Month: September 2010

Fair Use Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers)

by

This FAQ, from The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), originally appeared on the EFF site on 3/21/02.

1. What is Fair Use?

In essence, fair use is a limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. The Copyright Act gives copyright holders the exclusive right to reproduce works for a limited time period. Fair use is a limitation on this right. A use which is considered "fair" does not infringe copyright, even if it involves one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Fair use allows consumers to make a copy of part or all of a copyrighted work, even where the copyright holder has not given permission or objects to your use of the work.

2. How does Fair Use fit with Copyright Law?

Copyright law embodies a bargain: Congress gave copyright holders a set of six exclusive rights for a limited time period, and gave to the public all remaining rights in creative works. The goals of the bargain are to give copyright holders an economic incentive to create works that ultimately benefit society as a whole, and by doing so, to promote the progress of science and learning in society. Congress never intended Copyright law to give copyright holders complete control of their works. The bargain also ensures that created works move into "the public domain" and are available for unlimited use by the public when the time period finishes. In addition, as part of the public’s side of this bargain, U.S. Copyright law recognizes the doctrine of "fair use" as a limitation on copyright holders’ exclusive right of reproduction of their works during the initial protected time period.

The public’s right to make fair use of copyrighted works is a long-established and integral part of US copyright law. Courts have used fair use as the means of balancing the competing principles underlying copyright law since 1841. Fair use also reconciles a tension that would otherwise exist between copyright law and the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has described fair use as "the guarantee of breathing space for new expression within the confines of Copyright law".

3. How Do You Know If It’s Fair Use?

There are no clear-cut rules for deciding what’s fair use and there are no "automatic" classes of fair uses. Fair use is decided by a judge, on a case by case basis, after balancing the four factors listed in section 107 of the Copyright statute. The factors to be considered include:

  1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes — Courts are more likely to find fair use where the use is for noncommercial purposes.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work — A particular use is more likely to be fair where the copied work is factual rather than creative.
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole — A court will balance this factor toward a finding of fair use where the amount taken is small or insignificant in proportion to the overall work.
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work — If the court finds the newly created work is not a substitute product for the copyrighted work, it will be more likely to weigh this factor in favor of fair use.

4. What’s been recognized as fair use?

Read the rest of the FAQ on the EFF site. More in depth information about Fair Use issues can be found at Chilling Effects. 

Saturday Chit-Chat: A Plotting Workshop

by

This article, by Julie Leto, originally appeared on the Plotmonkeys site on 4/28/07.

Couple of weeks ago, I asked if it would be okay with the Plotmonkey readers if we devoted a little time to the writers who join us here on the blog. Since everyone seemed amenable, I’m going to hijack the Saturday Chit-Chat for the next few weeks to present my notes from a workshop I recently did for my TARA chapter called “Plotting With Your Pants On.” Ask questions, comments, request examples and clarifications…hopefully the other monkeys will jump in too with their commentary. (Except Leslie, who is off at a conference this weekend.)

Here it is…I’ll be presenting in parts.

Part One

Plotting with Your Pants On

In recent years, two schools of thought have emerged in terms of how writers plot their books. If you’ve been in RWA long enough, you’ve heard the term “plotter” and “pantster.” The plotter being the writer who carefully and meticulously plans out every key point in the scenes, chapters and “acts” (under screenwriting’s three or four act systems, which I’ll discuss next week), does character interviews, exhaustively researches and for all intents and purposes, comes off as anal and left brained.

The pantster, on the other hand, is so named because this writer works from the seat of their pants, rather than from any definitive plan. The original term for this was “misters,” a term coined, I believe, by Jo Beverly when she gave an RWA keynote address and wrote several articles on “Flying Into the Mist,” which basically outlined her process of sitting at the computer and typing away, letting the story tell itself organically without any definitive plot to guide her. This is all very creative, very right-brained, very…literary.

Over the past few years, there has emerged a sort of factioning that disturbs me as a writer. Assumptions are made about the creativity level of one author over the other…and frankly, about the talent.

I believe very strongly that these arguments are ridiculous. But it’s easy for me because I’m a switch-hitter. I “do it both ways” as it were.

Read the rest of the article on Plotmonkeys, and also see Part II. 

What An Indie Hip Hop Act (Or Any Artist) Can Learn From This Self-Published Victorian Era Mystery Author

by

This article, by Israel Vasquetelle, originally appeared on Insomniac Magazine on 9/19/10 and features M. Louisa Locke, one of our own Publetariat contributors.

Too many times, artists of all genres look only to their own immediate world for both creative and business inspiration. The problem is that those same ideas are recycled over and over again by many within that space. I remember when 50 Cent (and obviously artists before him) approached mixtapes as the ultimate way to saturate the market – one locality at a time. That was a phenomenal way for 50 and other artists to break in and make substantial names for themselves. The problem today is that nearly every rapper on the planet now has a mixtape.

Sure, this form of promotion and distribution can still prove to be a means to reach an audience, however, for the most part it’s noise. Today, mixtapes are a dime a dozen. Sometimes taking a step out of your immediate world, what every that may be, and looking at other forms of media can provide the most valuable insight. This is one of the reasons that for years I have continued to cover a variety artists and industry professionals’ stories of success within Insomniac. This has been done in hopes that their experiences will motivate others to find their own path to whatever they’re striving to achieve.

Maids of MisfortuneM. Louisa Locke recently published her first novel, a Victorian era mystery, and has managed to reach an audience despite not benefiting from the resources of a traditional book publisher. She’s not a household name, at least not yet, however, in the era of new media and the technology that makes it these channels possible, it’s not necessary to have a huge audience to find success.

