Think

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

Teachers, Writers, Speakers: On Confidence & Owning Your True Authority

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This post, by Susan Piver, originally appeared on her blog on 12/19/13.

Recently I began working with a master coach to develop my public speaking chops. While watching a video together of a recent talk I gave, he pointed out to me every instance where I gave away my authority, whether through intonation or body language. It was eye-opening to say the least. “See how you’re rocking from foot to foot? That’s what teenagers do when they’re asking to borrow the car.” “Notice how your intonation goes up at the end of most sentences? It appears as if you are questioning yourself which actually causes the audience to question you.” And so on.

It was crazy and also embarrassing. I had never noticed these things about myself.

When planning a talk, I think about what I can offer that is useful and what words I might use to express my ideas. Throughout, I ride a roller coaster of self-doubt. Do I really have the right to teach? There are actual experts on this topic and I know I’m not one of them. What if a real expert is in the audience? What could I possibly add to this topic that hasn’t already been said more effectively by countless people? And so on. The thing is, I thought I was hiding all of this. Come to find out, I was not. The disconnect between verbal and non-verbal communication was palpable.

As he pointed all of this out to me, I realized that this was not the first time I had heard some version of, “Please own your authority.”

I remembered a time I submitted the first draft of a manuscript to a publisher which was sent back to me with the following note: “Susan, please delete all such phrases: ‘it seems this way to me, but it may not to you,’ or ‘this is my opinion; you may disagree,’ and ‘this is what I learned; you may find otherwise.’ Not only is it confusing to the reader, it is irritating.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s blog.

 

The Good And Bad In Chaotic eBook Pricing

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This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on Techdirt on 10/8/13.

For years we’ve discussed the ridiculousness of ebook pricing, where some publishers seem to think that sky high prices for ebooks (often higher than physical copies) make sense, despite the lack of printing, packaging, shipping and inventory costs. And, of course, we won’t even get into the question of the price fixing debacle. Art Brodsky recently wrote a fascinating piece over at Wired about how ebook pricing is an “abomination,” because it’s designed to price people out of reading. He points out that we should think more about ebooks like we think about apps, since that’s a much more direct comparison than “books.” And then he gets into a discussion of how publishers are going crazy with their library pricing:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.

Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Techdirt.

 

David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Your Writing Name

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This post, by David Farland, originally appeared on his site on 12/18/13.

I was asked recently to write an article about selecting a writing name. Many authors would never consider using a pseudonym. Their identity is intimately tied to their name, and they long to see it in print, even if it’s a name as silly as Ernest Lee Funklemeyer.

For me, a name is a brand. Choosing an author’s name is more like choosing the brand name for your new line of automobiles. Sorry, I don’t really get a thrill about seeing my name in print. Maybe I did twenty-five years ago, but it really wasn’t that important to me.

I use David Farland for my writing name, but I was raised as Dave Wolverton, and wrote my first dozen novels under that name. Why did I switch? There were a couple of reasons: When I wrote my third novel, I got a glowing review which advised people to “make sure to look on the bottom shelf at your bookstore, where Dave Wolverton’s novels are likely to be found. . .” My heart sank.

You see I had read an article a few years earlier, in which marketers for Campbell’s soup had found that 92% of all people would not bend over to pick up their favorite flavor of soup from the bottom shelf at a supermarket. People prefer to buy their goods at eye level. Which meant, of course, that no writer wants to be on the bottom shelf. By using the name Wolverton, I was losing a huge number of potential sales!

Immediately, I began investigating how hard it would be to change my writing name. I was already a bestseller in science fiction, hitting high on the science fiction bestseller lists, so I wasn’t sure that I wanted to change my name back in 1991.

When I began to write fantasy (which was my first love as a reader), I recognized that I had a second problem. Fantasy tends to sell better than science fiction, so I figured that sales would be more robust in the fantasy genre.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on David Farland’s site.

 

So Why is Your Marketing Failing?

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This post, by Pratik Dholakiya, originally appeared on Jeff Bullas’ site on 12/16/13.

Internet marketers everywhere seem to agree that if you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a future. They argue that if you have to pay for traffic to make money, you’re not just being wasteful, you really don’t understand how the social web works, or where marketing is headed in the years going forward.

Well, I’m going to respectfully disagree. If you ask me, if you want your business to have a future, one audience isn’t enough. The truth is, the most resilient businesses are going to need at least two audiences if they hope to make the most of limited resources to succeed. Maybe that is why your marketing is failing.

Let me explain.

