlds and characters from nothing other than our hungry imaginations, then watch them flourish into amazing stories. Also if we do it right, we relish in the knowledge that our readers are enjoying them, and more importantly, feeling them. Of course, getting to that point is easier said than done.

In reaching that goal, my approach can be at times… a bit unconventional. Possibly insane. For me, writing a novel means feeling my way through the darkness and through my pages, essentially with no idea what the outcome will be. I don’t plan before I launch into my work. I write on instinct. As I do this, one persistent and nagging question pokes at me: Will this work?

 

Click here to read the full post on The Crime Fiction Collective blog.