Locke is part of a growing contingency of authors that have chosen to bypass the lottery-like odds that require the need to gain the limited attention of traditional publishers. Instead of chasing a middleman, she reaches a potential audience by utilizing the democratizing services of digital distributors and print on demand services that helped her to make her title a reality.

Artists seeking to get signed by labels should take a page out of this author’s playbook. With a little entrepreneurial spirit and the use of today’s technology, artists can reach their audience and maintain control of that connection. Until, this is something that was nearly impossible to achieve without a significant resources in the form of capital and a barrage of middlemen.Today, it takes talent, hard work and a bit of marketing savviness.

Traditionally, authors with aspirations of making it alongside bestsellers on bookshelves would need to convince gatekeepers of their potential to sell huge quantities. Obviously, only a tiny percentage of those considered ever garner a book deal. Once getting through that level of immense scrutiny, typically, for a new author, that means a small advance and a ticket on a waiting list that could last many months or years. Furthermore, for better or worse, the author’s words are subject to a barrage of changes and revisions by editors. If, and when the book finally hits the market, it will only receive the promotional resources of its publisher for a very short window of time.
 

Read the rest of the article on Insomniac Magazine.

Story Awarded Sixth Place

by

The results are in for a short story I entered this summer in White County Creative Writers Contests at Searcy, Arkansas. I was awarded sixth place for a version of the story I received second place for in an earlier contest. This time the story could only be 1500 words. That meant I had to do some drastic cutting and at the same time keep the basic story in tact. I managed to do just that, but I like the longer version better so that is my post for today. This story takes place during the Depression in the 1930’s.

 

The Unexpected Visitor

　

The two room cabin Rachel Archer rented wasn’t air tight, but it beat sleeping out in the open with the migrants. Sitting at her kitchen table drinking a second cup of morning coffee, she watched the freight trains slow down at the road crossing. Four men jumped on the flat cars and six leaped off. It was an ever day occurrence these days. Homeless and jobless men headed west, looking for work. The men disembarking were on their way back home after finding out there weren’t any jobs to be had. At night, the red and gold glimmer of a dozen or so campfires glowed in the timber near the cabin. Most days, at least a couple poorly dressed, unbathed men, looking half starved, knocked at the back door, expecting her to give them a handout.

Rachel picked the three folded sheets of tablet paper up off the table and reread them. Last week, the letter came from a fellow teacher, Mary Winters. Rachel hadn’t seen her for over a year when they spent a term teaching at the same school seventy-five miles away. She was delighted Mary was coming for a visit. In fact, her friend be arriving any minute.

Looking around the cabin, Rachel anxiously wondered what Mary would think of this place she called home. No matter what condition it was in or how cramped she was for room, Rachel considered herself lucky to have a place to live. The alternative was staying at a student’s home. This way she had privacy, and the door locked so she felt safe at night.

If only she could stop the nightly noises that kept her awake. Lately, the irritating gnawing under the kitchen floor had given her nights of disturbed sleep. What she heard had to be a rat. No mouse would be big enough to make that much racket. Suddenly a horrible thought came to her. What if that rat made his way through the wooden floor while her company was visiting? How embarrassing that would be.

Mid morning, Mary Winters knocked on the cabin door. Rachel greeted her with a hug. "Come in. It is so good to see you."

"I couldn’t wait to get here. I’ve missed our talks this last year," Mary said, returning Rachel’s hug.

"Me, too. Sit down at the table. I’ve kept the coffee pot on so we could have a cup when you got here. I expect you are about wore out from the trip."

"Not really, but the roads make for rough riding with all the pot holes and ruts. I thought that poor truck I hitched a ride on was going to fall apart before the farmer got me here," Mary said, laughing. As she sat down, she looked around the combined kitchen-living room.

"Not the biggest of home, but big enough for me. Beats bunking with one of the students," Rachel assured her. "I wouldn’t have a bit of privacy, and another family’s home life is so hard to get used to for me and them."

"I know that feeling. I spent the last term with a family of six kids. That might not be so bad, but the father made me nervous. I didn’t like the way he watched me all the time."

"Did he think you might steal something?"

"I don’t think that was his problem. I just made sure to never be alone with him," Mary admitted, ducking her head bashfully.

"You must get out of there. You are applying for a different school for this fall, aren’t you?" Rachel asked, appalled at what her friend had been going through.

"Already got a different school close by as a matter of fact so we can visit more often," said Mary, grinning.

"Wonderful!"

A train, traveling east, blew its whistle as it approached the crossing. Mary watched out the window with a frown. The freight train slowed down. Men jumped from the box cars and ran into the trees. "Did you have a good year here at the school?" Mary kept a troubled look as her eyes stayed glued to what was happening out the window.

"Yes, I had a nice size bunch of kids. Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere that didn’t get as much snow in the winter. I hate being snowed in for days on end," Rachel admitted.

"I know that feeling," Mary said in a distracted voice. Another train, headed west, slowed down at the crossing. Men ran along side and jumped on while almost as many men leaped off. Mary shook her head in dismay.

"Is something wrong?" Rachel asked.

"How are you so brave to live this close to the railroad tracks? Hobos keep jumping on and off the trains at the crossing."

"The hobos don’t bother me," Rachel assured her. "They do knock on the door once in awhile to ask for food. If I have extra, I give what I can."

"Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. You shouldn’t encourage that sort of thing. Those men look desperate to me and that makes them dangerous," warned Mary.

"Perhaps, you’re just edgy because of what you’ve been through this last year. Those men are just down on their luck. How about some lunch? This afternoon, I want to take you over to the school and show you around. I have a car. When you’re ready to leave in a few days, I’ll take you back to town to catch a bus," Rachel offered.

