Write

Articles about craft.

There Is No Truth

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I now know why I don’t enjoy reading a lot of fiction unless it’s mindnumbingly brilliant and utterly unconventional: third-person narration. It’s the same reason that most people enjoy reading fiction, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. Who is this narrator? How do they know everything going on? Why is the reader automatically permitted to know everything about everyone? That’s why most people like the third-person narrative stories–because it’s the only time in their life that they are allowed to know everything, and knowledge is power.

Maybe that’s what people say when it’s an escape. I don’t find reading fiction a big escape, rather, I watch movies for escape. With film it is implicit that the viewer doesn’t *necessarily* see everything. While the voyeuristic camera angles (featured and so loved by Hitchcock and his fans) give the viewer a peek into knowing all–and holding power over all–we have to know fundamentally that the zombie may be standing right behind you, even though you are furtively looking into your neighbor’s window.

Perspective is one of the fulcrums of any artwork: film, literature, visual arts, performing arts. Enabling the spectator to see through the artist’s eyes is a transparent act, in my opinion. Many fiction writers do everything they can to mask that act, though, and for me, it is asking the reader to suspend disbelief. We all know that in writing that isn’t seamlessly brilliant, an imperfect author will make the cardinal mistake of narrating the intentions of the character, without writing the character well enough in action to realize those intentions: "He felt strongly about his commitment to her, and so he wanted to do everything he could to show her how much he loved her." Right, that’s lame, we know. But even when this type of passage is expressed through action and/or dialogue, I still don’t buy it.

Writing "in voice" is what many call it, and it presents its own challenges because the writer must strictly adhere to each character’s voice, if writing in multiple perspectives throughout a story. Hopefully I achieved that in Getting the Old Gang Back Together. Right now I’m working on a deconstruction of Harold and the Purple Crayon where the protagonist writes the live story and narrates the book at the same time. These are not exactly what I would call experimental pieces since this approach has no doubt been used before; so maybe it’s just a different camp in the writing community. One experiment I may try–and I may be able to achieve this in Harold–is to give a voice to the third-person narrator while establishing a precedent for the narrator to be telling the story.

What is my problem, you’re asking? I don’t know, and I’m not even sure there is a problem. My response as a writer is to create works in which the pivotal characters narrate from their respective perspectives. For some readers, I recognize that this is also a suspension of disbelief. They are now being asked to reconcile why these characters are telling the story, and to whom.

To me, it’s a more realistic portrayal of events though because we know that there is no truth in the world. Right? There is no truth. Perception of the truth is as close as we can get to truth. As a writer, I want to bring my readers on that journey, so that they, too, realize, that even in fiction there is no truth and that each character–even the heroic protagonist–brings bias. So maybe once the reader is subjected to that bias, they can face their own bias. Just maybe.

Thanks for reading.
~ jenn

This is a cross-posting from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog.

Because I Can

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I write because I can.

I can because I got lucky. I was born in a family that values the written word, in a town that values writing, in a state that values literacy, in a country that was founded on a document. Every cultural break a writer can get, I got, save being born rich. I didn’t choose where I was born and I didn’t value these things when I was young, but they stood as open doors and affected me greatly. I got lucky and I never forget it.

I write because I can.

I can because I live in a free country. I have the right to say what I think, even if you disagree. Even if everyone disagrees. I know all people do not have this right. I know there are countries where writers cannot be true to their reality and imagination. I do not take my freedom for granted.

I write because I can.

I can because I protected the writer in me from every teacher who tried to kill it. I loved writing when I was young, as long as I was allowed to write the way I wanted to write. I hated writing when someone told me how to write. I flunked a class in junior high rather than turn in a five-page science paper. You laugh, but it’s the truth. I never got over the idea that a thesis statement was redundant. I never got past the certainty that the lede in a newspaper article belonged at the end. I knew these things were wrong, instinctively. You don’t start a murder mystery by announcing that the butler did it.

I write because I can.

I can because I tried everything else first. I looked at every job, every career — anything to avoid writing, because I knew I loved it and I knew how hard it would be to care. I tried the blue-collar life. I tried nine to five. I went to college and pretended I was a psychology major. I took a long look at philosophy, even though I knew there was more to life than logic and reason. I took a lot of classes, but I never clicked with any subject the way I clicked with the ideas and words patiently waiting to get out of my head. I was those words.

I write because I can.

I can because every time I look at a blank page I’m seduced by the possibilities. I have never feared a blank page in my life. I can’t wait to gather small strands of nothing until they begin to talk to each other and fuse and give off heat. I see such connections the way other people see contrails in the sky and skid marks on the street.. They are as plain to me. I write them down because I think others would like to see them, too.

I write because I can.

I can because I trust myself. I don’t do things that undermine my own confidence. I try to eat well. I exercise. I am conscious of how fragile writing is, and I try to protect my writing by taking care of the writer I am. Life intrudes, yes. But I’m not sabotaging myself. I know I will meet my deadlines. I may pound my head on my desk from time to time, but that’s the way some stories are. Some births are easy, some are hell.

I write because I can.

I can because there is nothing else. I don’t have questions about what I should have done with my life. I don’t have regrets. I don’t ever wonder if I made the right choice. I know I made the right choice. Long before my peers settled on a career I knew there was nothing for me but writing. I knew there would be no road-not-taken. Frustrations, sure, I’ve got plenty. But I wouldn’t trade the gifts I was born with for the crosses I bear.

I write because I can.

I can because I am still alive. Whatever your beliefs about an afterlife, you only get so many years to write. If you want to write and you don’t write then you blew it. I’m trying not to blow it. I don’t want to die thinking I missed my chance. Existentialism is a big word for taking advantage of the life you have. Take advantage of the life you have.

Write. Because you can.

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk site.

How To Be Your Own Best Editor: Part II

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Editor’s Note: With this post, M. Louisa Locke continues her series on self-editing and joins Publetariat as a regular Contributor. 

This is the second post about how I prepared my manuscript, Maids of Misfortune, for self-publication. In the first post I outlined the steps I took to develop the skills necessary to be my own best editor.

As I look back at this previous post I feel it is only fair to mention that those editing skills were already fairly well developed–as a result of getting a doctorate in history that required numerous rewritings of a 400 page dissertation and over thirty years of correcting student’s essays.

This post will look at the steps I took next to replace the editorial input I would have gotten if my manuscript had been accepted by a traditional publishing house. See earlier posts on Why I Decided to Self-Publish for why I didn’t submit the manuscript to an agent or the editor of a small press at this point.

It was June of 2009. I had a manuscript that had, over the years, been written and rewritten, as well as read and commented on by my writers group and a number of agents and editors. It was time for me to do the job of a developmental editor.

“A developmental editor works with a writer to improve the basic concept of the book, the way it’s focused and structured, the style and attitude of the narrative voice, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. In a non-fiction book they’ll help clarify and organize the ideas and information. In a novel, they’ll work on the plot, characterizations, dialogue, visual description, and literary style. It’s important to distinguish developmental editors from copy editors, who take a manuscript that has already been developed and correct the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and in some cases fact-checking.”  – AlanRinzler in Choosing a freelance editor

With all the rules of writing now refreshed in my memory, and all the comments that previous readers of the manuscript had made in front of me, as my own best editor I determined that I had four main tasks.

  1. Shorten the manuscript.
  2. Undo the effects of an earlier rewrite.
  3. Improve the romantic tension between the main protagonists
  4. Increase suspense. (library scene, each chapter end with hook, and better development of red herrings)

Task One: Shorten the manuscript

My manuscript was 119,000 words long at this point, and I knew from my reading about writing and my critical look at my favorite mysteries that this was too long for my particular genre (historical mystery in the cozy style.) Therefore, one of the major editing tasks I had was to shorten the manuscript.

As anyone who has bothered to read any of my blog posts knows-I am a wordy writer. I remember one of the first comments a reader of an earlier version of the manuscript made was that it sounded like something written in the nineteenth century. Not surprising, considering I spent nearly four years reading nineteenth century primary sources for my dissertation. I didn’t want to lose that flavor. I had, after all, written a novel set in 1879 San Francisco. But I knew that modern readers of mysteries expect a certain briskness to their narratives.

I first outlined the book I had written, breaking it up into 10 acts. For each act, I listed the existing chapters with brief descriptions of the action in each scene. I found that my acts ranged from 20 pages to 38 each, and my chapters ranged from 3 pages to 10 pages. My goal became to make the chapters more uniform in length and shorter over all.

In some cases this meant dividing chapters up when there was a logical break. In other cases I simply deleted large swaths of text (cutting out whole scenes or sections of dialog if they didn’t further the action). I also ruthlessly pruned historical detail if I felt it was there for no other reason beyond a desire to prove my historical expertise. (I hope to write a whole post on this in the future.)

I then went through each chapter, line by line, looking for unnecessary words. “I have a tendency to use the dreaded adverb,” the author ruefully admits. By the end most of my chapters were (in traditional manuscript formatting) 3-5 pages long and I had shortened the manuscript to 107,000 words. I had successfully gotten rid of 12,000 words or 9.9% of the manuscript. This was gratifyingly close the 10% that Stephen King, in his book, On Writing, recommends cutting when rewriting a draft.

Task Two: Undo an earlier rewrite

My first task was made more difficult by my second. In 2004, an agent who was considering my book asked me to rewrite the novel (written in the third person) by shifting from the dual perspectives of my primary protagonist, Annie Fuller, and my secondary protagonist, Nate Dawson, to the single perspective of Annie Fuller. (The details of this can be found in my post Why I Decided to Self-Publish: Taken for a Ride).

I had always felt that this change slowed down the pace of the narrative and weakened the development of the relationship between the two characters (see tasks number three and four!) I knew I wanted to go back to the multiple perspectives in my new version. However, this entailed not just rewriting two chapters but writing four entirely new chapters from Nate’s point of view–lengthening not shortening the overall word count.

However, as I hoped, when I no longer had to have Nate tell Annie in detail about all the things he had witnessed or observed or said it enlivened the dialog between them considerably.

This also helped me in my third task.

Task Three: Improve the romantic tension between the two protagonists

Maids of Misfortune is rooted in two distinct romantic traditions. The first is the tradition that can be found in the Harriet Vane-Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy Sayers, where two protagonists develop a romantic attachment as they solve a series of crimes-often over several books. The second tradition comes from the light, romantic comedy of Georgette Heyer’s regency romances. I found that it is not always easy to meld these two traditions. Some of my first beta readers felt that there was altogether too much romance for a mystery novel, while others felt that there was not enough sex for a romance novel. I knew that my novel was first and foremost a mystery, and so one of my tasks in this final edit was to ensure that the developing romance didn’t take away from the tension of the mystery.

Yet, I also wanted those readers who liked romance to feel completely satisfied by the romantic arc of the story, and I wanted them to be invested in finding out what happened to the two protagonists in subsequent books. To this end I adhered to the old adage, less is more.

I had liberally used one of the standard devices for creating romantic tension- a series of arguments between the hero and heroine. But one of my most thoughtful readers had pointed out that there was a kind of repetitive nature to these arguments. I now went through these scenes, one by one, cutting out any scene or even bit of dialog that repeated points that one of the characters had made in an earlier scene. This permitted the nature of the relationship between the two protagonists to build and deepen, not repeat. It also removed a few more words from the total!

