Month: November 2012

The Only 2 Things Authors Ought to be Doing

by

Part of running this blog is answering questions.

Many of these come from authors who’ve decided to dive into the waters of indie publishing. Spurred on by reading Joe Konrath‘s blog or by stories in the press about the contracts signed by e-book superstars, they are ready to take the leap.

(As an aside, this is already a pretty amazing paragraph I just wrote. Compared to the secrecy, dissembling, misinformation and prejudice that surrounded self-publishing during most of my career in the book trades, the turnaround is as startling as it has been rapid. Okay, back to the story.)

 

Now, authors are a lot like everyone else. Some are more technically-minded, others less so.

Some notice and appreciate typography, cover design, fine artwork and a beautiful page. Others either don’t notice or just don’t care about that stuff.

As my first boss, Harry Sandler, used to tell me, “That’s what makes horse races,” and I suppose he was right about that.

But There’s a Problem

When authors decide to self-publish, they naturally try to educate themselves, and that’s a very good thing.

They read blogs, buy books on self-publishing, download lots of free information on the topic, maybe take an online course.

Once they start to focus on actually creating a book, they get wrapped up in page margins, which fonts to use, who is the best print on demand vendor for their project, and myriad other details in the process.

Here’s my message for authors who think they have a book that will actually sell: don’t do it.

The Lure of the Process

Maybe it’s because much of the work of traditional publishers takes place behind a wall. It’s kind of the electrical and plumbing of book publishing.

Editors cut and shape manuscripts, designers create one version after another of the book’s cover until it’s right. Coders and typesetters and printers and binders work on creating the physical product that the book becomes.

Who knew what dark arts were being used to turn lumpy, awkward typescripts into beautiful, readable and enjoyable books?

In the belief that they now have to replace every one of the departments at the publishing house on their own, authors get stuck in the swamps of tutorials, courses, e-learning programs, webinars and action plans. How is anyone supposed to make sense of all this?

Of course no one person can be expert in all these fields. Even if you tried, you would be a novice in several fields at once. You know, the first books I designed didn’t look all that good. After all, they were the efforts of a novice, and we all know how those go, don’t we?

Where To Put Your Energy

Okay, here’s the follow-through. After talking to hundreds of authors, helping launch scores of indie books, sitting on panels and writing for several years on these topics, I’ve come to the conclusion that:

There are only 2 things authors ought to be doing: writing, and marketing that writing.

That sounds a lot like advice you might get if you’re a traditionally-published author, doesn’t it? But with a difference.

Just as the head of a traditional publishing house probably isn’t writing the press releases or setting up his blog syndication, you should focus where your work will have the biggest impact.

That means, unless you want to start a side career as a publicist or a blog technician, you should probably outsource all of that work. Everything. Why?

Because self-publishing does not mean “do-it-yourself publishing.” Self-publishing is not about:

  • picking fonts,
  • creating covers in Photoshop, or
  • learning Adobe InDesign.

No. Self-publishing is about controlling the process and the end result, it’s not about doing it all yourself.

Certainly you need to understand what an ISBN is and how to use it, but you might not need to get much more technical than that.

As long as you have a roadmap, you understand the process and where your books fit, and you have the ability to track and control your costs, you can run your publishing company by hiring the “technical” help you need.

This leaves you to write and market what you write. From everything I know, that’s going to give you the best chance for success. 

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

You Gotta Want It Badly

by

This post, by Dawn Goldberg, originally appeared on her Write Well Me blog. 

No matter how much we want and love to write, unless we’re terribly disciplined or have deadlines (or an editor/agent looming over us), our default activity is not writing. In other words, if we have a spare minute, a break between activities, the rare gift of an unplanned hour, do we write? Or do we fill it in with stuff that "needs to be done"? Or take a much-needed nap? Or call a girlfriend and relax? Or make plans for dinner? 

I will write – after I take a shower and get dressed – and after I make the bed – and after I do the dishes. 

Why do I delay? Why do those things come before writing? 

For one, those other things are calling at my attention, nagging me, so I tell myself that I’ll write better if those nags are quieted. But the list of nags must be quite long because there are a lot of times that I never seem to write. 