After dark, Mary jumped at every little noise outside. Rachel laughed at how spooked her friend was. "Relax. There’s always stray dogs and cats prowling in the night, looking for scraps."

By bedtime, Mary still wasn’t convinced the cabin was a safe place to sleep. A series of sharp yips startled her. The racket came from the hillside in front of the cabin.

"That is coyotes on the run. They’ll be into some farmer’s chickens before morning, I expect," Rachel told her.

The yips came again. "Those animals sound like they’re right outside the cabin," Mary said, shuttering.

Angry voices, some talking loud and others yelling, drifted from the timber to the women through the thin cabin walls. "Sounds like the migrants are into a fight again," said Rachel with a sigh.

"Again," screeched Mary. "You mean this happens often?"

"Once in awhile. Some of the migrants are a rough lot," Rachel admitted, looking at her sideways.

In the bedroom, Mary put on her nightgown and crawled under the covers on the cot Rachel fixed for her. She tossed and turned, having trouble going to sleep in the pitch black room. In a trembling voice, she said, "Rachel, how do you know the difference between a dog prowling outside your door and a hobo?"

Rachel’s voice held humor as she said, "Simple. The dog can’t turn the door knob."

"Honestly, Rachel, you’re awful. That isn’t one bit funny," Mary said, pulling her covers up to her chin. "Do you have a gun?"

"Land’s sakes, no. Just go to sleep, Mary. You’ll be safe enough in here with me," Rachel assured her.

Mary listened intently at first in case hobos lurked outside. Finally, she slept fitfully, dreaming the cabin was surrounded by hobos. They peeked in the windows and rattled the door knob.

Right on cue as soon as the lights went out and the women stopped talking, the rat gnawed with gusto. Rachel held her breath, hoping that Mary didn’t hear the racket. Rumbling snores from across the room convinced her the noise wouldn’t bother Mary. Rachel fell asleep wishing she could figure out a way to persuade that nasty creature to move out from under her home. The sooner the better. She longed for a peaceful night’s sleep.

The next morning, Rachel, while filling the coffee pot at the sink, looked down. There was what she had dreaded for days. In front of the sink was the feared hole, with fresh wood shavings heaped around the edges. Slowly, she opened the sink door. Cowering in a shadowy corner behind a stack of iron skillets, the beady eyed, black rat stared at her.

Horrified, Rachel screamed. She forgot about her sleeping company as she yelled, "Oh my, he’s gotten in." She slammed the sink door.

Startled awake, Mary sprang off the cot. She pulled a butcher knife out from under her pillow. The picture of an unkempt, menacing hobo ran through her mind. At that very minute, he was stalking Rachel in the kitchen.

"Where’s he at?" Mary’s loud voice trembled. Her bare feet thudded on the floor as she raced to the doorway. Afraid for her life, she flattened herself against the bedroom wall to listen.

"Under the sink," Rachel replied in a disgusted voice.

Welding the knife with its blade up in the air, Mary peeked around the door. Bewildered, she looked around the room. Rachel, stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the sink cabinet door. "How – how did he get in there?" She stuttered.

Looking over her shoulder, Rachel spotted Mary’s weapon. "That my knife?"

"If you had a gun, I wouldn’t need this for protection. I slept with it under my pillow," Mary replied sheepishly.

Rachel grabbed the broom, leaning in the corner. She opened the sink door and prodded back and forth with the handle. "Get out of there," she yelled.

Mary clamped her hand over her mouth and shrank back into the bedroom. She waited for the hobo to unbend from his contortious position and spring out of the cupboard. When he attacked Rachel, she’d have to be brave enough to stab him with the knife, but she didn’t know where she’d find the courage.

Suddenly, the rat darted out of the cabinet and ran in circles around Rachel’s feet. Doing a jumping dance, the frantic woman slapped the floor wildly with her broom. Mary peeked into the kitchen. She ducked back out of sight just in time to keep from getting hit when the broom came up over Rachel’s head. The rat headed for under the table. Rachel slapped the business end of the broom down at him, but missed. He hunkered by a far table leg, hoping that Rachel wouldn’t spot him.

Rachel rammed the broom handle at him, yelling, "Out from under the table, you creepy thing."

"He’s under that small table?" Mary cried in disbelief from the bedroom.

"He was," Rachel screeched. "He’s on the move again now."

A fast black blur, the rat, hunkered low and scurried across the floor, up the cupboard and under the wooden bread box lid.

Rachel cried, "Oh, no! He went in the bread box with my bread." Mary, clutching the knife, eased out into the kitchen. "Let him have the bread. You can buy more." Completely befuddled, she looked at the small box and whispered, "How could he fit in there?"

As Rachel turned her back on the bread box to answer, she felt a scratchy, fuzzy upward movement inside her left slack leg. She clutched her thigh and watched the lump continue to move up her slacks past her knee. "Oh, Mary, he’s in my slacks. What will I do?"

Thinking Rachel had lost her mind, Mary said, "Dear, he couldn’t be in there. Don’t you think you should sit down?"

"I can’t do that. I have to get shut of him," Rachel said, giving Mary a disgusted look. She yanked the back door open and ran out into the yard.

Mary followed her. Helplessly, she watched Rachel frantically jump up and down like she was skipping rope.

As the movement continued in Rachel’s slacks leg, she darted around the yard holding her leg tightly and screaming very loud. After she grew weary from the exertion, she looked down at her slack leg and begged, "Please leave. Please leave."

"Poor Rachel. I knew living out here on this prairie had to get to you. I just didn’t realize you were this bad. Please stop bouncing around," Mary commanded, grabbing Rachel by the shoulder. "You must calm down. I promise you there isn’t a hobo in your slacks."