Additionally, I worked to make the sexual tension that underlay the romance more subtle, again—less is more. This required rewriting anything that felt like a romantic cliché-but also remaining true to the historical period (late Victorian) where the early dance of courtship within the middle classes was characterized by restraint, not excess.

Task Four: Increase suspense

The editing I did to achieve my first tasks went a long way to helping me achieve this last one.

The new shorter chapters, tighter dialog, and sparer language kept up the pace, which in turn increased the tension.

I also paid attention to comments from my writer’s group that the series of scenes where my protagonist snuck around a house at night were oddly lacking in suspense. I discovered that the whole time she was snooping, I had her ruminating about her feelings and speculating about things that had happened earlier in the day. Ho hum! I rewrote these scenes to focus on the present, describing what she saw, smelled, and heard while she was groping about in the dark, which produced a much greater sense of danger.

Finally, I checked every chapter ending, looking for ways to hook the reader into turning the page to the next chapter. I was amazed how often I had undercut what was a perfectly good chapter climax with some extraneous bit of dialog or action. Gleefully, I cut some more words from my total count, while ratcheting up the suspense.

One of the most consistent compliments I have gotten from people who have read the published book is how fast paced and exciting it is to read.

Conclusion:

When I was done editing Maids of Misfortune, for the first time in its long history, I was confident that it was as well-written as any mystery produced through the traditional publishing process. Now I just had to make sure it was sufficiently copy edited, so that minor errors (although found ever more frequently in traditionally published books) wouldn’t cause a reader to feel it had been unprofessionally produced. But copyediting, I knew, would require more than a single eye, and I assembled my own editorial board to provide this function. This will be the subject of my final post on being my own best editor.

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor blog.

Me Busy?

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Did I say I was ready for spring to get here? I think I should be careful what I wish for. I was looking at an Amish website awhile back and saw the cook columnist had taken the month off because she needed to help the family with home butchering. I know from my childhood that it’s a big job to process a beef or hog by canning and preserving all the meat. Also, I know something about home butchering today, but I’m lucky to have plenty of freezer space.

As my week has turned hectic and my Tuesday post date came and went, I wondered how I was going to squeeze this post in this week. Did I have any excuses to measure up to the Amish cook’s? First of all, we are making many trips out to the barn to check for new babies (lambs and kid goats). I had been going to bottle feed two lambs four times a day. I cut my trips down to three Monday so I didn’t have the bedtime feeding. A sister- in- law had surgery last week. I offered to stay with her from 1 to 10 while my husband’s brother is at work. My husband now does the dinner time bottle feeding and watches the mothers after I leave. Yesterday morning, I had a scheduled appointment at the nursing home, I used to work at, to take a lamb and baby goat in for the residents to see. I was asked several times what I do to keep busy now that I’m retired. I repeated much the same as this post. The replies were it didn’t sound like I retired. After the visit, it was back home by noon, fix lunch, feed babies, and go help the sister-in-law, come home, change into chore clothes, go to barn and help new mother and babies.

With all that the exciting news is I stopped at the post office Monday and Tuesday morning with a box full of new books to send buyers. So there was packaging and email buyers those mornings. I enjoy hearing from new buyers and returned buyers that have become old friend, email pen pals in the last few years because they buy my books. My latest Amish book is the second in the Nurse Hal Among The Amish series – The Rainbow’s End- if you want to look for it on Amazon or ebay.

Now I promised you an excerpt from my Amazing Gracie Mystery Series – The Chance Of A Sparrow. So here is Gracie Evan trying to cope with spring fever and suddenly her prayer comes true. Oh by the way, this book and the other four in the mystery series are sold on Amazon and ebay.

Tightening her grip on the railing, Gracie climbed the church steps. In the quiet, her black, high topped shoes made a hollow tapping sound. She opened one of the double doors. The groan from the hinges echoed through the empty building, reinforcing her despair. Persistent irritation with everyone and everything that she had no power to change welled up in her.

Gracie shut the door behind her as easy as she could and proceeded up the aisle. Normally, she stayed toward the back during the service, but this time she had the whole church to herself. Best time to come when she didn’t have to worry about the greeters and hand shakers getting in her way. Gracie marched down the aisle past the slick, dark pews and plopped down in the front row. That was as close as she could get. She intended to have a serious talk with God now that she had made up her mind to do so. Since he hadn’t been paying much attention to her concerns lately, she wondered if it was because he had become hard of hearing over the years. She sympathized with him. If she felt old, think how old God must feel.

Gracie twisted to face the simple, unadorned cross above the pulpit. She smoothed her

braids, then clasped her hands together and licked her lips. Inhaling deeply, she began, "God, I’ve had plenty of time to give some thought to how things work in life. Don’t mean to complain, mind you." She paused a minute. It occurred to her she should be truthful. After all, this was God she was talking to, and she figured he pretty much knew what she had on her mind before she did even. "Well, that’s not exactly right. I do mean to complain. That’s why I’m here. In the short time it took you, I think you did a wondrous job creating the world and all the creatures, but seems to me, you might have gotten in something of a hurry when you made them all in seven days. For instance, maybe you should have taken just a little more time to think about some way to improve on humans. Take sparrows. Lord, did you ever stop to think sparrows get a chance to have two families a year? That’s ever year, mind you, but humans only get one chance in their life time. Take me. All my family is gone now, and I didn’t choose to marry and have younguns. Now that’s not your fault. I made the choice to say no when Millard Sokal ask me all those years ago, but now I’m sitting in a rest home with no family, wasting away the last of my days. Oh, I know there’s not much you can do about it now that you have everything created, but I just wish you’d have thought to give us lonesome human beings the chance of the sparrows. Well, that’s all I got to say on the subject. Just wanted to get what I was thinking off my chest. Thank you for listening God. Amen."

The rest home’s front screen door clattered shut, echoing down the entry hall and into the library. "Where you at Molly?"

Molly Lang stopped writing. She knew from the sound of Orie’s voice that something had him excited. She dropped her pen in the cobalt, ink well on the writing table and combed her fingers through her honey shaded hair before she called, "In the library."

Her hazel eyes twinkled when she smiled at her tall, dark haired husband as he burst through the door. He was definitely easy to look at, striding hurriedly across the room. "Molly, I have something to tell you."

"What are you doing home this time of morning? Is everything all right at the farm?"

"Yes, everything’s fine." Orie yanked the chair across from Molly out from the table and plopped down. "You know how mopey Miss Gracie’s been lately?"

Molly furrowed her eyebrows together. "Yes. The poor dear. I’m really worried about her. She hasn’t eaten well for days. She’s beginning to look thin."

Orie shook his head. "Undeniably the worse case of spring fever I’ve ever seen, but I have an idea how we can perk her up."

Molly suddenly straightened in her chair. "By the way, speaking of spring, could you bring home a wagon load of straw to use under the rug in the parlor? It’s time to take the old up and put down new."

"Yes, yes, I can do that. Molly, you want to hear what I have to say or not?" Orie asked impatiently.

Trying to look serious, Molly folded her hands in her lap, giving him her complete attention. "All right. Tell me your news."

"This morning on the way to the farm, Thaddeus Sawyer stopped me. You know, the man that rents Miss Gracie’s farm, Three Oaks. Seems he needs someone to stay at his place to keep an eye on it for about a month. He wanted to know if I knew anyone he could ask. Right away I thought of Miss Gracie."

"Oh, Orie, I don’t know. Miss Gracie? All the way out there by herself," groaned Molly.

Orie shook his head sideways. "It wouldn’t be all that bad. I go by there every day to the farm so I could check on her. I could pick her up on Sundays and bring her in for church. Maybe I could even talk our neighbor, Millard Sokal, into looking in on her, too."

"Would Mr. Sokal want to do that?"

"We’ve helped each other farm for years. I’m sure he would do this as a favor to me,"

assured Orie. "I think Miss Gracie would perk up if she had the chance to get out in the country again."

Molly worried, "But, Orie, she couldn’t do farm work anymore."

"Thaddeus said all she’d have to do is milk twice a day and gather the eggs. I think it would do her good to go home for awhile. Work the spring fever out of her system," Orie pleaded.

Lessons Learned From TOC: Don't Be A Jerk

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Don’t believe what you hear about New Yorkers being rude. During the four days I was there for the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference [in 2009], only two people were rude to me. One was a woman who sat next to me during a showing of the musical Billy Elliot. The other was an author in attendance at the conference. I’ve blurred the details in relating my experience with the author here, but there’s still an important lesson to be learned from it.

I’d long been a fan of this author and a regular follower of her blog and online columns for various publications, and had long pondered a specific passage in one of her books. Seeing her at the conference, I figured this was my chance to ask her for further clarification directly. Her response was curt. She tersely said I’d completely misunderstood the passage and rather than indulge me with further explanation, directed me back to her site. Not surprisingly, my impression of this author has changed entirely, for the worse, and my new, negative impression will undoubtedly color my opinion of all her work in the future.

In fairness to this multi-published, big-name author, it must be said that she probably receives queries like mine all the time and is sick and tired of having to answer the same questions from the boneheaded public over and over again. However, in fairness to the boneheaded public, it must be said that we pay her bills and it is our desire to read and understand her work that allows this author to maintain her lifestyle and vaunted status. While I sell respectable numbers of books and get tens of thousands of hits on my various websites each month, I’m a relatively smalltime operator in the big scheme of publishing. Even so, I cared enough about this author’s work to buy it and try to absorb it, and I think that’s reason enough to deserve a modicum of respect from the author.

The author essentially made me regret having posed my question to her, and by extension, having spent the money and time I’d invested in her work to date. I was left to slink away in quiet embarrassment as other, better-known conference attendees swooped in and were granted a much warmer welcome by the author. What could I say? "Gee, sorry to show interest in your work, I’ll try not to do it again."

As an author, you should count yourself lucky to have each and every fan, and treat every one of them with the same level of respect and interest you would show to the most famous and influential person you can imagine. In the general sense it’s just plain good manners, but in the marketing sense it’s critical.

You may think a bumpkin housewife who accosts you to ask the most lamebrained question about your work you can imagine isn’t worth your time because she’s just a lamebrained, bumpkin housewife, but you’re wrong. That housewife buys books, belongs to book clubs, church groups and the PTA, and comes from a large circle of family and friends in her community. Whatever she tells her circle about you is something that circle will repeat to their circles, among whom are sure to be some bloggers and influential voices—six degrees of separation and all that.

Each contact with a reader is an opportunity to make a good impression, reinforce an already good impression, or spread bad press on your own behalf. No matter how tired, frustrated or annoyed you may be feeling on the inside, paste on a smile and show your audience some respect.

This is a reprint from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

7 Reasons Not to Self-Publish—Is This You?

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Yesterday the publisher services company Lulu.com announced that John Edgar Wideman, two-time winner of the Faulkner Award for fiction, would be publishing his new collection of short stories, Briefs, Stories for the Palm of the Mind, in conjunction with Lulu’s new VIP program. Wideman has been published for years by Houghton Mifflin, according to the report in Publisher’s Weekly.

This was notable, although Wideman may just be the first of many as self-publishing gradually loses its stigma and is seen as simply another path to publication, and for many people, a superior one to the traditional publishing route.