Secondly, I might be afraid of writing. I’m not where I want to be in my project. It’s stalled. I want it to be perfect, compelling, and impactful, and I’m afraid it’s not. Or it feels hard to get started, so it’s much easier to do other things.

And – here’s what I’m afraid of the most – maybe I don’t want to write badly enough more than I want to take a shower, get dressed, make the bed, and do the dishes. 

When I was teenager in Texas, I’d get up in the summer early and go run. The heat, no matter how early in the morning, was oppressive. Step outside, and one hits a wall of heat. Yet, I’d invariably get up and go run in that awful furnace. Why? Because I’d rather do that than deal with my parents when they got up in the morning. Running in the heat was preferable to being around my parents. I would rather run.

So what do we need to create so that writing IS the default activity and it is THE thing we would rather do than anything else?

 

1. Be aware of what DOES get in the way. Pay attention. Are they always the same things (chores like cleaning the house, work tasks like returning emails, etc.) that you do instead of writing?

 

2. Understand why you would rather do those things. Are they nagging items? Are they delaying tactics? Are you afraid of something?

 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 6 additional, informative bullet points, on Dawn Goldberg’s Write Well Me blog.

Small Press And Non-Digital Survival

by

It’s a fact of the publishing world that new ventures rise and old ones fail all the time. Running a small press is incredibly hard work, and there’s not much, if any, profit to be found. So many small presses are run for the love of it, with their owners also keeping a full time job and using their own money to keep the press afloat. If a small press can break even, financially, it’s considered a success.

 

Of course, there are those which do actually turn a profit, even if it’s not a full living wage, and those presses could go on to eventually become financially successful ventures. But it’s not easy and by no means definite. With the way the publishing world is currently changing, there are a lot of pitfalls along the way, just as there are a lot more opportunities out there. Never before has the phrase “Adapt or die” been more relevant.

So it was with sadness and some consternation that I read about the closure of Wet Ink the other day. From their announcement:

It is with great regret we have to announce that Wet Ink is closing down after seven years of publication; the current issue, number 27, is the last.

We were hoping for number 28, but it isn’t feasible.

Basically, the reasons are financial. Retail sales are weak, advertising and sponsorship are almost impossible to obtain and subscriptions levels haven’t been enough to make up for the shortfall in other areas. Despite all of these problems we are not interested in only going digital, as it isn’t for us a meaningful alternative.

Now I quite understand that some people are married to the physical artefact and not interested in reading ebooks. I understand that many publishers aren’t interested in learning new skills to engage with the digital marketplace. Even though those skills are easy to learn and implement, I get that some people aren’t interested. And, as a result, the publishing endeavours of those people will die because of it. What confused me more in the case of Wet Ink was this line:

Despite all of these problems we are not interested in only going digital, as it isn’t for us a meaningful alternative.

(The emphasis is my own.)

Only? Meaningful? The implication there is that survival is only likely with a purely digital product, which is simply not true. Digital production doesn’t mean only ebooks. With technology as it is today, it’s quite possible to build any publishing venture into a print and digital product without any compromise on quality and with far lower operating costs. Print On Demand technology is responsible for producing some truly beautiful books and magazines these days, without the high cost of physical print runs. Also, the difference between producing a print product and then adjusting that product for the ebook market is negligible in terms of time and effort.

A press that is producing a quality magazine with high running costs can switch to POD and ebook production quickly and easily and still produce their own favoured high end print artefact, as well as making ebook versions available, thereby maintaining any existing (print) subscriber base and potentially attracting a whole new set of electronic subscribers. That’s adapting to the modern era and giving yourself a chance at survival.

To suggest that it’s death or digital, as in suggesting that it’s a choice between losing money on beautiful books or giving in to those awful ebooks, is misinformed. It’s a perfect example of refusing to adapt, therefore dying.

I feel for the people behind Wet Ink, I really do. It sucks when something you love becomes unsustainable. I quite understand that there are people who don’t want to learn or embrace the new digital ways. But it’s a shame that a well-respected journal like Wet Ink has to die because digital isn’t seen as a “meaningful alternative”. What’s not meaningful about keeping a good thing alive?