That statement brought Rachel to an instant stop. Panting, she gave Mary a incredulous glare. "There isn’t a hobo in my pants. What are you talking about?"

Mary answered in a small voice. "I thought you thought you had a hobo going up your leg. What do you have in your pants?"

"Believe it or not. What’s in my pants is much worse. It’s a rat."

Mary turned loose of Rachel and staggered backed a few feet. "Really?"

"Really. I knew he was under the cabin floor, but I hoped he wouldn’t gnaw through while you was here." Rachel couldn’t feel movement in her hands anymore. She loosened her grip on the lump. It didn’t move. She shook her leg and cringed as she felt the tickling, furry lump slide down her shin. The motionless rat appeared and lay her shoe. Rachel gave a fast kick, sending the rat toward Mary.

Pale faced, Mary squealed and dodged sideways.

"Thank goodness, he’s dead," Rachel sighed, panting.

"He is, but I’m not sure I’m going to live through all this excitement," Mary said and giggled. "Tell me the rest of today is going to be calmer, please."

"Can’t never tell what will happen next around here," Rachel affirmed, laughing.

　

　

　

Limning A Controversy

by

This article, by Erin McKean, originally appeared on The Boston Globe site on 9/19/10. It will be of interest to any writer who’s ever wrestled over word choice: how esoteric is too esoteric?

It is probably a bit too harsh to call those upset by The Baltimore Sun’s recent use of the word limn in a headline word-haters, but I assume they’d be even more offended by the fancy word misologists.

If you didn’t catch the (admittedly brief) controversy, it went a bit like this.

On Sept. 7, The Baltimore Sun used the word limn in a front-page headline (“Opposing votes limn difference in race”). That same day, Carol N. Shaw sent a letter to the editor complaining about the paper’s use of the word, calling it “unbelievably arrogant and patronizing” to use a word that she, having graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland, didn’t immediately understand.

Although the Sun has used the word limn twice before in headlines (and 47 times, total, in the paper’s history), those previous uses didn’t occasion much, if any, comment. The Sun’s level-headed and pragmatic grammar and usage blogger, John McIntyre, supported the use of limn in the headline, especially as it’s one of the limited stock of short verbs in English that are (as he put it) “neither scatological nor obscene.”

At first glance, it’s hard to see why limn should be considered verba non grata: It’s related, etymologically, to illuminate, and has been in use in English since the 1400s, at first to mean “to paint with gold or bright color” (as in illuminated manuscripts) and then (metaphorically) to mean painting a picture in words. That metaphorical use has proven to be irresistible to book reviewers, especially: Michiko Kakutani, the book reviewer for The New York Times, has been criticized for overuse of limn.

 

Read the rest of the article on The Boston Globe site. 

10 Simple Steps To Increase Your Digital Influence

by

This post, by Jeff Bullas, originally appeared on his site on 9/20/10.

What if you could shortcut the time it takes to be known as a thought leader or an expert or get elected to a position of authority and power or chosen for that important job that you want so desperately.

Just imagine when you wrote a book that it immediately sold in the thousands and maybe even appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Social media is sometimes viewed as just another way of communicating… and yes it is… but it is so much more than that if start to scratch its surface and dive in and start to leverage its power to spread your content globally and amplify the results. It can be used as a tool to promote your company and personal brand that can fast track results that can be astounding and the 10 people mentioned in this article I am sure would testify to that.

Social media is sometimes viewed as just another way of communicating… and yes it is… but it is so much more than that if start to scratch its surface and dive in and start to leverage its power to spread your content globally and amplify the results. It can be used as a tool to promote your company and personal brand that can fast track results that can be astounding and the 10 people mentioned in this article I am sure would testify to that.

There was a comment left on a post the other day and it was both expected and surprising.

“Why are cooperation, organization and collective action treated as new methods of achieving results … There’s nothing new to any of these interactions…the only “new” component is the current social networking apparatus (fb, twitter, etc.) and even these aren’t really new…and those are only variations on communications (primarily involving the internet) which we’ve been experimenting with now for more than a generation…but I worry about what we’re giving up for those advantages. I will worry even more if people unthinkingly give credit to social media for the achievements that would have resulted from their interaction without said media….”

Sure there are some problems with any new media with the fear of  the unknown or the concern with its possible diminishing of face to face interaction. The reality is that it increases real interaction both online and offline through reduced friction to keep in touch, be found and spread your knowledge and opinions in your niche.

I have found it facilitates face to face opportunities and intensifies my personal and professional interaction, engagement and collaboration and  it also breaks down barriers to communication by enabling multiple means to communicate and keep in touch that are both efficient and personal.

In fact my blog and my social media channels provide me with my own  multimedia printing press and marketing platform.

I think what excites most social media early innovators and adopters is the ease with which you can promote your ideas and opinions to large audiences without gatekeepers like traditional mass media costs and barriers that prohibited us sharing without getting permission from editors and journalists or power brokers.

The Influencer Project provides some more insights on what tips and actions you can implement to be digitally influential. Here are some thought leaders’ insights from the Influencer Project and I have added some actions you can implement or start to commence on your digital influence journey.

1. Hang out where your audience hangs out and get to understand them.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jeff Bullas‘ site.

The Language of Drunk(Acrostic Poem)

by

Three sheets to the wind, the boat meanders,
Hammered with repeated blows.
Euphoric, triumph will prevail.

Loaded with accessories,
Annihilates the blue screen of death.
Naggin-bottle, empty and sweaty.
Groggy from exhaustion and blows.
Under the weather deck,
Addicted in a weakened state,
Giddy, as dusk approaches,
Erunk, The past becomes present.

Oiled on troubled waters,
Fried from battling the waves.