Here’s part of what he said in a press release issued by Lulu:

Wideman decided against a traditional publishing contract — and royalty advance — for Briefs because he wanted more control over the publishing process and to develop a more direct connection with his readers. He also wanted to experiment at a time when the publishing industry is undergoing more revolution than evolution. . . . I like the idea of being in charge. I have more control over what happens to my book. And I have more control over whom I reach.

I’ve often heard other self-publishers voice the exact same sentiment, although few had a royalty to turn down. But there are also echoes in Wideman’s statement of the move to what you might call author self-empowerment. When publishers rely on authors for marketing plans, platform building, and finding their own community of readers, they inadvertently also pass a great deal of power over to the author at the same time.

Self-publishers have traditionally grasped for this power directly. Before the internet, self-publishers lived by direct mail, and the direct selling that happens on the internet today owes a great deal to what direct marketers have learned over the last 50 years in other media.

But the growth of self-publishing as an accepted path to publication, aided by authors like John Edgar Wideman, is not what this article is about. No, this article is about you.

You Know Who You Are

Wideman found compelling reasons to self-publish his book, based on an informed and pretty astute reckoning of where publishing is at the moment.

But, like anyone connected to book publishing, I often hear the exact opposite from people who buttonhole me and start telling me about the book they have “in their desk drawer” or “packed up in the attic” or “in a big box under my bed.” These stories are amazingly common.

A woman dreamed of writing a book, spent months working on it, but never got any further. Or a man, getting up early for years, completes a manuscript but just prints a few copies to give to friends. Why?

Because they have found many reasons to not self-publish. Look, most authors are never going to get a contract offer from a big—or small—publishing house. The demand for publishing far outstrips the supply of big-publishing company openings for books. That’s what’s caused the meteoric rise of self-publishing, once digital printing and print on demand distribution removed the monetary risk of getting into print.

So what obstacles are left? Why haven’t these writers become authors, fulfilled their dream of publication, and found their readership?

Here are the top reasons I’ve identified why you might decide not to self-publish:

  1. You don’t want people to look to you as an authority—Authors acquire a definite authority within the area they write about. This is particularly true of non fiction authors. Even though you know quite enough to write a book on the subject, does something about being looked to as an authority make you nervous?
     
  2. You’re afraid of speaking in public—It’s common for authors to be asked to speak in public, and to pursue public speaking as a way to market their book. Common knowledge tells us that the number one fear in Americans is the fear of public speaking. Perhaps this is really the fear of appearing a fool in public. Is that what’s stopping you?
     
  3. You don’t need another income stream—Novelists would like to make money from their books, but would write them anyway. Nonfiction authors often write in order to make money, to capitalize on a business opportunity or leverage their experience to improve their clientele or their hourly rate. The independently-wealthy and people satisfied with their current income might see self-publishing as a waste of time.
     
  4. You have nothing unique to say in your field—Maybe you’ve spent a career as a primary school teacher, following curriculum. Perhaps you’ve been a cubicle slave for years, and the creative juices have been beaten out of you. I’d say it’s more likely you’ve simply forgotten how unique your own perspective on life, your business, or your hobby really is.
     
  5. You’d rather not contribute to publications in your niche—Once you start publishing you naturally start marketing, and writers use writing as a way to get the word out. But maybe you are embarrassed by the chance you might seem to some a “know it all” if you start getting articles published in relevant trade magazines and websites. That could slow you down.
     
  6. You prefer to wait a few years and see if you get offered a contract—There’s a certain kind of writer who is happy to write, and never get published if they can’t get that contract from Knopf, or Random House, or whoever. They accept the wisdom of the agents and editors they submit to (literally) over the years, and feel it’s better that their work stay unknown, since it’s unworthy of their gods. That’s a tough one.
     
  7. You hate the idea of autographing books for buyers—Having fans, people who will show up at bookstores to hear you talk, stand in line to get your autograph, may be disconcerting. People in our culture often feel unworthy of attention, as if others are deserving, but I am not. Maybe this shame was drilled into us when young, it certainly is long-lasting.

The World of Publishing is Changing: It’s Your Turn Now

I fully expect to see more authors like John Edgar Wideman turning to self-publishing out of pure self-interest. But many other writers can do the same thing. The tools of Lulu and other publishing services companies are there for us to use. Many involve little or no expense.

Writers who publish a book themselves, if they are realistic in their expectations are usually energized by the experience. Since print on demand means you’ll never get left with a garage full of unsold books, the risks have become almost completely psychological.

My message is this: Now is the time. It has never been easeir, faster, or less expensive to get into print. With the tools of the internet and social media, the marketing landscape has never been so level. Go drag that box out from under the bed. Climb up into the attic and pull that manuscript down. Fulfill what you started, or start what you’ve dremed of. You won’t regret it.

Takeaway: The obstacles to publishing are, increasingly, within us. Our opportunities to self-publish have never been better, and the stigma of self-publishing may fade rapidly. The time to act is now.

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer site.

Calling For Tax Advice The Inexpensive Way

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With this article, Publetariat premieres its new Business End department, and resident tax expert Julian Block. Indie authorship is a business, after all, and it’s important for indie authors and small imprints to keep on top of tax matters.

Internal Revenue Code changes have averaged one per day over the past eight years — with 500 revisions in 2008 alone and 235 in 2009. Who’s counting? Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, announced the statistics in her annual report to Congress. An independent organization within the Internal Revenue Service, the Taxpayer Advocate Service helps taxpayers resolve complaints with the agency when problems cannot be resolved through normal channels.

 
Will Advocate Olson’s reports convince our lawmakers to draw back from their drawing board? Not during these troubled times. Expect them to enact even more alterations to an already confusing code in the immediate future.
 
How do individuals who need to focus on tax planning all year long keep on top of all those major and minor modifications? Most decide to become clients of tax professionals — advice-givers adept at calming the concerns of the affluent and nimbly sidestepping pitfalls while capitalizing on opportunities to diminish, delay or deep-six paying amounts that otherwise would swell IRS coffers. And that kind of advice does not come cheap.
 
In locales like my neck of the woods near New York City, such clients should expect to pay hourly fees of several hundred dollars and up for guidance. Help is available from lawyers, CPAs, financial planners, and enrolled agents — i.e., persons licensed to practice before the IRS who are neither attorneys nor CPAs, but who are former IRS employees or have passed rigorous tax examinations administered by the IRS.
 
Fortunately, pricey professionals are not the only source of help for Americans worried about their financial futures and retirement prospects. Cheaper alternatives are available. One option is to sign up at places like high schools and community colleges for inexpensive adult education courses on various aspects of personal finance — for instance, tactics that trim taxes or methods for investment selection.
 
But people who need financial advice should be wary of free lunch seminars that are actually showcases for hucksters. Seminar sponsors usually promote their programs as educational events, with free meals thrown in. But the seminars generally feature hard-sell pitches for substandard investments designed to enrich the sponsors — many may be Uncle Bernie wannabes — and impoverish investors, especially unwitting seniors.
 
It is also possible to obtain advice at no cost from knowledgeable, disinterested professionals. This resource is available to an ever-increasing number of individuals who belong to affinity groups or work for companies that offer such advice. Individuals eligible for assistance can call centers staffed primarily by financial planners who offer advice only — untainted by compensation linked to commissions on product sales.
 
But what is available for people in need of instant advice who are without access to such call-in centers? Thanks to technology, there are person-to-person Internet advice sites that let them talk to experts on topics like taxes and investing. It is important to note, however, that these sites do not vouch for the accuracy of their experts’ advice.
 
A major purveyor of telephone counseling is Keen.com, a company that describes itself as “Your Personal Advisor,” offering live, immediate advice (and hand-holding) for everyday life.  Keen provides computer tech help, career coaching, astrologic readings, relationship advice, credit counseling, and just about everything between. Unless you have need for such services, ignore them, and head straight for Keen’s tax-planning experts. (In the interests of full disclosure, I was among the first dispensers of tax advice recruited by Keen when it debuted in 2000.)
 
Keen’s specialists cover a broad range of financial topics  —  anything from tax-efficient maneuvers that callers can implement themselves, to new theories to test out on real-world advisers, to portfolio diversification strategies.
 
Keen allows callers to check out advisors’ backgrounds and client ratings. Another confidence booster is that Keen makes the call to both parties — ensuring that its online specialists remain clueless about callers’ names, phone numbers, and other personal information, unless callers choose to divulge such details.
 
What does a service like this cost, and how does one pay? As with most Internet sites, Keen accepts credit cards and bills per minute, but frequently discounts fees for first-timers. There is no minimum fee commitment, and callers decide when to conclude the conversations, so they are in control at all times. The result is helpful advice at far less than the cost of in-person sessions.
 
That noted, Keen is not ideal in all situations. At least some of its mavens will lack your mom’s smarts and accessibility, and none can compete with her, whose 24/7/365 counsel comes at no cost at all! Still, Keen is particularly well suited for several common situations. Its advisors can provide inexpensive reassurance when taxpayers want to verify that information received from their advisors or the IRS is correct or when their returns are being audited.
 
Keen is particularly useful during tax filing season, when other advice lines may be overloaded. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), taxpayers trying to dial into the IRS telephone assistance system for comparable help may be stymied by busy signals or put on hold, only to endure lengthy waits. But Keen’s advisors offer prompt answers.
 
Throw in another plus for last-minute filers choosing Keen over the IRS: They improve their chances for obtaining advice on circumventing stiff, nondeductible penalties for late filing (as much as 25 percent of the balance due on a return submitted after the due date) and late payment. The IRS charges interest on penalties and back taxes. Whereas taxpayers can count on Keen’s availability on April 15, that is the day when “abandoned calls” — the GAO’s term for calls to IRS telephones that go unanswered — surge. And, in case you forgot, that is also the day the Titanic sank.
 
For Keen’s directory of tax advisors, go to  http://www.keen.com/categorylist/Taxes/41/. You can select one by clicking on a “Call Now” icon, or you can dial 1-800-ASK-KEEN (275-5336) and follow the voice prompts. That may be all it takes to speak with someone who can staunch the potential hemorrhaging to the IRS.
 
Julian Block, an attorney in Larchmont, NY, has been cited as a "leading tax professional" (New York Times), "an accomplished writer on taxes" (Wall Street Journal) and “an authority on tax planning” (Financial Planning Magazine). His books include “Tax Tips For Small Businesses: Savvy Ways For Writer, Photographers, Artists and Other Freelancers To Trim Taxes To The Legal Minimum,” praised by law professor James E. Maule of Villanova University as "An easy-to-read and well-organized explanation of the tax rules. Business owners would be well advised to buy this book." To order his books, visit www.julianblocktaxexpert.com. Copyright 2010 Julian Block. All rights reserved.

The Real Source of Self-Publishing Stigma

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So here is the thing…

There is a lot of talk about the “stigma” of self-publishing. But for the most part this stigma is rather contained. For example:

Mainstream Publishers/Agents: They don’t really care whether you self-publish or not. I mean think about this for a moment. If you’re self-publishing, you’re one less manuscript in their slush pile. If you fail, they don’t have to deal with you. If you succeed, then you are a proven quantity to them… a sure thing, which is something publishers like. So exactly why would they care? Publishers and agents reject bad writing all the time. They don’t remember the bad writing because they see so much of it, it all bleeds together (from one of the horses’ mouths.)