Meet your two audiences

You don’t know it yet, but you actually already have two audiences. The problem is, you’re probably alienating at least one of them. Here’s what I’m talking about:

1. Core audience

These are the people who are completely obsessed with the topic in question. The live, eat, and breath the stuff you blog about. In fact, some of these people will know even more about the topic than you do, at least when it comes to certain aspects of it.

2. Mainstream audience

These people have little or no direct interest in your topic, but they might have some tangential interest in it. For the most part, the only thing they want to know is why any of this should matter to them, and if you can’t keep them entertained, they won’t be hanging around for long.

While your business won’t necessarily die without both of these audiences, let’s just say that without some appeal to both of them, your use of resources will be…less than optimal.

 

Brands that failed to reach both audiences

There’s certainly no shortage of brands or campaigns that failed because they failed to reach both audiences.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jeff Bullas’ site.

 

Successful Authors Are Outliers, Not Statistics

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 12/10/13.

Digital Book World has put out another survey about authors, indie authors, hybrid authors*, hobbits, wizards and drones.

While I applaud the effort, I find a lot of the data about authors essentially skewed, especially when it comes to those of us who make our living writing. Especially for those of us who’ve made our living writing for more than a year or two, ie those who’ve made a career writing. Which is about as rare as a hobbit in an orc bar. Unless it’s being served for dinner.

While I’m not a fan of Malcom Gladwell’s public condemnation of Amazon while still selling his books there (also Scott Turow), I accept that they are both highly paid indentured servants to their publishers who have no control over whether their books are sold at Amazon. Gladwell wrote a book introducing a concept called Outliers, which looks at the factors that lead to high levels of success (see, I link to the book on Amazon—please donate all sales to charity, Mr. Gladwell). I submit that any person who can make a decent career as a writer of fiction (ie a professional bullshitter) has achieved a high level of success in the world of publishing. It’s something I learned in Special Forces, who are almost all outliers.

So how are successful authors outliers?

Gladwell: “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.”

I do think we need all four; and while I know writers who’ve come from nothing and pushed all four to the extreme and have become successful, there are certainly other factors that Mr. Gladwell explains.

At Cool Gus one of our mottoes is: the best promotion is a good book, better promotion is more good books. Gladwell has a term called “Accumulative advantage”. He uses the example that most elite Canadian hockey players were born earlier in the year. What’s the connection? Since leagues are done by year, a kid born in January has almost a year of experience and growth over a kid born in December. Thus the earlier birth players seem to be the best. Thus they are treated as better—it’s a case where the rich get richer.

In publishing this means those of us who came out of traditional publishing with rights to some or all of our backlist have had a huge advantage.

 

Read the rest of the post on Write on the River.

 

Why Writers Must Self-Publish Their Books

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on his The Book Designer site on 12/2/13.

In yesterday’s New York Times there was an opinion piece by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Here’s a quote:

“Even highly gifted and relatively successful writers, artists and musicians generally are not able (to) earn a living from their talents. The very few who become superstars are very well rewarded. But almost all the others—poets, novelists, actors, singers, artists—must either have a partner whose income supports them or a ‘day job’ to pay the bills. Even writers who are regularly published by major houses or win major prizes cannot always live on their earnings.”
— New York Times, The Real Humanities Crisis

You know this is true as well as I do, and it speaks to several larger truths:

◾ the low regard most creative artists who are not “superstars” generally command in our society

◾ the lack of leverage most creatives have in dealing with corporations who license their work

◾ the disempowerment of writers who are not “bestsellers” and who, by and large, are poorly compensated for their work

Stable jobs with dependable income involve helping the wheels of commerce keep turning, or unavoidable occupations like road building and health care.

But try making a living as a poet, a writer of histories, a novelist, a short story writer, a playwright, or any kind of writer whose work isn’t essential to making a living, and you better not give up that day job.

We don’t need to comment on the values this reality expresses, but we do have to deal with the consequences.

Now, with all the new tools of publishing, we can take a bigger role in our own publishing careers than ever before.

 

Self-Publishing Today

Talking to authors—and especially authors who have already been published by big traditional publishers—you can see the excitement and anticipation when this subject comes up.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Book Designer.

 

Top Seven Reasons To Self-Publish

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This post, by Mari Selby of Selby Ink, was originally published on The San Francisco Book Review site on 12/5/13.

When Selby ink was founded 15 years ago publishing a book followed a routine process: You started by calling agents and editors who most likely told you to send them a query letter. Next step was usually a book proposal (if they were interested), plus a few sample chapters. Then the waiting game started, usually ending with disappointment. On the other hand, the option to self-publish was there, but it had a certain stigma…like your book wasn’t good enough for a “real publisher”. And eBooks were unknown!