Drunk with passion to reach
Rocky land in the far distance.
Under the influence, controlling my fate,
Newcastle, on the horizon,
Knowing, the safety of the harbor.

When Dreams Become Expectations

by

This post, by Nathan Bransford, originally appeared on his blog on 9/16/10.

There is a famous psychological study that shows that people who win the lottery and people who are involved in catastrophic accidents return to the same original base level of happiness after two years. People who make more than $75,000 are barely affected by further raises at all.

Success and fortune is normative. When we experience success, no matter how great, we first experience a blip of happiness, then we get used to it and start looking for what’s around the bend.

And for writers, as previously chronicled, this leads to the "If-Only Game." If I could only find an agent, then I’ll be happy. When you get that agent it becomes: If only I could find a publisher, then I’ll be happy. If only I could make the bestseller list, then I’ll be happy. If only I could have as many Twitter followers as Neil Gaiman, then I’ll be happy. We allow our success to be the new normal and aren’t satisfied even when we reach the next milestone because there’s always another milestone to be had.

But I think there’s another hidden danger for writers that can dampen writerly happiness: using our daydreams to get us through the tough times.

You know how it goes. You face a difficult time while writing, you don’t want to do it, you’re putting in such incredible hard work, and your mind starts drifting to your book being published and taking off and becoming a bestseller and being the next HARRY POTTER only more popular (don’t worry, we’re all J.K. Rowlings before publication) and sitting on Oprah’s couch and building A FLOATING CASTLE IN THE SKY TRUST US WE’LL BE RICH ENOUGH. And you use those dreams to power through the difficult stretches and redouble your efforts.

And that’s perfectly natural! No judging.
 

Read the rest of the post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

Things That Go Bump When We Write – Tough Topics

by

This post, by Tereece M. Clarke, originally appeared on The Freelance Writing Jobs Network site on 9/16/10.

Life is full of difficult, uncomfortable situations. How we deal with those on a personal basis is one thing… how you deal with tough topics as a writer may be completely different. One thing that doesn’t work is avoidance.

Usually at FWJ we have to caution writers about taking on too much work, but the room clears when sensitive subject posts are passed out. Why?

Fear. No one wants to get their name tagged to a controversial subject because they fear they will lose out on future gigs because of it. No one wants to call the woman with breast cancer and talk about the big “C” because they fear they will come across insensitive or nosey. No one wants to offend.

Debra Stang of Confessions of a Word Concubine (love that title by the way) answered a question I posed from a previous post about this very same topic. She had some great words of advice from her own experience:

Perhaps because I’m a medical social worker and get involved in ethical dramas every day, I seem drawn to sensitive topics; for instance, I recently wrote an article for Suite101 about whether a mental illness could ever be considered terminal. I’ve also written articles about abandoning aggressive care for palliative care and about the efficacy of electro-convulsive therapy as a treatment for depression.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Freelance Writing Jobs Network site.

How to Write a Great First Draft

by

Many writers think a first draft of a novel has to crappy. Anne Lamott in her nonfiction book about writing, Bird by Bird, has a chapter called Shitty First Drafts. A recent Murderati blog post was titled “Your first draft is always going to suck.” 

I respectfully disagree. Of course, no first draft is publishable as is, but it doesn’t have to suck either.  There’s no reason a novelist can’t craft a readable first draft that needs only minor revisions in the second round. Every writer has his/her own style, but my personal belief is that if you start your journey with a good road map and a tangible destination, you won’t get lost.

In other words, I believe I write decent first drafts. Which saves me a lot of time and trouble. How do I do it? With a lot of advance planning. These ideas may only be workable for crime fiction, but here’s how I craft a great first draft without any gaping holes or illogical twists:

1. Create an outline. Once I have a basic story idea (comprised of an exciting incident, major plot developments, and overview ending), I start filling in the details. I structure my outline by days (Tuesday, Wed., etc.), then outline the basic events/scenes that happen on each day, noting which POV the section will be told from. For police procedurals (and most mysteries), in which everything happens in a very short period of time, this seems essential. Some people (like Stephen King) tell you not to outline, that it ruins creativity. Again, I disagree. So I fill in as much detail as I can at this point, especially for the first ten chapters and/or plot developments.

2. Write out the story logic. In a mystery/suspense novel, much of what happens before and during the story timeline is off page — actions by the perpetrators that the detective and reader learn of after the fact. Many of these events and/or motives are not revealed until the end of the story. I worry that I won’t be able to convey to readers how and why it all happened. So I map it out—all the connections, events, and motivations that take place on and off the page. Bad guy Bob knows bad guy Ray from prison. Bob meets young girl at homeless shelter. Young girl tells Bob about the money she found . . .

3. Beef up the outline. As I write the first 50 pages or so, new ideas come to me and I fill in the rest of outline as I go along. I continue adding to the outline, and by about the middle of the story, I have it completed.

4. Create a timeline. A lot happens in my stories, which usually take place in about six to ten days. I keep the timeline filled in as I write the story. This way I can always look at my timeline and know exactly when an important event took place (Monday, 8 a.m.: Jackson interrogates Gorman in the jail). It’s much faster to check the timeline than scroll through a 350-page Word document. The timeline keeps also me from writing an impossible number of events into a 24-hour day.

5. Keep an idea/problem journal. I constantly get ideas for other parts of the story or realize things I need to change, so I enter these notes into a Word file as I think of them. (Ryan needs to see Lexa earlier in the story, where?). I keep this file open as I write. Some ideas never get used, but some prove to be crucial. Eventually, all the problems get resolved as well. I use the Notebook layout feature in Word for this so I can keep the outline, timeline, notes, problems, and evidence all in the same file, using different tabs. I love this feature.