Agents DO discourage self-publishing very often on their blogs and such, but the stigma doesn’t really flow from them. More about that in a minute…

And while there is much talk about how if you self-publish you’ll ruin your future chances at a career because bookstores won’t order your books from a publisher because your self-pubbed books sold so poorly, that’s not a very strong argument and I’d like someone to bring in an actual bookstore book purchaser to confirm this. BOOKS are all returnable inside the brick and mortar bookstore system. They don’t HAVE to assess risk with a major publisher.

Chances are really good they NEVER stocked your book. So… if you’ve got bad sales, and since everyone claims brick and mortar distribution is Distribution Mecca, then… oh gee, maybe they’ll “get” that it may be a distribution issue and not that the book isn’t good. The double standards out there are astounding. Either way though, with a major publisher backing a book and taking their sales people around, do you really think bookstores are doing intensive background checks? Who cares if you self-pubbed a book?

Bookstores: With bookstores the stigma isn’t so much stigma as shelf-space. While it’s a common belief that self-published books can’t get shelved on brick and mortar bookstore shelves, this is BS. There is a vetting process whereby small press and self-published authors can get their books vetted and into the store, even the MAJOR chains. I know of many self-pubbed authors whose books are sitting on major bookstore shelves.

But if you WANT that, you have to do the legwork necessary. You have to produce a quality book and you have to get into Ingram and Baker and Taylor (the primary distributors of the book trade), but it can be done. At the end of the day it isn’t “stigma” that keeps a self-pubbed book off a bookstore shelf… it is the self-publishing author’s lack of education about the process to do it or willingness to do it, or the quality of their book. Plain as that.

Also, even if you can’t get on bookstore shelves, you should ask yourself whether or not this is something that’s necessary for you. The bookstore returns system can cannibalize your sales and for a small operator, that might not be the place you want to be at. Especially not in the beginning as an indie. Though your mileage may vary.

So far we’ve established that agents, publishers, and bookstores don’t really “care” whether or not you self-publish. If you’ll note bookstores don’t start big blogs ranting and whining about self-publishing. Neither do publishers. In fact, many are open to the idea of finding authors to sign among those who are successfully self-publishing. They understand due to distribution issues that it’s still hard for an indie to sell a lot of books and they adjust their expectations accordingly. While agents may discourage writers from self-publishing… it would kind of be contradictory to their business model to do anything else. It’s called self-interest, folks, not empirical reality.

If an author self-publishes and THEN gets picked up by a publisher, the agent wasn’t needed to scout out and find the talent. The author is then the one in the power chair. And that author is unlikely to call up that agent for representation. They may call AN agent, or they may call an intellectual property lawyer to handle their contract. But the important part in this scenario is that the author has the power, not the agent… more about that in a minute.

Now granted, the odds of succeeding as an indie are slim (but the odds of succeeding ANYWAY are slim.) If you’ve got the goods, you’ve got them, no matter how you publish. Agents have to wade through a lot of crap to find gems but right now their job is still necessary. If all hopefuls were to start self-publishing, or even if ENOUGH of them did, that publishers got all the work they needed from successfully self-published books, then the agents’ job description all but disappears.

Most of the “self-publishing stigma” hinges on the idea that all self-published books are bad and written by deluded morons who can’t really write. The moment enough truly GOOD writers buck the system and self-publish, this stops being true. In order for the stigma to continue, it must remain a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in order for THAT to happen, everyone WITHIN the system must heavily discourage anyone working outside it by appealing to their vanity and their fear of being ostracized from the community.

And if the agent’s job doesn’t completely disappear (i.e. they could go back to just doing what they were supposed to be doing: contract negotiation), their perceived power among writers does, because then their position in the system as the writer’s employee, is reinforced. I believe many of the agents out there on the Internet who verbally abuse the writer community every change they get, enjoy this false power they’ve been temporarily granted. But, if there is an easier and more drama-free way for publishers to find talent, besides the slush pile and agents, then agents go back to being employees and not a second round of gatekeeper.

I find it insane that while many in traditional publishing will pontificate about how indie authors aren’t “vetted,” GUESS WHAT? Agents aren’t vetted. Anyone can call themselves an agent and a bad agent is worse than no agent at all. Most top agents aren’t taking on new clients because they don’t have to. They’ve got enough good authors making them plenty of money.


Reviewers: What about all the review sources who won’t review your book? Another myth. There ARE self-pubbed books that are reviewed in major sources. If you do things the right way the issue of whether or not your book is self-published shouldn’t even come up. i.e. You have an imprint that isn’t YOUR name (like not Sally’s Books), you have a professional-quality book, and you’re presenting yourself as a professional.

You may still not get reviewed, but… it’s not because of the stigma of self-publishing. It’s because of ALL the books out there and how competitive it is. Most trad published books don’t get reviewed in major sources either. Also, most major sources for reviews are drying up and being replaced by the voice of readers on book reviewer blogs that gain a following. It is a WHOLE different landscape out there, and yet many are still functioning as if it’s 1999.

Readers: I don’t care what anyone says, readers are why writers write. There is no other reason. If you want to make money you can find something that will pay you far better than writing. Writing is what you do because you have something to express and share with the world. So reader opinions? The buck stops with them I’m afraid.

You just can’t delete readers from the equation no matter how much the industry seems to want to. They are the end consumer of the book. And the more the traditional publishing system abuses and disregards the wants and needs of the readers, the more readers will shrug and go find other entertainment options, whether it be small press and indie books, or reality TV. Either way, they’ll get tired of the shit eventually.

So what do readers think? Well, for the most part, since most of them aren’t exposed to bad self pubbed work, since crap doesn’t rise to the top, they don’t care. They don’t know who your publisher is and they don’t care who your publisher is. While there are SOME readers who have either somehow been exposed to a lot of bad self-pubbed work and got a bad taste in their mouth over it, or who are plugged in enough to the pulse of the publishing industry that they have become influenced by the “stigma”, most readers don’t know about all this bullshit politics. Nor do they really care one way or the other.

You don’t have to overcome reader objections to your method of publication if you produce a quality book. The reason you don’t is that publishers never branded THEMSELVES. No one knows who Dan Brown or Stephen King’s publisher is… or not average readers anyway. They don’t know the different imprint names or publisher names for most mainstream-produced book. They can’t tell a small press imprint, from a division of a larger well-known publisher. SOME of them, can’t even tell AuthorHouse from Random House (This one is Henry Baum’s brilliance, not my own.)

So you don’t have to overcome reader issues. In fact, if I didn’t interact at all with the writing community on the Internet, and just went about my business self-publishing, I’d never run into any drama whatsoever about my method of publication. I choose, for better or worse, to get into the debates that I do, because while I know I won’t change the pig-headed views of the person I’m talking with most likely, I *may* influence the view of someone reading who hasn’t made up their mind yet. And that, to me, is worth it.

Okay… so if the source of the stigma isn’t “really” agents, publishers, bookstores, reviewers, or readers, what is it?

OTHER WRITERS.

Traditionally published authors who get bent out of shape about self-publishing, may, in fact, have a partly altruistic motive of protecting authors from making bad business decisions, though I think the better alternative is to teach a writer how to assess business risk, rather than making up asinine rules like “money always flows to the author.”

However, don’t ever be led to believe it is merely altruism that causes a traditionally published author to rail against self-publishing. Self-publishing is a threat. It doesn’t matter that a lot of self-published work is bad… many trad pubbed authors suffered through years of rejection to get “accepted.” They have been validated by a certain system.

If it becomes socially acceptable to work outside that system, then where does their validation go? It becomes less valuable because readers already don’t care. Bookstores already don’t care. The only people who REALLY care are other writers. And so it’s important to set up this “cult of truth” for writers and make everyone goose step and ostracize those who don’t.

If someone won’t march in line like the rest, you attack the quality of their writing, their character, and their mental state or capacity. They aren’t good enough, they haven’t been validated, they are lazy or taking a shortcut. They are delusional. They are naive. And if none of that works, you define them as “the exception” and say they shouldn’t encourage anyone else to do what you’re doing. Writers are so desperate for validation that often they will ignore their own will in favor of being accepted by their peers.

But guess what? Indies have their OWN peers.

Unpublished writers generally want to be accepted by those they look up to. And so because the self-published author is the only one “beneath them” on the food chain, they join in the mob to attack as well.

So let’s sum up… in a really competitive industry the stigma against going outside the system is your competition.

Have a different view about that stigma now? The moment you stop associating with these people and focus on the readers, they just fall off your radar. I’ve chosen under this name, to be loud and out there about being indie and to confront stupid arguments head on because I know for many it’s too hard to stand up to the people who have either been elevated or elevated themselves to grand high potentates of publishing.

Though now I need to probably take a bit of a break from arguing, so I can get something worthwhile accomplished… like I don’t know… publishing.

 

This is a cross-posting from Zoe Winters’ blog.

Promote Your Book in Your Own Backyard – 10 Strategies for Success

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Online book marketing is a terrific way to promote your book to a worldwide audience, but sometimes authors overlook book marketing opportunities in their own backyard.

In your local area and region, you have the opportunity to stand out as a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Here are ten tips to promote your book in your own area:

1.   Always carry books and literature with you. Keep a case of books and some flyers in the trunk of your car, and business cards in your wallet. You never know when you will run across a potential customer or marketing contact.

2.   Look for opportunities across your region. Headed for a weekend getaway or off to visit grandma? Do a little research ahead of time to identify bookstores, retailers and libraries in the area that you can call on. Or plan your own book tour, staying with friends and relatives along the way.

3.   Promote yourself as a local author to bookstores and libraries. Many bookstores and libraries have a special section where they showcase the books of local or regional authors.

4.   Look for other retailers that are a good fit. Think about what type of retailers relate to the topic of your book, and promote your book as written by a local author.

5.   Put "local author" stickers on the books that you sell in your area.

6.   Speak at libraries. Contact libraries about doing a presentation on your book’s topic. This can be especially effective for children’s books and for nonfiction titles that have a broad appeal (such as travel, business, or fitness).  Many libraries will let you sell your books at your presentation, and some have a budget for paying speakers.

7.   Find other speaking opportunities. Speaking is a great way to promote your book, and you may even get paid to speak once you get some experience. There are lots of organizations looking for interesting speakers for their meetings, including business and civic organizations, church groups, schools and universities, trade associations, and more.

8.   Seek publicity through local and regional media. Send a book announcement press release to media in the town where you grew up and where you live now.  The "local girl makes good" angle works especially well in smaller towns. Create press releases based on local tie-ins, such as a novel set in the region, and on current news events. Don’t forget your college alumni newsletter and any civic or professional associations you belong to. Nonfiction authors should consider radio and television talk shows.

9.   Exhibit at book fairs and festivals. These usually work best if your book is related to the theme of the event, or if the book has appeal to a broad audience.

10.   Market children’s book through schools and youth organizations. School visits are a great way to reach kids. For tips, see Melissa Williams’ article at http://snipr.com/s4qga.

Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides. For more book promotion tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana’s book marketing blog, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips ebook when you sign up for her free book marketing newsletter.