When we see the sales figures for a self-published book like The Shack we realize that times have changed. Today self-publishing is not only popular, but often it’s the preferred publishing path of many respected authors. As long as your book is professionally produced, with an eye-catching cover and compelling content, you can directly compete with any bestselling author.

Thinking about publishing your book in the New Year? Here are my seven best reasons to self-publish your book:

1. Timing: Traditional publishers work on a long production cycle, they often plan a year to a year and a half—or even longer—to get a book out. As a self-publisher you can do it in a fraction of that time. It’s your material, your career move – you can take control of when you want to publish.

2. You Just Might Strike It Rich: Self-publishing offers the potential for huge profits. No longer do you have to be satisfied with the meager 5 to 15 percent royalty that commercial publishers dole out. When you use creativity, persistence, and sound business sense, money is there to be made. Most publishers require their authors to do their own promotion, why not self-publish and earn a 40 – 400% margin? If your book becomes a hit, publishers will come calling and give you the upper hand in negotiations.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The San Francisco Book Review site.

12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

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This post, by Jonathon Owen, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 11/20/13.

There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem — these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you start noticing some patterns. Inspired by a recent post titled “Grammar Police: Twelve Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes,” I decided to make a list of my own.

1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage. Many people who write about grammar seem to think that grammar means “any sort of rule of language, especially writing.” But strictly speaking, grammar refers to the structural rules of language, namely morphology (basically the way words are formed from roots and affixes), phonology (the system of sounds in a language), and syntax (the way phrases and clauses are formed from words). Most complaints about grammar are really about punctuation, spelling (such as problems with you’re/your and other homophone confusion) or usage (which is often about semantics). This post, for instance, spends two of its twelve points on commas and a third on quotation marks.

2. Treating style choices as rules. This article says that you should always use an Oxford (or serial) comma (the comma before and or or in a list) and that quotation marks should always follow commas and periods, but the latter is true only in most American styles (linguists often put the commas and periods outside quotes, and so do many non-American styles), and the former is only true of some American styles. I may prefer serial commas, but I’m not going to insist that everyone who doesn’t use them is making a mistake. It’s simply a matter of style, and style varies from one publisher to the next.

3. Ignoring register. There’s a time and a place for following the rules, but the writers of these lists typically treat English as though it had only one register: formal writing. They ignore the fact that following the rules in the wrong setting often sounds stuffy and stilted. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in casual conversation will make you sound like a pompous twit.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

 

Put Yourself into Your Writing

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his Glass Highway site on 10/10/13.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

That quote—or variations of it—has been attributed to the sportswriter Red Smith, among others. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, trying to determine whether the writer was (a) being funny, (b) over-dramatizing or (c) attempting to impart real wisdom. Recently, I’ve come to believe that C is the correct answer.

Good writing is about the mechanics. Great writing is about putting yourself into the words. Actors talk a lot about this—putting themselves into their character. I once asked a friend of mine who had studied method acting at the Actors Studio, “Do you actually become the character?” “No,” he said. That would mean I’m insane. Good point.

So, must writers become the characters we are writing about? No, but there are three things I believe to be essential if you want the reader to believe they exist.

You Must Understand
Without understanding, you’re doomed to writing thin, unbelievable characters. I should know—I’ve written enough of them. We all have. In screenplays, people always talk about a character’s backstory. Screenwriters spend a lot of time writing detailed histories of their characters, things like where they went to school, whether they have siblings, the kind of music they enjoy, etc.

Me, I don’t do that. I always start with someone I know or someone I’ve met. Sometimes, I create a composite. The point is, by honing in on a specific person, I’ve already got my backstory. To me, it’s a waste of time to create a fake history when there are so many real, interesting people in the world. And this is not say that I don’t embellish.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Glass Highway.

 

Creating A Discussion Guide For Your Book

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This post, by Lisa Lickel, originally appeared on the AuthorCulture site on 12/9/13.

Love em, Hate em, want them in the back of the book or not—discussion questions do add a new dimension to your work.

I’ve had publishers tell me they don’t want them in the book, and know of some publishers that require questions. I’ve put them in one of my books, and have designed them for several of my books as well as for other books in my book club when I’ve been the discussion leader.

Why questions? Questions are good for personal reader reflection, but especially for a group discussion guide. I think that questions in the back of the book make your work look serious. Readers can skip them if they want. A discussion guide may mean inclusion in book clubs. Why do I want book clubs to read my book? First of all, these questions give me a place to do some explaining that I can’t inside the text; it also gives me an opportunity to point out my subtle genius points that may have been, sadly, overlooked. Think of it like watching the TV show Lost with JJ’s subtexts. Secondly, sales, library sales and borrows, word of mouth, my friends. Possible author face time. Feedback. Book clubs are always looking for fodder, and while it’s annoyingly true they tend to choose NYT bestsellers, there’s no reason to think yours can’t make a list or two.