Adapting to the modern environment is something people have always had to do. Every industry goes through many changes and old technologies die or change. Publishing, until recently, has been strangely insulated from change. But not any more. It’s very sad to see Wet Ink die, just as it’s sad to see any journal die, thus reducing the variety of publications out there.

I wish the people behind Wet Ink all the best. And I hope other publishers stay on top of this changing world and manage to adapt so their publications don’t die too. Still, even if they do, young turks will come along with new ideas, embrace the new technology and opportunity, and exciting new things will appear. Publishing isn’t dead or dying – far from it. It’s never been more vibrant. 

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Saying “No” to NaNoWriMo

by

This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his blog.

As I write this there are thousands of other writers around the world, madly slaving away at their novel in honor of NaNoWriMo. For those of you who are not in the writing trade, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Here is an excerpt from the “About” page on their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

So that’s fifty thousand words in thirty days or 1,666.666666666667 words per day. Yeehaw! Well, guess what. I’m not having it.

That’s right. I refuse to participate. Why? It’s not because I don’t respect anyone who has the discipline to write nearly seventeen hundred words a day for thirty days straight. And it’s not because it wouldn’t be fun to see if I could create a story from start to finish in that time. And it’s certainly not because I wouldn’t be able to boast in some future tense that I created my bestselling masterpiece in thirty days. No, my reason is much more prosaic. I don’t have time.

It’s All About Priorities
I actually considered participating in this year’s contest. I’m a member of several writers groups which give out daily encouragement to those foolhardy enough to attempt this Herculean task. But you see the thing is, I am into the second draft of my zombie novel and at seventy-five thousand words it really isn’t long enough to begin with, which is a never-ending source of agita. In addition I have committed to posting regularly on this blog and am doing my best to market my published works via Twitter and Facebook. On top of that I regularly offer my time to other writers for anything from marketing and social media advice to written critiques of their works in progress.

Not that I’m complaining! I love what I do.

Looking at the problem practically, however, I would essentially have to put everything on hold for thirty days in order to participate in this contest. But if I want my book ready for publishing in the spring—or let’s face it, summer— I simply can’t afford to take a month off.

What Happens on December 1st?

 

Read the rest of the post on Steven Ramirez’ blog.

Write A Holiday Story

by

This post, by Dawn Thurston, originally appeared on MemoirMentor.

Thanksgiving is a week away and Christmas is not far behind. The holidays resurrect all kinds of childhood memories. Why not spend some time this season committing your memories to paper. Even if you don’t have time to write a complete story, jot down ideas as they come to you during the holidays, ideas that can be developed later into a polished piece. Here are some suggestions to guide your thinking:

 

  • Keep your stories personal. What was meaningful to you? What did you look forward to? Does one Thanksgiving or Christmas stand out more than the rest? Were there any disappointing moments? What are your favorite Christmas carols? What childhood traditions have you carried over to your own family? How are holidays different today than they were when you were a child? What was your favorite part of the holidays? What food did you like? These are just a few questions. The point is, make it your story.
     
  • Anchor your story in its era. People of all ages love the movie A Christmas Story, a memoir-style story of a 1940s Christmas told from the perspective of nine-year-old Ralphie Parker. The film is lush with period detail, and yet its recounting of a child’s joy, longing, and disappointment seems to capture aspects of everyone’s Christmas memories. My children swear their Christmases were just like Ralphie’s, even though they’re decades apart.  Include details that communicate your childhood era. For example, when I was a child, Christmas trees were decorated with colored lights and tinsel. By the time I became a teenager, tiny white lights were all the rage. So were flocked trees. For a brief time during those years, the late ’50s, I think, some folks favored ghastly aluminim trees, standing them in rotating bases and training colored flood lights at them–a kind of bizaare extension of the Space Age, I guess. Your childhood years had their own set of holiday fads. Red Ryder BB Guns? Cabbage Patch Dolls? Slinkies? Get them in your story.
     
  • Include sense details. 

 

Read the rest of the post on MemoirMentor.