10 Greatest Writers Who Became Famous After Death

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This post, from Anna Miller, originally appeared on the Online Degree site and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

The old cliché states that artists and writers never achieve true fame or appreciation for their creative output until after their death. While the advent of bestselling authors who peddle their wares on television, radio, and other media outlets, the seductive cult of celebrity has begun trickling its way into the literary world at a much faster pace than yesteryear. But the following writers never had a chance to see the greater influence and love that their painstaking, passionate work earned due to dying before receiving recognition. Some, of course, never actively sought critical or academic renown for their novels, short stories, essays, or poems – though their intentions do not exclude them from proving the old adage true.

1. John Kennedy Toole

Following his disheartening 1969 suicide, John Kennedy Toole would go on to leave a permanent mark on the American literary landscape with his hilarious and heartbreaking A Confederacy of Dunces. His route towards history is indelibly marked by tragedy and well-known to anyone familiar with the brilliant novel and its lesser-known companion The Neon Bible. Toole’s mother Thelma brought the found manuscripts to Loyola University New Orleans professor Walker Percy in 1976. Initially skeptical of her claims that her son was a phenomenal writer, Percy found himself surprisingly bowled over by the grotesquely entertaining Ignatius Reilly and Toole’s pitch-perfect depiction of life in New Orleans and rallied to find a publisher for A Confederacy of Dunces. Louisiana State University agreed, and in 1980 Toole went on to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the novel. Today, it remains a much-beloved work of American literature with a healthy and continuous following – studied frequently in high school and college-level English classes across the United States and subjected to many painstaking dissections by scholars and academics.

2. Franz Kafka

Today considered one of the quintessential existential (and, to a lesser extent, modernist) writers, many unfamiliar with Austrian writer Franz Kafka’s life will be shocked to discover that his intensive influence never coagulated until after his 1924 death from tuberculosis. Kafka actually spent much of his short life working in insurance and factories with the occasional dabbling in theatre. Most of his dark, deeply psychological short stories, novels, novellas, letters, and essays never saw publication in his lifetime – in fact, he ordered his contemporary Max Brod, the executor of his estate, to burn every manuscript without reading them. Obviously, Brod disobeyed these last requests. As a result, Kafka’s descriptive exploration of the more twisted, unknown corners of the human psyche entered into the literary canon. Loved and appreciated throughout the world, critics laud works such as The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and many, many others as some of the greatest literary contributions from the 20th century. They have gone on to heavily inspire not only other writers, but artists, musicians, and other creative types as well.

3. Henry Darger

A curious figure, Henry Darger enjoyed acclaim as an outsider artist and writer after Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner, his landlords, discovered the massive cache of pen and pencil drawings, watercolors, collages, and manuscripts he left behind. After moving into a Lincoln Park, Chicago apartment in 1930, he remained there until his death in 1973. Darger worked menial labor jobs in a hospital before retiring in 1963, and lived an exceptionally solitary existence revolving around attending mass and collecting discarded magazines, newspapers, and books that served as references for his art and inspirations for his stories. Growing up in a traumatic Catholic mission house after his mother’s death forced his being given up for adoption, Darger channeled many of the anxieties and frustrations he experienced into 3 gigantic literary works and a couple of smaller ones. The preservation of innocence and protection of abused children stood as the main themes of his entire creative output, with the seminal 15,145-page The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion as the most visible and popular example. He kept several diaries, some of them about the daily weather, and also penned The History of My Life (a 5,084-page autobiography) and the 10,000-page Crazy House.

4. Emily Dickinson

Like many beloved writers before her and many after, Emily Dickinson spent much of her adult life living like a hermit and was dismissed as a mere eccentric until shortly after her nephritis-related death in 1886. She attended Amherst Academy and studied literature, math, Latin, the sciences, and other disciplines and counted William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson amongst her many influences. Keeping to herself, most of her family and peers knew her as a passionate gardener while in private she penned some most unorthodox poetry at the time. Only a small handful of her almost 1800 poems were published during her lifetime, and her sister Lavinia burned a few of her posthumous leavings upon request – mostly letters. However, Dickinson failed to leave behind instructions for some of her notebooks, and as a result her first volume of poetry hit the shelves in 1890 with the help of supporters Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Critics received it with a largely mixed response, though later scholars would come to heap praise upon her experimentations in slant rhyming and unconventional punctuation and capitalization.

5. Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath did, in fact, find a modicum of literary recognition in her lifetime before committing grisly suicide in 1963. In 1955, she even won the Glascock Prize for “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Sea.” Following her graduation from Smith College, she guest edited at Mademoiselle magazine to much disappointment – an experience that inspired her celebrated semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar – and published the occasional poem in the Cambridge University newspaper Varsity. Plath struggled with mental illness all her life, finding solace in her confessional works that discussed her overwhelming emotions with raw, open honesty. However, this intimate peek into her tumultuous inner life gained far more momentum after her death, with 4 children’s books, 6 works of fictitious and nonfictitious prose (including diaries), and at least 7 volumes of poetry attributed to her name after 1963. Prior to that, she had released The Colossus and Other Poems to a small but largely positive critical base that would later come to prefer her posthumous works. She even won the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize for poetry for 1981’s The Collected Poems. It was the publication of The Bell Jar that fully solidified her place in the American literary pantheon, though. Written under the pen name “Victoria Lucas,” it had been accepted for publication and hit the shelves one month before Plath’s suicide – meaning she never had a chance to actually enjoy the subsequent adulation.

6. Jane Austen

Considering contemporary media’s nigh-obsession with all things Jane Austen – a disconcerting many of them jettisoning the truly biting Regency satire in favor of focusing on the more profitable romances – it comes a shock to many that she never garnered hefty amounts of popularity in her lifetime. Austen did, in fact, publish several of her most beloved novels (Sense and Sensibility in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815) prior to her 1817 death from a disputed disease. Many literary critics and intellectuals spoke well of her spunky parodies of English society, though others criticized the novels for their failure to adhere to Romantic and Victorian philosophies and literary protocol. While never huge, they enjoyed a steady stream of moderate success, and her comprehensive Juvenilia series sent her family rollicking with its cheeky, anarchic humor. In spite of all this, however, Austen remained almost an entire unknown entity until after her death…when her brother Henry revealed in the biographical notes of the posthumously published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both in 1817) that she spent her entire literary career writing anonymously.

7. James Agee

Known during his lifetime as a moderately successful literary critic and co-screenwriter for the classic films The African Queen in 1951 and The Night of the Hunter in 1955, James Agee’s alcoholism frequently prevented him from ever achieving fame equal to his talents. A lifelong writer, he wrote for Fortune, Life, The Nation, and Time (he also served as a movie critic for the latter 2), published a volume of poetry (Permit Me Voyage), and released a largely ignored novel (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) prior to his death by heart attack in 1995. Agee’s most celebrated and studied work, the autobiographical novel A Death in the Family, saw publication 2 years later and earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1958. Afterwards, interest in his oeuvre skyrocketed and eventually earned him a place as one of the most respected American writers of the 20th century.

8. Nathanael West

As with many who worked as screenwriters in the 1930’s, Nathanael West never enjoyed great success for his literary prowess. Prior to his fatal car accident in 1940, West released 12 screenplays (and 1 remaining unproduced), 2 short stories, and 4 novels all while participating in a few writers’ seminars with the likes of Dashiell Hammett and William Carlos Williams. Most of his works – including the celebrated Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939) – drew from his experiences in the tarnished, writhing underbelly of the supposedly glamorous and idealistic Hollywood. It took his sudden and unexpected death to launch any real interest in West’s output, and the 1957 re-release of his collected novels only solidified his popularity. To this day, many regard The Day of the Locust as the quintessential Hollywood satire, offering a portrait into the shady wheelings and dealings of producers, actors, and other movie professionals vying for stardom and glory.

9. Anne Frank

The tragic story of Annelies Frank needs very little introduction. Fans of history and literature alike need to read the young girl’s diary, which she kept from June 12, 1942 until three days her capture by the Nazis on August 4, 1944. Frank died in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945 at the age of 15 as one of the 6 million completely unnecessary Jewish murders during the Holocaust. Miep Gies, one of the women responsible for hiding Frank’s family from the Third Reich, handed her father Otto the famous account. He sought a publisher for it as a means of educating the populace on Hitler’s atrocities, and came to find a valuable ally in historian Annie Romein-Verschoor and her husband Jan Romein. The Diary of a Young Girl was first published in 1947 in The Netherlands, with much of Europe and the United States following shortly thereafter. Critics enjoyed the book as both a harrowing glimpse into life as a hated minority in Hitler’s Germany and as a well-written piece of literature in its own right. Though a teenager, Frank’s experiences granted her work a maturity beyond her years that paradoxically never tarnishes her childlike perceptions of the chaotic world. The result is an entirely necessary entry into the literary canon – a work that absolutely needs reading if humanity ever hopes to quell the possibility of another fascist genocide.

10. Theodore Winthrop

Better known as a Civil War soldier and one of the first Union fatalities, Theodore Winthrop made a name for himself as a Yale-educated lawyer and seasoned world traveler before enlisting in 1861. He published a few articles, short stories, sketches, and essays but garnered little attention beyond the popular, patriotic “Our March to Washington.” Only after his death at the Battle of Big Bethel shortly after entering the army did anyone pay much attention to Winthrop’s writings. His sister, Laura Winthrop Johnson, was responsible for compiling all of his poetry and prose for submission and an eventual collection. At least 5 of his novels hit the shelves posthumously, many of them drawing from his generous academic and travel experiences. However, it was his Cecil Dreeme that garnered the most attention. Challenging and progressive, he turned traditional perceptions of social, gender, and racial roles upside-down using New York University as his backdrop.

No matter their ideology, style, or motivations for writing in the first place, these talented men and women left their undisputed legacy on the literary scene only after passing on. They obtained the level of fame that inadequate, trend-chasing copycats or celebrity-worshipping predecessors and successors only dream about, molding and shaping the written word with oeuvres that far outlived the limitations of human flesh.

 

Anniversary Contest Finalist #6 – How To Be Your Own Best Editor, Pt. 1

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This post, from M. Louisa Locke, originally appeared on her The Front Parlor blog on 2/16/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is Locke’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Locke become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

I made the decision that I was going to self-publish my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, in the spring of 2009. Having discovered and become a faithful reader of the website, Publetariat, I was well aware that I had several tasks in front of me if I wanted to be a successful indie author. I had to decide where to publish, design a cover, set up a website, learn how to format the manuscript for  different publishing mediums, and set up a marketing plan. But most importantly, I needed to make sure that my manuscript was completely ready for publication.

 
Over the years, through at least 3 rewritings of my manuscript, I had gotten excellent advice from  my writers group. However, with each rewrite, I had always assumed that any lingering problems with the manuscript would somehow be taken care of when it was finally accepted for publication and went through the traditional editing process. I had no such safety net as an indie author.
 
Read any blog post on self-publishing, and the question of editing comes up. In fact, this seems to be at the crux of most arguments against the validity of self-publishing–that self-published work just can’t be good because it hasn’t been through the vetting of an agent and editor. See Tom Barlow’s “Six reasons that self-publishing is the scourge of the book world”  for a typical example of this point of view.
 
Even strong defenders of self-publishing often suggest that indie authors should hire a professional editor before publishing their books. For example, see  “Why do you need an editor?” by Heidi Thomas.
 
Yet, even if I had decided to hire a professional editor (which I didn’t) this wouldn’t preclude my responsibility for the finished product. Editors can point out errors, they can suggest changes, but ultimately, as an indie author, I needed to be my own best editor.
 