The larger publishers like Random House often have author pages with all kinds of goodies-author interviews and background for the books, and discussion questions. Read some of them for some pointers.

ReadingGroupGuides website is one of the top ones to go to for great discussion questions, but they’ve gone from a $100 to $20 fee to have your material placed there. However, if you can get in on other readers’ group blogs, and especially GoodReads, an Internet search will bring up your name and book. I’ve placed questions on GoodReads for my books. Don’t forget to put them on your own site, Amazon and BN author pages and forums.

How to devise your questions for either fiction or non?

Foremost, never make them yes or no questions, or lead to obvious answers. If the questions are in the book, you can refer to page number, such as, “On page 142 Cala Lily has a breakthrough. What is it and how did it affect her feelings toward Reed?” However, it’s best not to be that specific due to readers having different versions.

How many questions should you write?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on AuthorCulture.

 

Can Perseverance Be Taught?

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This post, by Angela Duckworth, originally appeared on Big Questions Online on 8/5/13. Since perseverance is definitely a requirement for success as an author, whether indie or mainstream, the post raises a question that’s pertinent to most of us.

Can perseverance be taught? As a psychologist who studies achievement, I am asked this question more frequently than any other.

This question is motivated by two everyday intuitions, both of which have been confirmed in empirical research: First, some people are, in general, more persistent and passionate about long-term goals. Compared to their less gritty peers, these individuals are more resilient in the face of adversity, bouncing back after failure and disappointment and otherwise staying the course even when progress is not obvious. Second, grit predicts success. Grit is not the only determinant of success – opportunity and talent matter, too. But on average, grittier individuals are more successful than others, particularly in very challenging situations.

So, can we intentionally cultivate grit in our children, in our employees, in ourselves? Relative to many other scholarly traditions, the science of behavior change is in its infancy. Still, we know enough, I think, to answer that question in the affirmative. Can perseverance be taught? Yes. Do we know how? More and more – though, of course, there is much to be discovered.

As a starting point, we should acknowledge the empirical fact that perseverance, like extraversion, intelligence, and every other trait psychologists measure and study, is a function of both genes (nature) and experience (nurture). So, while science is a very long way from identifying the specific genes that contribute to individual differences in perseverance, we know that each of us comes into the world with proclivities, already different from one another based on the DNA we inherited from our mothers and fathers. Of course, the very same research also tells us that whatever our genetic endowments, our particular life experiences – what we see and hear, how we are treated by others, which of our actions is rewarded or punished – nudge us closer to one end of the perseverance spectrum or the other.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Big Questions Online.

 

The Cardinal Sin No Writer Should Ever Commit

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This post, by Jody Hedlund, originally appeared on her blog on 11/26/13.

This post contains SPOILERS for the newly released book Allegiant by Veronica Roth. So if you’re planning to read the book and don’t want to know what happens, then click off this post and come back after you’ve finished the book!

I already made the mistake on Twitter of blabbering about Allegiant with no thought to the those who might not want to know what happens. I won’t make the same mistake here! So again, please don’t read further if you want to avoid a MAJOR spoiler.

I read the first two books in the popular dystopian Divergent series this past year. But they didn’t wow me, especially the second book, Insurgent, which I thought was rather slow and confusing at times.

But my daughter LOVED both. So she kept me well informed when the countdown began for the third book’s release. When the big day came, she asked me to buy it for the Kindle since the wait for it at the library was like a million years long.

I clicked over to Amazon to check on price for the Kindle and the audio versions. And to my utter bafflement, the book had less than three stars as the overall rating. Of course, I was even more astonished to see that the one star reviews completely outnumbered the five.

As I started browsing to see why the book had garnered so many one stars, I read things like:

“Possibly the Worst Trilogy Ending I’ve Ever Read” and “Horrible Just Horrible!!” and “Outraged”

After seeing those headings, I had to read the reviews. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know why readers hated this book!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

The number ONE reason why readers hated the book was because in the end, Roth KILLS OFF her main character. Yes, the heroine DIES.

Over and over in the reviews readers say they felt betrayed by Roth, that now they wish they hadn’t read any of the books in the series, that they won’t read them again or go see the movies.

The bottom line is that readers are crushed. They invested time and money into the books. More importantly they invested emotional energy into falling in love with the heroine. And after waiting with such expectancy for the series to come to a satisfying conclusion, they are instead left feeling empty and hopeless.