Indie Author Marketing – Get a Blog, Right? Wrong…

by

This post, by Renee Pawlish, originally appeared on her Master Wordsmith blog.

Did that title get your attention?  Let’s face it, indie author marketing is tough work (indie author marketing success even more so).  And so many indie authors will tell you that you need a blog for effective marketing.  Well, yes and no.  I’m actually all for having a blog, ifyou are doing this for the right reasons, and you are avoiding some key mistakes. 

Having a poorly designed blog or one with little content can do just as much damage as good for you as an author, so you must think about why you have a blog in the first place.  I’ve touched on some of these points before, and I’ve added some new things here as well…

Indie Author Marketing – Reasons To Have A Blog

The primary purpose of blogging, for indie authors, is to help you sell books (unless you’re running a blog like this one that focuses on helping indie authors with writing and marketing).  Here are some of the things a blog can do for you:

  • it can connect you with potential readers
  • it can build your audience
  • it can showcase your writing skills
  • it can generate book sales
  • it can position you as an expert in your genre
  • it can generate traffic to your author website
  • it can give you credibility as an author (great if you want to get an agent)
  • and more…

Okay, you’ve probably heard of all of those and could add to the list.  And you may be asking yourself, I do these, so why isn’t it working?

Indie Author Marketing – Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Working

As I meet more and more indie authors, I see numerous things that they do with their blogs that actually harm their blogging efforts:

  • having a poorly designed blog
  • spelling or grammatical errors
  • blogging inconsistently (this doesn’t encourage people to come back because they see you’re inactive)
  • only blogging about your books (and saying buy my books all the time)
  • little or no book information
  • not linking your books directly to Amazon or other selling sites
  • not having a niche (you have to target your audience and write to them)
  • sharing your posts with those that aren’t in your target audience (I see this on Triberr a lot)

Now that we know the good and bad about our blogs, what can we do to correct things?

Indie Author Marketing – The Big Key – Your Blog Design 

 

Read the rest of the post, which gives further detail on each of the above bullet items, on Renee Pawlish’s Master Wordsmith blog. 

Priorities And Time Thievery

by

This post, by Bear Weiter, originally appeared on Booklife.

 

I’m not a write everyday kind of guy. I wish I was, and I have been at times (working on a novel seems to bring that out of me). I read comments from other writers who put in at least a few hours every day (if not more), working on their craft. I kid myself at times by thinking “they’re professional writers, that’s their job,” and while there’s a kernel of truth there, I know they all suffer from the same hecticness and interruptions as I.

 

 

The ideal is just that—writing for several hours a day, uninterrupted, churning out so many thousands of words at each sitting. During these times there would be no email, or phone calls, and no other projects demanding their share of time.

The reality for most of us is that life can’t be put on hold. There’s family, and work, other commitments, and other distractions. For me specifically, I work for myself—which means I need to be responsive to clients if I wish to continue working for myself. My work is full of ups and downs (busyness wise), and when I’m busy it’s best that I remain busy.

It is during these times when you need to realize what your priorities are. Is writing—or some other creative endeavor—critical to you? Is it worth sacrificing at least a little time to keep it going? I assume if you’re reading this then it is—I know it is for me.

There’s the big solutions—organize your time, plan, prioritize, keep lists, block out your calendar, etc. Or, you can take smaller steps—take snippets of time from other activities: write while watching TV (if this is family time, join in on the TV watching but wear headphones so you can focus on your work), while eating breakfast or lunch, during your commute (please not while driving!), in bed before falling asleep or when you just get up. Steal a half an hour here, an hour there, whatever you can get away with.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Booklife.

What Is Steampunk?

by

This post is from Steampunk.com.

 

This is a good question that is difficult to answer.

 

 

To me, Steampunk has always been first and foremost a literary genre, or least a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy that includes social or technological aspects of the 19th century (the steam) usually with some deconstruction of, reimagining of, or rebellion against parts of it (the punk). Unfortunately, it is a poorly defined subgenre, with plenty of disagreement about what is and is not included. For example, steampunk stories may:

– Take place in the Victorian era but include advanced machines based on 19th century technology (e.g. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling);

– Include the supernatural as well (e.g. The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger);

– Include the supernatural and forego the technology (e.g. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, one of the works that inspired the term ‘steampunk’);

– Include the advanced machines, but take place later than the Victorian period, thereby assuming that the predomination by electricity and petroleum never happens (e.g. The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling); or

– Take place in an another world altogether, but featuring Victorian-like technology (e.g. Mainspring by Jay Lake).