These are the steps I took:
 
I read.
American Idol has demonstrated the amazing capacity of humans for self-delusion, but I knew that no matter how tickled I was with the story I had written, it was not up to the quality of the best of the published fiction I enjoy reading. That knowledge came from a life-time of reading, cringing at badly written material and being transported by the good stuff. I knew that it would be from reading that I would hone the skills to edit my own work.
 
First I concentrated on reading (or rereading) books by all of my favorite mystery authors.
I have never understood the would-be novelists-and I have met a number-who tell me they are writing in a particular genre because they think it will sell, even though they don’t really like that genre. As “research” they read one or two books-usually recent best sellers (which are probably not even the best written book by those authors-since the best sellers often aren’t as good as the first lovingly crafted books that got those authors their first contracts.) They then try to model their work on those best sellers-and what they come up with is often derivative and lacking the joy that comes from a writer writing what they love to read.
 
I love mysteries. That’s why, when I wanted to tell a story about working women in the far west, I wrote my story as a mystery. Because of the number of mysteries I have read, I have a much finer tuned sense of what it takes to make a good mystery. So, as I reread my favorite authors, I looked specifically at what I liked about their writing. I noticed what voice they used and if they provided multiple perspectives. I noted how long the chapters were and examined the transitions from chapter to chapter. I paid attention to their secondary characters and how much physical detail was used to describe each one. I looked for the story arc, searching for the red herrings, the sub-climax, the climax, and at how the book ended. When there was something I didn’t like, the ending disappointed, or I couldn’t keep all the characters straight, or I got bored and found myself skipping ahead, I tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
 
I didn’t confine myself to my sub-genre (historical mysteries set in Victorian era). In fact I rather steered away from these books, because I didn’t want to find myself copying from them. Instead, by learning how to maintain a fast pace from a Dick Francis, or how to create a sense place or time from a Navada Barr or Laurie King, or how to provide sexual tension without sex from a Dorothy Sayers, I was able to apply their methods to my own original work without becoming derivative.
 
Next, I read or reread all the advice books I had accumulated over the years, including practical guides on grammar.
For example, Publetariat’s section on writing featured a long list of tips that I found very useful. I knew how to write, but I needed to be reminded what to look for when I was reading my own work. I also discovered some new rules. For example, sometime since I wrote the first draft of my manuscript, the standard had shifted from two to one spaces between sentences! Who knew!
 
Then, I read all the comments from agents, rejection letters from editors, and critiques from my writers group.
I looked for common threads (several mentioned that I had too many arguments between the protagonists). I looked for differences of opinion (one said it didn’t have enough romance, another too much). I read these comments in the light of what I had learned from all the reading I had been doing in the genre and about writing.
 
Finally I was ready. And, in my next post I will detail what I did to prepare my manuscript for publication as my own best editor.
 
(If you want to see how successful I was, check out the free excerpt of Maids of Misfortune, or better yet-buy the book!)

 

Anniversary Contest Finalist #5 – If You Build It, Will They Come?

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This post, from J. Daniel Sawyer, originally appeared on his Literary Abominations site on 3/1/2010 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. This is JD’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see JD become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Free content – particularly in the audio fiction space – suddenly seems a lot less of a perpetual free lunch than it did six months ago, and it’s got a lot of folks freaking out in my corner of the Internet.

 
Providers are dropping like flies this year! Matthew Wayne Selznick and J.C. Hutchins have both very publicly withdrawn from the podcast fiction space, and for the best reason there is: Money.
[Correction: MWS chimed in in the comments to correct my misapprehension of his current attitude toward podcasting, which is considerably more complex than the paragraph above makes it seem. My apologies for inadvertently misrepresenting him.]
 
The two of them are generation one podiobookers who appeared in the space hot on the heels of the three founders, and seeing them throw in the towel has a lot of other creators wondering: “Are we all just being idiots giving stuff away for free?” And it’s got a lot of fans wondering “What’s going to happen now? Are all my favorite writers going to give up?”
 
The Gospel of Free has been pinging around the internet for a while now, it’s even got its own official book. There are folks in the fiction space – like Doctorow and Sigler – that have made it the cornerstone of their publicity strategy and turn a consistent profit at it. The use of free content in career building is a well-established promotional strategy, but it’s a difficult tool to use, and suffers from the reductio ad absurdum that most people hear when they first encounter the message, no matter how subtly it’s preached: “If you build it, they will come.”
 
So if I just put my stuff on the web I’ll find an audience? Well, no. You might find an audience, if you get yourself seen by the right people (and by “right people” I mean people who are prone to telling everybody they know about their latest new and great thing). You might even find a good audience – but you have to bear in mind, “Free” doesn’t mean what you think it does.
 
Let’s take what I do for free (well, free to my audience): I use a segment of my professional time as a writer and as a sound engineer to produce full-cast audiodbooks. I pay for this – billing my professional time out at normal rates, and factoring in what I pay my actors in trade (whether they’ve collected on it or not), my cost (not including what I should be paying the author) is in the neighborhood of $10-15k. Now, am I out of pocket that much? No. I do go out of pocket a little bit, but not a lot – however, that’s all time stripped out of my life that I could be billing at that kind of rate. If you’ve wondered why I do less in the way of publicity than some other podiobooks authors, now you know – the time is my main expense, and I have a life and a business. I intend, eventually, to have my writing income make up a greater-than-fifty-percent share of my household budget, but I’m not there yet. I’m nowhere near. This is what is called a loss-leader.
 
In business terms, a loss-leader is the bait on the hook – the hook is what gets the audience to spend money. Matching the right bait to the right hook and fishing in the right water is a learned skill set, and it relies somewhat on how fast one learns from experience, how lucky one is, and (in the writing game) how good a lawyer one is and/or has. There’s a reason more than 75% of authors wash out of the game after their first book contract runs out, and why only a minuscule percentage of people with authorial ambitions ever get even that far – being a good writer is not the same as being a successful author. It’s even possible to be a successful author without being a good writer (for example, Dan Brown), but I wouldn’t bank on it and I know damn few successful authors who would, particularly over the term of a career. Craft does matter – it’s just not all that matters.
 
If podcasting is your loss leader, what’s your endgame? If all you’re trying to do is get your voice heard, podcasting or blogging your novel is a perfectly fine idea. If you’re looking to get published, it might help, or it might be a distraction or a detriment, depending on your approach and a host of other variables. If you’re looking to build a sustainable long term career as a professional author, it’s time for you to stop and think about a few things before you go into podcasting:
1) What will podcasting give me?

2) What is my professional time worth – and if I were to bill myself for this, how much of a loss will I be taking?

3) What kind of author do I want to be?

4) Why do I think “getting published” is a worthwhile goal?

 
Why should you stop to think about these things? Because I guarantee you that your answers to at least one of those questions is wrong enough to set you up for some serious disappointment.
 
What will podcasting give me?
Podcasting will, if you stick with it and actually produce a decent product with broad enough appeal, give you an audience ranging anywhere from a few hundred to maybe twenty thousand regular listeners. If you’re very innovative in evangelizing your product beyond the established fiction podosphere, your chances for good numbers go up. If you host in a high visibility place like Podiobooks and leave your content there for a few years, your numbers will climb over time due to the long tail effect.
 
Podcasting may also help you learn the market in terms of audience. This is the primary reason I started fiction podcasting: Market research. I was looking to find out what kind of people would enjoy the stories that I’m interested in writing, so that I could figure out how to find and deliver to that market that, in the long term (and I’m talking about a time scale of decades) I will be able to consistently turn a profit on. Notice I said “stories”, not “books” – that will become important later.
 
Podcasting may give you a creative community – this isn’t something I was looking for, but I have made some friends through the process as well as more than a few good business contacts that have been helpful along the way.
 
Podcasting (if you’re good at it) will win you respect and accolades as well as the adoration of at least a few fans along the way, and this feels really good. Just remember that, as encouraging as it can be, it’s a limited kind of street cred. Audience tastes change, and what they love about you today they may hate about you tomorrow. Glory feels wonderful, even in small doses, and can put an extra bit of shine on a life well lived, but it will never make up for insecurity or the need for the kind of relationships you can only have with people who really know you.
 
Podcasting may give you pleasure – if you enjoy the process and enjoy interacting with people, it’s something that you might like even as a hobby.
 
But unless you are supremely lucky and very canny, there is something podcasting will not deliver: a paycheck of any substance. If you’re expecting to be have your audio audience put you on the bestseller list once you get that book deal, good luck to you. A few people have pulled it off. Those people are, without exception, people that – by chance or by cleverness – wrote exactly to market. They were selling stories that resonated perfectly (or at least well enough) with the public that a larger-than-average segment of their fan base wanted to own a physical copy, and the same larger-than-average segment went out of their way to pimp the shit out of the books to their friends, family, and strangers who might not even own iPods. A few others have pulled it off by their books being noticed on a site like Podiobooks, and subsequently selling film options.
 
If you want your book to perform well enough to get to your next contract, you need a publishing house that will throw its weight behind you, a print run that is realistically scaled to your book’s performance, and a property that is going to sell in the current market. If you don’t have at least the latter two of these three things, then (again) good luck to you. You’re going to need it.
 
How Much Is My Time Worth?
I hate to sound like a schoolmarm (or worse), but time that you’re podcasting is time that you’re not doing four other things, all of which are arguably more important. It’s time you’re not making money at whatever your profession is, it’s time you’re not spending with friends and family building the memories that make life with living, it’s time that you’re not learning, and it’s time that you’re not writing.
 
If you intend to write fiction for any significant fraction of your life, you need to be doing all of those things. You have to write to grow as a writer, and you have to make money to be able to live while you’re writing. But if you have a life that isn’t worth living – say, a life without significant relationships or learning and enrichment – then it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to have anything interesting to write about (and you may be too depressed to write about anything at all, except stories about depression).
 
Every hour you spend podcasting is billable time – somebody’s paying for it, and it isn’t always just you. Don’t cheat on your mental accounting sheet – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Even in a down economy, your time has a dollar value attached to it – figure out what that value is, and then keep track of what you’re spending. If nothing else, being aware of the cost will help you keep from feeling cheated at the far end if you wind up not getting a good return on your investment, because you’ll be spending on purpose.
 
What Kind of Author Do I Want To Be?
If you’ve been in and around the writing business for any length of time, you’ve heard the old saw “you can’t make a living as a writer unless you’re in the top 1%.” This bit of conventional wisdom is what lies behind the blockbuster mentality on the part of authors: you want to have a brand name, you want to be the biggest thing ever, and you must relentlessly self-promote (the blockbuster mentality of some publishing houses is another animal entirely, and Charles Stross and Dean Wesley Smith have both covered it very well on their blogs recently).
 
If you’ve heard that and are still intent on trying, then you are either mind-numbingly stupid, a heroically-minded risk junkie, a hobbyist, or someone who actually has a clue about business and doesn’t listen to the conventional wisdom of creative people (in which case, good for you).
 