6. Keep an evidence file. This idea won’t apply to romance novels, but for crime stories, it’s useful. I make note of every piece of evidence that I introduce and every idea I get for evidence that I want to introduce. I refer to this file regularly as I write, so that I’m sure to process and/or explain all the evidence before the story ends. In my first novel (The Sex Club), a pair of orange panties didn’t make it into the file or the wrap up, and sure enough, a book club discussion leader asked me who they belonged to.

7. Update my character database. It took me a few stories to finally put all my character information into one database, but it was a worthwhile effort. Now, as I write, I enter each character name (even throwaway people who never come up again) into the database, including their function, any physical description, or any other information such as phone number, address, type of car, or favorite music. Now, when I need to know what I named someone earlier in the story or in a previous novel, it’s right there in my Excel database (Zeke Palmers; morgue assistant; short, with gray ponytail). For information about how to set up a file like this, see How to Create a Character Database.

As a general rule, I like to get the whole story down on the page before I do much rewriting, but I’ve learned to stop at 50 pages for two reasons. One, I like to go back and polish the first chunk of the story in case an agent or editor asks to see it. Two, I usually give this first chunk to a few beta readers to see if I’m on the right track. So far, I have been.

 

Look Out Below! Morrell's Exclusive Deal Empowers Authors, Readers, Amazon; Opens Trap Door for Traditional Publishers

by

How big a deal is it when a bestselling author like David Morrell decides to skip traditional publishers altogether and announces that he is going direct to Kindle with his new full-length thriller, which is available today in the Kindle Store along with six of his backlist titles including six that were out of print?

It is a very, very big deal.

I thought it was a pretty big deal in February 2009 when Amazon announced that it had signed Stephen King for a Kindle exclusive book deal with Ur, and I was subsequently jazzed when Anne Rice made noises about going direct to Kindle and Joe Konrath pulled his popular Jack Daniels series from traditional publishers in favor of an exclusive direct-to-Kindle deal for the series’ latest, Shaken (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries).

And I apologize for being a teensy bit self-referential in pasting in this paragraph from p. 92 of the August 2008 paperback print edition of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle:
 

Since I ordinarily come at these things from a bookselling perspective, I’ve been thinking for a while that the time should come soon when Amazon should arrange with Stephen King or J.D. Salinger to release his or her next book for the Kindle 60 days ahead of print, and then keeping doing this about once a month. Of course Amazon already knows that: nothing sells TVs like must-see TV.

After all, this one is not rocket science, and David Morrell is not Stephen King or J.D. Salinger. In fact, for these purposes, he’s better than King or Salinger. Why? Well, King is just that, the King, and his success as a fiction writer is so relentless and otherworldly that very, very few hardworking fiction writers are going to see him as an example.

Morrell? Yes, he has written over two dozen novels, made gazillions from film adaptations, and sold a ton of books. But his success is not so inaccessible that other writers won’t look at his decision to go "direct to Kindle" and decide that maybe they should do the math for themselves.

Morrell is not the first to do this, but he’s the biggest yet to bring out a new title this way. Konrath does not need his Morrell’s validation, but one effect of Morrell’s move is that a lot fewer people are going to refer to Konrath as "an exception" and a lot more are going to start calling him a trailblazer.

More and more authors are going to follow this trail, and they will soon be making more money and achieving more stable success than would have been the case if they had remained in what will increasingly be revealed as the sad, diminishing little world of the traditional publishers. And of course, for every popular author who decides to go "direct to Kindle" there will be thousands more Kindles sold.

Related post: Bestselling Author David Morrell Goes "Direct to Kindle" with 10 Kindle Exclusives Including The Naked Edge, a New, Never-Before Published Full-Length Thriller

 

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

When Author Intrusion Rears Its Ugly Head

by

This post, by Lydia Sharp, originally appeared on The Sharp Angle blog on 9/10/10.

First, I’d like to clarify what author intrusion is NOT. Although they can appear very similar at times, author intrusion is not the same thing as a POV slip.

That little mishap deserves a post all its own. It is also not author influence, which we discussed in a previous post.

So you’re reading [insert title here] and everything so far is just plain awesome. Then you get to the end of a scene or chapter (because this is where authors like to intrude the most often and the most obviously) and you read something like this (extremely generic example here): 

Kathy was in love. Her heart skittered. Real love. Little did she know her luck was about to change.

Dun, dun, DUN! Um… actually, something like that has the complete opposite effect as what the author intended. They try to make a cliffhanger by insinuating a coming threat, but it’s out of context and most definitely out of the realm of the POV character’s current knowledge in that scene. Which means the only place that information could be coming from is the author.
 

Read the rest of the post on The Sharp Angle blog.

Why I Love Crime Novels

by

When reviewers come across a particularly good crime novel, they like to say it “rises above the genre.” They mean to be complimentary of the author, but it’s really an insult to crime fiction, as though the genre was subpar and the writer was able to drag the story to a higher level.

What nonense. For me, crime novels offer some of the best reading on the market. I believe, as many crime writers and readers do, that our fiction confronts the realities of life, across various cultures, in both sensitive and thought-provoking ways.

Crime novels are particularly suited to exploring provocative social issues and showing those issues and attitudes from various perspectives.  Some crime novels are often quite analytical about segments of our society such as illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug use. Other stories highlight cultural and social ills, such as racism, sexism, bigotry, and the dangers of stereotypes. Crime novels let us see the world from perspectives that surprise us and make us think outside our comfort zones.

Crime fiction also offers a way to vicariously win the struggles between good and evil. We get to see the good guys win and the bad guys get what is coming to them. It doesn’t always work out that way in real life, so it’s important to our collective mental health to experience this triumph and justice in fiction and movies.