After reading the reviews, I now have absolutely NO desire to read the last book. In fact, I now felt like I wasted my time reading the first two. So even though I haven’t read Allegiant, I can completely relate with what readers are saying about it.

As I analyzed the overall reader reaction (along with my personal response), I quickly realized that Roth committed a Cardinal Sin that no writer should ever commit. And that’s this: Don’t kill your main character.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jody Hedlund’s blog.

 

How To Grab, Delight Or Shock Your Readers Right From The Start

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This post, by Alan Rinzler, originally appeared on his The Book Deal: An Inside View of Publishing site on 10/8/13.

“Every time mama came down on that shabby floor, the bullet lodged in my stomach felt like a hot poker.”

Claude Brown and I hunted through his manuscript for two days to find that moment and move it to the opening of his classic Harlem memoir Manchild in the Promised Land.

We wanted to detail the true grit of getting shot at age 13 while dealing drugs at a fish and chips joint, and to include the emotional drama of his mother jumping up and down in despair. We added the hot poker detail to scorch the reader’s sense of sight, sound, and visceral pain. We hoped this start-up moment would persuade them to buy the book. And if 4 million copies sold in 14 languages is hard evidence, something must have worked.

 

The importance of first pages

The first pages of your story create an instant impression of its quality and value. Agents, acquisition editors, reviewers and potential buyers standing in a store or scanning the First Pages feature on Amazon – are all going to keep reading or skip to the next candidate, depending on how they respond to your opening.

As a developmental editor, I often work with authors to reconstruct, revise, and create completely new openings. It’s a challenge editors face often, and it’s one of the most essential. Here are some of the main issues and how to solve them.

 

How to begin your book

The first sentence of your book must have compelling emotional energy, whether it’s the magnetism of the narrative voice, the wit of the smart dialogue, or the evocative description of the dramatic environment.

But an opening to a story is more than just one sentence, no matter how brilliant. That’s only the first step in getting the reader’s attention. Next you need to develop the whole scene.

 

Four techniques for creating a great opening

1. Start with a moment that changes everything

As the author, you know how the story will evolve, but your reader doesn’t. Therefore, you can write an opening that throws everything up in the air, creating a whole new universe of anticipation in the reader’s imagination.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Book Deal.

 

25 Things Every Indie Author Should Know

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This post, by Nenia Campbell, originally appeared on her Goodreads blog on 1/13/13.

1. If you are vending inferior goods, don’t be surprised if you don’t have any takers. You wouldn’t buy moldy food or a shirt that’s falling apart, right?

2. Do set your book at a reasonable price. Cheaper is probably better. People are more willing to branch out and experiment if the cost to them is low.

3. Your readers are not walking bags of money. Don’t treat them as if they are. They are people with thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and their respect and interest must be won, not wrested.

4. Big egos are lethal. If you are your own worst critic, nothing anyone says will bother you and advice will be easier to stomach if you admit to yourself that you are not perfect.

5. What happens on the internet does not stay on the internet. Anything you say can and will be held against you. Don’t be a jerk. Not just because you’ll inevitably get caught, but also because it’s just not professional.

6. Don’t take your readers for granted. Having a steady following doesn’t mean people won’t notice when you let your writing go.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Nenia Campbell’s Goodreads blog.

 

Kindle Singles and the Future of Ebooks

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This post, by Joe Wikert, originally appeared on his Digital Content Strategies blog on 10/21/13.

“Compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.” That’s Amazon’s tagline for their popular Kindle Singles program. And while Singles hasn’t exactly been a major industry disruptor I believe it lays the foundation for some of the bigger, bolder initiatives Amazon is planning for the future. I also believe it’s a model that will become much more common over time.

The formula looks like this:

1.End the practice of artificially puffing up content

The greatest aspect of Kindle Singles is, of course, their short length. The first one I read was a Single about media and I remember thinking how a typical business book editor would have asked the author to turn this 30-page gem into a bloated 300-page mess. It happens all the time and it’s a function of both physical shelf presence and perceived value. In the ebook world there’s suddenly no physical bookshelf an individual title has to have a spine presence on. Now we just need to stop equating “shorter” with “cheaper”…more on that in a moment.

2.Attention spans are shrinking

Face it. With very few exceptions you’re probably thrilled to read all this short-form content that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Blogs, no matter what they’re called, are very popular. Then came Twitter with its 140-character bursts of information. Let’s also not forget about all the other terrific short-form content services like Byliner that we’ve grown to love. Shortened content is also why The Week is such a popular magazine. Kindle Singles is just tapping into our desire to find the Cliff’s Notes on everything so that we can quickly read it and move on.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Digital Content Strategies.