So you want to be the next Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer? You’d be better off going to Vegas – that kind of trend really is a game of chance, and depends largely (though not entirely) on unforeseeable market forces. That said, there is a whole swath of writers who make a living on their names, which they worked very hard to establish, and who aren’t blockbusters (and yes, Scott Sigler is one of them. He might be a blockbuster by our standards, and his ambition is to be the next Stephen King, but by broader market standards he’s a respectable front-lister, and there’s nothing at all wrong with that).
But blockbusting is not the only way to win this game, and here’s why:
 
Most authors who make a living at it don’t make a living on their book advances. Oh, the advances help, but they’re not even close to the whole pie. Subsidiary rights sales, foreign rights, royalties from the long tail, article sales, and commissioned work for other commercial ventures (such as being tapped to do a Star Trek or a Dragonlance novel) make up a large part of the income flow, with investments helping keep the rent paid during lean years. These authors generally (though not always) sit solidly on the mid-list, and some of them write under a variety of names for different markets. I know and have known (personally) at least a score of authors who make their living with their words, and the two qualities that distinguish them from the authors I know who haven’t been able to pull it off are: 1) insufferable, bloody-minded perseverance, and 2) continual growth in craft and breadth. In other words, these authors actually treat it like a career, rather than a brass ring.
 
The truth is that most people who get counted as “authors” in surveys of author incomes are people who publish a single book, or who have a book they haven’t sold. They’re not career writers. They don’t count screenwriters, ad copy writers, stage play writers, or other such folks. In other words, this bit of conventional wisdom is horse shit because it counts every dilettante, aspiring amateur, and washout as an “author.”
 
Authors such people may be, but professionals they ain’t. Some of them will become professionals (I must hasten to add, I’m on this tier — I’m not prolific enough or churning enough cash enough yet to be called a professional, but I’m heading deliberately in that direction) – others are hobbyists. I daresay that if such a survey were taken of all the auto mechanics in the world, with hobbyists and people that change their own oil counted with the same weight as ASE certificate holders, the numbers for auto mechanics wouldn’t be dissimilar to what we hear about with writing.
 
If you’re looking to do this for a living, writing is a professional business (i.e. a business that relies on being an expert in a particular domain), with all the problems that implies: It relies on individual expertise, a broad skillset, at least a vague awareness of market dynamics, a certain legal acumen, the ability to adapt to contingency, a high tolerance for risk and uncertainty, and a little bit of luck. You know, just like any other non-franchise business.
 
Why Do I think Getting Published is a Worthwhile Goal?
More than any other question, the answer to this gets to the heart of the matter for an author who is thinking of podcasting their work, because in answering this you’re probably going to answer a significant portion of all the other questions.
 
My answer to this one is simple: It’s a step on the road. I got a huge thrill with my first short story sale – now, after only a couple more, it’s an exercise in contract negotiations and another tick on the scorecard. It’s fun and exciting, but it’s not the life-affirming experience that the first sale was. Why? Because my sights are on the next set of goalposts, and I need to get to those so I can see the next set, and so on.
 
But my self-worth is not wrapped up in this. This is business. If I can’t make it work one way I’ll make it work another, and if, in the end, I turn out not to have the chops, I’ll shift my focus and continue writing as a hobby to whatever extent I can justify it. Yes, I am one of those rare people who will write no matter what – it’s the reason I’m making a go of turning it into a profession. But that doesn’t mean that everything I do will be available for free. Some things will, some things won’t – just like, right now, some things are and some things aren’t. My time is billable hourly, and my free stuff is there so that I can 1) build my audience, and 2) learn how to navigate in my marketplace(s). It’s an investment I’m making because it seems sound to me – I know what it costs, and for me the price is right.
 
Is the price right for you? Think hard about it. I daresay there will always be hobbyists in the podcast fiction space, but if you’re a pro or an aspiring pro, look at it as a business investment. It’s not a magic bullet, and it’s not a shortcut. Even podcasting’s biggest success, Scott Sigler, doesn’t see it as either of those things. Scott needed a platform to prove that there was a market for cross-genre horror, so he essentially invented one. His focus now is on figuring out where the next place to grow his audience is, and what books will be best to write next. There’s a reason he’s made this work, and it goes a lot deeper than “he writes in a popular genre” (although that also is very important).
 
Wrapping It Up
The Gospel of Free is a pernicious little meme that’s burned out some talented people and seriously burned others, but it’s not a new one. Every get rich quick scheme, every investment bubble, every motivational speaker that comes along has the same basic blend of bullshit and wisdom: “Look at this new thing – it’s no-lose! Look at its merits! Imagine how much you could do with this!” Network marketing, real estate flipping, dot com stocks – there’s always something, and it nearly always takes a pretty clever idea and isolates it from all good business sense.
 
Don’t fall for it. Free has always been with us, and it’s always been good business when done right. New tools, new media, and new toys are great, but excitement about the opportunities they present can easily obscure the most basic thing about business: supply and demand must meet, and they must trade. If they don’t, then at best what you’ve got is a rewarding hobby, and at worst you’re in a financial disaster. There is no such things as a fast buck except at the craps table, and there is never any such thing as a free lunch.
Me? I’m in this for the long haul. I’m building a business, with all the risk that implies. Right now, my business model includes podcasting. Will it in three years? It depends on what happens between now and then.
 
So, in sum, my advice to other writers and podcasters, for what it’s worth: Podcast what you will. Keep track of what it’s costing you. Cut your losses if it’s not returning what you need for it to be worthwhile. Above all, don’t buy the bullshit that motivational speakers and other sharks shovel. Celebrity status might be useful, but it’s like Monopoly money: not negotiable currency outside of the small circles that generate it.
For fans of mine and other’s podcast fiction: remember that while this is free to you, it’s not free for us. Your feedback, your cash in the tip jar, and your evangelism are much appreciated. We podcast authors know that we’re being wasteful and reckless – and not all of us will stay in this space forever. For now, I at least am getting what I want out of the bargain, and I do enjoy entertaining you all.
 
For everyone reading, remember: Life is precious. Don’t forget to enjoy whatever it is you’re doing, and treasure the memories it gives you. Treat your time like an investment, and savor what you buy with it. In the end, the moments are the only thing we have to make a life out of.

 

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Matthew Wayne Selznick’s comment:

Hi Dan. Thoughtful post. I do want to clarify something — you wrote that I’ve “withdrawn very publicly from the podcasting fiction space” for “the best reason there is: money.”
That’s not accurate.
 
I have one book written and published, “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” It came out as a free podcast in September of 2005 on the same day it was available to purchase in paperback and several e-book formats, and was one of the first twenty five podcast novels. The podcast is still available, and it’s still free. I haven’t podcast any of my other fiction… but I also don’t have any more novels ready to be released in any form.
 
Many folks assumed I would release podcast episodes of my ongoing episodic serial fiction project, “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights” when it debuted last May. There are three reasons I haven’t done so, and none of those reasons have anything to do with money:
 
One: the serial is available to read for free already (you can support it voluntarily if you’d like to be a patron of my creative endeavors.)
 
Two: I’m not sure I want to begin podcasting a story arc that I haven’t finished writing.
 
Three: creating podcast fiction content takes time, and it doesn’t make sense for me to spend that time on that right now (see One and Two.)
The one thing I did do publicly in my “Lessons From 2009″ blog post was come down on people — fans and authors alike — who over-estimate the value of podcast fiction for an author’s career, and those authors who treat their tiny measure of fame in a very small arena as more than it really is. But, I also make it very clear in that post that podcasting my first book was a worthwhile marketing and promotional decision.
 
Philippa Ballantine, in the comments, lumped me in with J. C. Hutchins and Matt Wallace as someone who has “changed their opinions” about, I assume, the “magic bullet” of podcasting fiction as a path to success. I won’t presume to speak for Hutch or Matt W. (they’ve spoken on their own behalf, very well) but I guess I need to clear this up, too:
 
I haven’t changed my opinion about podcasting fiction, because my opinion has always been that giving away a version of your work in podcast form is a viable marketing device to promote other, for-pay versions of that work, and to build an audience for that work and for the author.
 
This remains my opinion. There is no “magic bullet,” and if I’ve ever given anyone the impression that there is, I apologize — it was not intended.
 
Podcasting fiction has always been, for me, part of the marketing “budget” of a book. I don’t think I’ve ever said that I’m not going to podcast any more fiction… have I?
 
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify things. I guess I’m going to have to write a post of my own to really set the record straight!

 

Anniversary Contest Finalist #1 – Surprise Endings: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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This post, from PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on her Inspired By Real Life blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is PJ’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see PJ become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been writing stories and working on my novel for several months now and I am approaching the point where I am considering submitting some stories to literary magazines.  A few weeks ago, I started perusing some of the magazines listed at Duotrope’s Digest and I came across several magazines and online sites that admonish writers to avoid O. Henry endings.

The first one or two times I saw this warning, I didn’t take much notice.  But then as I began to see the same message over and over, I tried to interpret its meaning.  I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t violating some sort of unwritten – or, in some cases, written – rule with my stories.

I confess that if I have ever read an O. Henry story it has been many, many moons ago.  O. Henry was an American story writer who lived in the late 19th century/early 20th century.  He lived a short and difficult life but published scores of short stories during his lifetime.  So, I read a smattering of O. Henry stories and did some research and discovered that O. Henry endings are so notable that I found an entry referring to them in several online resources such as this site compiled by Dr. Wheeler of Carson-Newman College:

“O. HENRY ENDING: Also called a trick ending or a surprise ending, this term refers to a totally unexpected and unprepared-for turn of events, one which alters the action in a narrative. O. Henry endings usually do not work well with foreshadowing, but particularly clever artists may craft their narratives so that the foreshadowing exists in retrospect. The term comes from the short stories of O. Henry (a pen name for William Sidney Porter), which typically involve such a conclusion. Note that an O. Henry ending is usually a positive term of praise for the author’s cleverness. This is the opposite sentiment from a deus ex machina ending, in which the unexpected or unprepared-for ending strikes the audience as artificial, arbitrary, or unartful.”

Not all would agree with the assessment above that “O. Henry ending” is a positive term, as we shall see.  In trying to understand the O. Henry endings, we have to look at the relationship between the author and the reader.  I recently took a class with Stanford Continuing Education with the author Seth Harwood.  The class focused on creating suspense and Harwood explained that there are three ways to create suspense:

1) where the reader and the main character don’t know what’s going to happen and the reader learns what’s going on at the same time as the main character (e.g., a typical mystery novel in the Perry Mason tradition);
 
2) where the reader knows what’s going on but the main character doesn’t know the full story (e.g., a mystery where the reader has been given some additional insight such as seeing a murder take place or knowing that the ‘bad guy’ is nearby); and
 
3) where the writer and the main character know some critical information that the reader doesn’t.  In this case, the reader is often left feeling deceived.

Suspense works best with the first two approaches because the reader has more identification with and empathy for the main character and is hoping that everything turns out ok in the end.  In the third approach, the writer has employed deception and has betrayed the reader’s trust.  Harwood went on to say that the ending to a story using the third approach is likely to be met with groans rather than applause.  Many stories that have surprise endings use this third approach.

So, let’s consider some examples of O. Henry’s writing.  Some of his most well-known stories use the surprise ending to great effect.  “The Gift of the Magi”, “The Retrieved Reformation” and “The Ransom of Red Chief” all employ some element of surprise in the ending, but we learn of the events along with the main characters and they are as surprised as we are at the endings.  This is why these stories work well.