As crime writers and readers, we get to make sense of things that would otherwise haunt us. We learn why the family next door disappeared one day or what’s really going on in the creepy warehouse across the street. Sometimes that knowledge helps us sleep better and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least we learn one version of the truth.

Novels with well-written protagonists and antagonists bring us to terms with the duality within ourselves. Humans are all deeply flawed, with the capacity for great goodness as well as for deceit, jealousy, schadenfreude, addiction, selfishness, and often worse. When crime fiction heroes—detectives, FBI agents, and prosecutors—possess such flaws, we not only relate to those characters, we forgive ourselves for the same shortcomings. When a killer calls his mother or pets a stray dog, we hate him a little less and remember to look for good qualities in everyone.

Crime novels explore relationships in a way that few other genres can. What better mechanism to test a bond between husband and wife, parent and child, or lifelong friends than to embroil the relationship in a crime, either as victims, suspects, or perpetrators. Similar to natural disasters, the aftermath of a crime can bring out the best—or worst—in humans.

The genre is rich with possibilities for exploring the complexity of the human condition. Victims become predators; predators become victims. A person is guilty, but not in the way we’ve been led to believe. Most of all, crime fiction is full of surprises, and we readers love the unexpected.

Writing complex crime stories that live up to my own expectations—while entertaining readers— is the most challenging and satisfying work I’ve done.

 

Peeling Away The Layers Of Confusion

by
When I first started researching the area of Self Publishing about three years ago, I was struck by the multitude of terms used both writers and publishers to define their own business. We can easily review many self publishing companies and rattle off terms like Vanity Publishing, Subsidy Publishing, POD (Print-on-demand) Publishing, Partnership Publishing and Independent Publishing. I’m sure many readers of Selfpublishingreview can list off a few others.

 
In the development of Self Publishing over many years, the above terms have not only merged, but indeed, the waters of distinction have become pretty muddied. I also have been guilty of interchanging the terms. It just seems that many Self Publishing companies (if I might call any publisher who offers one or more author services at a cost) are often all too eager to add to the confusion—combining romantic notions on the art of the writer with extravagant promises of notoriety and success—simply to promote a form of publishing were money flows to them and not the writer. Let me throw my two cents in on the above terms.
 
Vanity Publishers
 
These are the old timers of the business. Vanity in publishing has become like the ‘C’ word. To me, Vanity Publishers operate on the ‘bait and snare’ model of business. Get the customer interested enough; laud their work to high heaven; demonize traditional publishers; throw a veil of complexity on the publishing process; and like used car salesmen, don’t point out the scratches or the cracked chassis or the full costs until the customer asks how much to make the cheque out for and then hit them over the head with a baseball bat.
 
Sound pretty loathesome? Well, the reality is that many still operate this form of publishing business, and some of them have the highest turnover of self published titles every year. Brazen enough to even advertise four to five digit author fees! Vanity, to me, isn’t Aunt Maple wanting her life story published, nor is it some spotty college teenager thinking he has written ‘The Great American Novel.’ It is a publishing business set up to prey upon Aunt Maple’s and our teenager’s naivete, not their vanity. The vanity lies with the publisher smug and disingenuous enough to keep doing it.
 
Subsidy Publishers
 
Much of my attention two years ago was focussed on Subsidy Publishers in the USA. In the past year, I’ve started looking at UK and Irish Subsidy Publishers. What sets these Subsidy Publishers apart from Vanity Publishers is that, for the most part, they are upfront from the start about what they are offering, in effect—an author service, usually from submission through to design, production, print, final proof and the proverbial 25,000 online available booksellers and anything more is an additional paid add-on. The add-on’s are what is also known as the up sell. You will be emailed about ‘must have services’ which will help your book sell. Their contracts, rights, costs, editing, quality of production, promotion and marketing, if any, and other author services vary widely.
 
Like any serious purchase in life (and I believe a first book is as important as a first car or mortgage) research, shop around, ask a lot of questions, know the depth of service you are getting, talk to other authors who have used their services, and most importantly, be sure this is the right path to publishing for your book. Ignore the ‘Joyce, Whitman, Poe etc., self published’ spiel on the publisher’s web pages, as most of these tales have been debunked and are, at best, true, but this was a time when the common man and woman couldn’t read and hadn’t an arse in their skirts or trousers, and, at worst, blatantly false and misleading. Ignore their ‘listen to what our published authors said about us’ pages on their website.
 
Contact an author on their bookstore page through the web. They usually have web pages set up about their published books and will be far more candid about their experiences with the Subsidy Publisher. A good guide to a reputable Subsidy Publisher is one that actually advertises books on their publisher homepage. Remember, the vast majority of income for a Subsidy Publisher is made from author fees, not selling books!
 
Any author engaging with a Subsidy publisher who has not at first attempted the traditional route of agent/traditional publisher for their book is being very foolish. This has always been my first line of advice to an author. There is a vast wealth of knowledge to learn by pursuing this avenue at first call, pain and disappointment though it may bring.
 
Partnership Publishers
 
Again, this is any publisher who is upfront about a financial input from the author, but with the single significant difference from the Subsidy Publisher; a Partnership Publisher is also financially backing the author for one or more books, essentially, prepared to invest in the author and not just a book. It can also be referred to as ‘shared publishing,’ where there is a contract stipulating little or no advance, but a much larger percentage of royalties, sometimes up to 50%, far beyond the 6 – 12% royalties available from a traditional publisher’s contract.
 
You may be surprised to learn that in the past few years some larger publishers are creating imprints just for this kind of publishing. HarperCollins run HarperStudios, Troubador/Matador and also the London Press run a similar model in the UK, and I believe over the coming year, we are going to see an explosion of this kind of publishing from large traditional publishers caught in the trappings of economic recession, who, in spite of less well-informed observers and critics of traditional publishers, actually do believe in a philosophy of nurturing and investing in first-time raw talent. In the coming months, keep an eye on publishers like Macmillan, Faber & Faber and other such publishers who have strong online presence and are always testing the boundaries of what the publishing model is.
 
POD Publishers
 
I’ve been guilty of using this misnomer. All publishers can be POD Publishers if they are using digital and offset to define the method of printing. POD is a form of digital print technology first used in banking to print out customer statements. Someone saw the potential and introduced it to book printing. It allows publishers to print a single copy or short print run of a title in their catalogue without the need to use an offset print press. Offset printing has been the most common method used for the printing of books with a 2000+ print run. Like any product, the more produced in one run reduced the overall unit price. For the moderate self published books, the average is a few hundred copies, and offset is simply too prohibitive on unit price and storage for this amount. Many traditional publishers use POD (print on demand) to re-issue old back catalogue titles which would not warrant a sizeable print run to make them economical using offset printing.
 
You can bet over the next year that many large publishers will be using POD to print a lot of titles from their back catalogues as commissioning editors, and in particular acquisition editors, all stare with distain at their budgets and cut back on titles and quantities published and printed this year. Again, POD Publisher has become one of those terms which has arisen since the advent of publishers offering author publishing services. It is the tried and trusted method of digitally printing self published, low print-run books, and in fact 80% of Subsidy Publishers use exactly the same printer, Lightning Source, with huge printing facilities in the USA and UK. The remainder use other smaller digital printers, or have invested in their own machines.
 
Infinity Press is one of the few Subsidy Publishers who print in-house with their own equipment. With the advent of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM-a digital print machine, small enough to fit in a retail store), more and more Subsidy Publishers will probably have their own machines, or the buying customer will simply have their books purchased and printer in their bookstore.
 
Independent Publishers
 
All publishers who are not owned by a parent company are ‘Independent’ and make their own business decisions. This has nothing to do with the means an author chooses to achieve publication. If we were to draw a ‘family tree’ and list off all the publishers we can think of—you would probably find it a little disturbing to find out that many ‘publishers’ are often owned by the same large media conglomerate. This was very much an occurrence during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and even today, in the self publishing world, as companies like Author Solutions own Createspace, AuthorHouse, Wordclay and iUniverse.

(This article first appeared in selfpublishingreview.com)

 

This is a reprint from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing.

New Visions For The Book, Part 1

by

This post, by Janneke Adema, originally appeared on Open Reflections on 9/13/10.

A few weeks ago the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University brought together a group of digital humanists of diverse disciplinary backgrounds as part of the unique summer institute One Week | One Tool. The aim of One Week | One Tool was to come up with an (open source) digital tool to aid humanities scholarship. The catch was that this whole process of tool-building could take no longer than a week.

The tool the group came up with and, as part of the deal, actually build, is called Anthologize. Anthologize, as the tagline proclaims, ‘use(s) the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book.’ The idea is that you can grab content from your own blog or other blogs, order it, determine the layout and publish it, both in print and in different electronic formats.

Next to being a refreshing project and a useful tool, what I found interesting about Anthologize is the (implicit) notion that lies behind its conception, namely the idea of what a scholarly book should or can be.

Anthologize it

Let’s take a closer look at a blogpost about Anthologize written by Dan Cohen, the director of the Center for History and New Media. Cohen is a historian who, in his own words, ‘explores—and tries to influence through theory, software, websites, and his blog—the impact of computing on the humanities.’ In the post he wrote to introduce Anthologize, there are a few interesting preconceptions concerning the book. For instance, he begins his post with stating the following:

“A long-running theme of this blog has been the perceived gulf between new forms of online scholarship—including the genre of the blog itself—and traditional forms such as the book and journal.”

This sentence is very interesting for various reasons. First of all Cohen talks about the perceived (and thus not real) gulf between online scholarship, such as the blog, and traditional forms such as the book. Furthermore he states that the book and the blog are both forms of scholarship, they are just different genres. Finally, he refers to how discussions surrounding the scholarly book mostly have been conducted by opposing new online forms of scholarship to traditional print scholarship such as the book and the journal.

Further on Cohen explains more in detail what Anthologize has to offer:

“Today marks the launch of this effort: Anthologize, software that converts the popular open-source WordPress system into a full-fledged book-production platform. Using Anthologize, you can take online content such as blogs, feeds, and images (and soon multimedia), and organize it, edit it, and export it into a variety of modern formats that will work on multiple devices.”

In this sentence it becomes clear that both Cohen and the One Tool | One Week people argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the print format, where in their view books can be delivered in various formats (including, but not exclusively, print) suitable to be read on (and by) various devices. Furthermore, they—I would say consciously—push for a broad(er) idea of what a book can consist off: in their vision a (scholarly) book can, besides text, consist of all kinds of multimedia content. Furthermore, it can consist of material that has been previously online available—hence published—such as blogposts. Thus with Anthologize a book becomes a selection of online available material which can be expanded with new texts and/or multimedia content. Finally, it offers the creator of the book the possibility to instantly publish the book her or himself, without the help of publishers or self-publishing platforms.

As I will state, with this tool Cohen and the people from One Week | One Tool argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the idea of the traditional printed scholarly book. Anthologize forms a, perhaps implicit, critique against connotations that are an intrinsic part of the production process of a scholarly book as it is currently common in print publishing: double-blind peer review and quality control and branding by a reputable press. In this way they try to challenge or by-pass the traditional authorities that determine whether a scholarly book is fit to be published.

The New Age of the Supplement

Read the rest of the post on Open Reflections.