I came upon two examples of his stories that have surprise endings that, for different reasons, do not work well in my view.  “The Girl” appears to be a story about a man proposing marriage to a girl, but in the end it is revealed that the man is not proposing marriage at all but is trying to hire a cook.  This ending had me rolling my eyes.  “The Pendulum” is a very believable story and, especially for a cynical reader, the ending is understandable, but the way the ending was written was very unsatisfactory to me.  It used a sort of literary trick in that rather than trying to explain the reason John, the main character, reverts back to the status quo, the story points to an abstract notion the author refers to as “the Order of Things.”

In further exploring why writers should stay away from “O. Henry endings,” I consulted with Seth Harwood (mentioned above) and Victoria Mixon, a professional writer and editor.  They both had some terrific insights and they can be boiled down to these points:

  • Harwood pointed out that because O. Henry was so prolific and virtually all of his stories involved surprise endings, this approach is “well done and finished.”  So, literary magazines may come away from reading a story with a surprise ending simply thinking “been there, done that.”  They are looking for fresh, modern voices …”in the sense of ‘making it new’ and not just ‘new to you.’”
     
  • Harwood also emphasized the point that surprise endings are “very hard to do well and all too easy to do terribly.”  The bottom line is that literary journals are looking for good writing and the writer who is relying heavily on surprise endings tends not to be focused on the quality of the writing (I’m paraphrasing).
     
  • Mixon put it very well by saying, “…there is a big difference between surprising the reader and tricking them.”  This comes back to the description above of the three ways to build suspense and the need to avoid the third approach.  The element of surprise is a mainstay in literature and when it’s done well, “You do that with an ending that throws a whole new light on the story while at the same time feeling like the inevitable conclusion this story must have been headed toward all along.”  (Mixon also promises me that she will be writing about this very topic in her upcoming book!)

I hope this post has provided you with some insight about the perils of surprise endings.  Thanks for reading!

 

Branding And Publishing Strategies

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With this cross-posting, the very knowledgeable yet down-to-Earth Mick Rooney joins Publetariat’s roster of regular contributors. 

Today, publishers are looking more to cut back on the amount of titles they release and focus their marketing clout and expenditure on extracting as much as possible from the branding of high-end authors. That doesn’t mean mainstream publishing editors aren’t open to new authors with an original book or voice. It just means the playing field is getting a little less hospitable.

There seem to be a lot less players on the playing field and the substitution bench is getting crowded and our publishing managers are getting evermore conservative, unwilling to risk a late substitution from an unproven player in an effort to hold out and still win the game. Author solutions services will often use this argument to hook you into their services. Consider that almost all writers you read started out as unknowns, published a first book, broke the so-called mold, achieved what you might consider impossible or hopeless, but remember, they almost all did it by pursuing the commercial route, either directly, or via a literary agent. They, and the people who represented them, read their first book, believed in their brand, and managed to connect and sell it to readers.

Certainly, we are seeing more and more books coming out through alternative channels, be it self-publishing, or the flourishing array of small presses, some with as little as three or four titles per year. Unfortunately, authors who explore alternative routes to mainstream publishing often don’t have a brand—scratch—aren’t a brand of themselves—even heavier scratch—don’t even understand what a brand is in publishing of any route.

Dan Brown is a brand. Jodi Picoult is a brand. Stephen King is a brand. Hell, British comedienne, Jo Brand, is a fucking brand in name as well as comic execution. Double hell, Sarah Palin’s even got her political PR team to turn her into the ultimate Hockey Mom-Rottweiler brand and one day she could be your president! All the above players have been ploughing the playing field for a long, long time. They understand PR, media, and most of all, creating their own brand.

Picoult has deftly rattled off novel after novel about family and relationships, posing moral and philosophical dilemmas for many years—what if I gave birth to twins and they turned out to be reincarnations of Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both just as much? That’s Picoult signature and brand and she is wonderful at what she does. Think the Jerry Springer show on sedatives. And Picoult, more importantly, knows it, and so does her agent and publishers. Having a brand is one thing—having people around you or the ability within yourself to exploit this is entirely another.

In my 2010 predictions, I said we could see authors who enjoyed moderate success at commercial publishing houses find it increasing difficult to win over their editors with their latest opus. Indeed, I qualified that by saying we will see some big enough names jump from the mother ship and join the burgeoning independent family. Canongate did a great job in the UK with Obama. But the independent family is not necessarily self-publishing per say—rather the area of publishing where the medium-to-small press is not only deft at involving the author in every facet of book publicity, but damn well expects it.

The self-publisher must do this as a given. It’s not some publishing culture clique, vogue down them indie parts of the city—it’s a fucking financial necessity—resulting in a sink or swim book. Broadly, I do welcome the approach of a well-thought out, condensed, homogenised, marketing campaign, and so should any passionate author worth their salt—provided their new-found small press is not, in turn, running the legs off the author as if they were some form of new marketing donkey (read camel if you want to be upmarket) for the solution to the rigours of economic decline and creating a bottom-basement publishing empire…eh, from the bottom up!

Bob Miller and HarperStudio have been getting this new strategy of publishing right over the past twelve months. If you want an author to do some of the donkey marketing work, with finesse, then the publishing partnership/contract needs to recognise this and reward the author through an increased royalty share. There are some really strong UK publishers in the independent field well-placed to adopt some of these strategies. Salt Publishing has had a real go at it, but economics have played much of a part in 2009 and it looked touch and go for them for a while. They are not out of the rapid waters yet, and I seriously feel they need to look at their royalty structure to survive (single digit royalties just aren’t cricket in the independent game anymore) and pick up the really big fish from the mainstream arena if they are to see out 2010 and really develop as a true independent of great promise.

There are other great pretenders, Two Ravens Press, Snowbooks—I equate them with publishers like Soho Press or Soft Skull Press (arty, urban and eclectic), or their musical equivalents of the early 1980’s, Rough Trade and 4AD, highly independent but crucially with a definitive branding and an extraordinary ability to identify that brand and the creators of it, through to reaching out to an audience/reader and connecting with them.

So whatever the origin and the route to readership, independent publisher, small press or self-publishing author—what’s the brand and how do we identify and find it?

Well, it’s not the norm; otherwise we wouldn’t have independent operating authors or publishers. We’d just be selling plain vanilla ice-cream all the time. But, just sometimes, someone likes their vanilla with cherries in it, or curious wee green bits—we taste first, savour and enjoy, before we actually discover the wee green bits are pieces of pistachio nuts. It’s only then we ascribe a tag, a flavour, a definition and a brand to them. Good marketing and branding starts out with absolutely nothing, and ends up with something glorious and unique. Bad marketing starts out with something and tries to make it something it will never be. Bad marketing will never separate the wolf from the pack, nor the gem that sits amongst the stones at the bottom of the sea. So, again, what leads to good branding, identifying and selling the idea of a book?

Branding is not one book, as such, but its inception and origin must at least start there.

Every publisher and agent you will contact wants you to tell them everything about your book in one concise short sentence (that’s about 0-12 words, tops, 15 words, and after that I’ll have to kill you). It’s tougher than it sounds. Try it. If you can’t; two things, one, maybe your book needs a sharper focus. Its core idea and branding should shine through after just a few pages; and two, maybe you don’t understand your own book as well as your readers can define it.

Creating something often allows us to overly immerse ourselves in the result of our endeavours, and we don’t see our book’s simple necessity and message. It’s also what a good editor worth their salt is looking for—something clear, unique and different. This is also the true definition of what independent publishing is.

At large publishing houses, often a promising manuscript will have to be read by an editor, then, outside readers, and ultimately, the commissioning editor before it is passed to the sales and marketing team. A manuscript can fall at any of the latter hurdles, but it helps if the first key editor sees the light shining from your manuscript. Too often, set formulas, and prescribed ideas of manuscripts that went before can influence what falls on the commissioning and sales desks. This is why a skilled literary agent who believes in the merit of your work and can see the branding possibilities of your work and can help to push and guide a manuscript through these treacherous waters.

So, how does Jodi Picoult fair in our branding exercise? OK, 15 words max.

“What if I gave birth to Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both equally?”

Holy shit! Just in at 15 words. I think this can still be tweaked, but what the hell. I found my first novel Academy really difficult to market and brand. It was a highly complex, historical and dark novel. My subsequent book was far more esoteric and experimental, and, yet, advanced copies and readers presented its tag and branding within a few days—where cruelty meets beauty—four words.

Branding one book can be difficult. I think it gets easier the more books an author writes. And so, it should if the author is making defined and progressive development in their books and writing style. I am lucky in my time to have met and even befriended a great many authors. One thing is clear when we discuss branding for an author and their books. It takes time. There is no author I know of, and I mean no author, who writes successfully full time and managed to achieve it after a book or two. Those who do manage to write full time have long identified their brand and managed to connect that brand with an established readership after about four or five books whether they have achieved it through mainstream, small press, e-publishing or self-publishing.
 

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog.

Kudos to Publisher MacMillan for Speaking Up, Even if….

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Along with most citizens of Kindle Nation, I happen to believe that some of the big publishers are making a big mistake by trying to control retail ebook prices and raise those prices by 30 to 50 percent. This mistake is compounded, in my view, by the apparent circumstance of its having been arrived at through a collusive, anti-consumer process in which the "Apple 5" of MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, and HarperCollins have been lured by Steve Jobs into trying to fix prices and restructure retail relationships all at once.

That being said, congratulations to MacMillan CEO John Sargent for having the guts and transparency to speak up and address readers directly in this post on the company’s blog yesterday:

Macmillan CEO John Sargent on the agency model, availability and price

I had been critical of Sargent previously for addressing his earlier comments only to authors and literary agents, and consequently trying to position them to speak up on his and his company’s behalf, and this new post is well worth reading. He has not changed my mind, and I doubt he will change the minds of many ebook readers, but we will see. There are dozens of comments that give a good sense of the range of views generally in the ebook pricing controversy, and you may want to add your voice to those of other readers.

There are reasons for  optimism about the way that this will play out, and I see glimmers of hope both in the fact that Random House has yet to join the Apple 5 and in the fact that Sargent cracks open the door of flexibility an inch or two by acknowledging that some ebooks will be priced lower than $12.99 during their "hardcover new release" period. If readers are in a position where they are able to make buying decisions based on price as well as interest in particular books, it will be easier for publishers to gather information about the importance of competitive pricing.

Credit should be given to Sargent for staying away from two "that dog won’t hunt" arguments, at least for now:
 

  • He doesn’t try to claim that these dramatic increases are based on cost.
     
  • He doesn’t try to justify these dramatic increases by saying they will be good for authors or even lead to higher royalties for authors.

One omission that hurts his case involves the actual price that consumers usual pay for hardcover new releases. It is a classic  case of apples and oranges for Sargent to compare the hardcover suggested list prices of $25 to $35 with the $12.99 to $14.99 prices the Apple 5 wants to fix for ebooks. The retailers responsible for most hardcover book sales in the U.S. (Amazon, the chains, and the big box stores) have been discounting most hardcover new releases by 25 to 46% for years, and MacMillan is not taking any steps to limit this discounting. With publishers insisting that no discounting be applied to ebooks, the actual terms of comparison should be between $13-$15 ebooks and $15-$18 hardcovers, which doesn’t quite rise to the level of Sargent’s claim of "a tremendous discount from the price of the printed hardcover books."

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.