“It’s sort of Victorian-industrial, but with more whimsy and fewer orphans.”

– Caitlin Kittredge

There are probably plenty of other combinations I’ve forgotten, but that’s steampunk as a genre in a nutshell. Steampunk has also cross-pollinated its way into other genres, so there is steampunk romance, steampunk erotica, and steampunk young adult fiction. I haven’t spotted any steampunk picture books yet, but I won’t be surprised when I do.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Steampunk.com. 

Call Me Chicken

by

This post, by Gayle Carline, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

One thing all fiction writers must do is build tension in their stories. No matter the genre, the main character must have a goal and be thwarted at every turn from achieving that goal. The cop wants to catch the serial killer, but is given false leads. The sleuth opens a cabinet that holds an important clue, but is conked over the head with a teapot. The handsome cowboy is set to ask out the cute barmaid, but is told by her psycho-stalker roommate that she’s a lesbian.

It’s always something.

One of the things I have to do is put my P.I. in dangerous situations. I don’t like danger myself. I don’t walk down dark alleys, don’t snoop around where I’m not wanted, and have never been in a physical fight, unless you count the time my mare bit me and I smacked her with the hose. I don’t even open other people’s medicine cabinets when I’m visiting, unless I’m looking for dental floss to dig out that piece of overcooked brisket wedged in my molar.

Honest, that’s all I’m looking for.

If I made a horror movie, it would last exactly five minutes. When I heard the weird noise outside, I would not go out looking for the source, carrying a candle and wearing a negligee. For one thing I don’t own a negligee. What I would do is call 911, turn on all the lights, gather every weapon and sharp object in the house and barricade myself in the back bedroom. And… credits roll (police sirens in the background).

So putting Peri in the line of fire is not easy for me. I like Peri. I don’t want her to be injured or killed. But I’ve read armchair detective stories and I’m just not as interested in the action if the main character is not in the thick of things. Secondary characters in danger don’t get me as involved as when it’s happening to the protagonist. So Peri must go where I don’t want to tread.

Apart from my own fear, I confess, when I begin to write a scene where Peri is going down the dark alley or snooping around, I am actually afraid that the scene is going to get out of my control and Peri will be boxed into a corner with no escape. I have written plenty of scenes where I want them to go in one direction and my characters revolt and march off the opposite way. What if the danger doesn’t go the way I plan? What if the villain is a step ahead of her and she walks into an ambush?

I know what you’re thinking: just rewrite the scene. (Okay, you’re probably thinking I’m loony as a Toon, too, but let’s leave that for another post.)  

I’d like to think I can rewrite the scene, but I can’t. I mean, I can, but the original version will haunt me. All the time that I spend revising that chapter so that she gets a phone call just before she opens the door, which delays her enough to figure out that she’s being set up, I’m still thinking: nice dream but I know she really walked straight into that gunfire. 

So when I begin an action scene, I decide on the outcome first. Is Peri left unconscious? If she gets shot, where? Once I know how she will survive, then I imagine rewinding the scene and playing it backward, so to speak. This way, I can direct the action from the start so it ends my way.

After all, I can’t depend on my characters to do it for me.

So, writers, how do you thrust your characters into the line of fire? And readers, how much do you trust an author to take you to that edge without driving you over it?

Am I a “Real” Author If I Only Publish Ebooks?

by

This post, by Jim Edwards, originally appeared on Dvorah Lansky‘s Book Marketing Made Easy.

For some authors this is a real concern. They write books to gain credibility and readership as much or more than they do to make money. Being perceived by others as a “real” author is very important to them, and for good reason. However, the world of “books” has changed dramatically in the last decade. What made you a “real” author just a few short years ago may not represent what can actually make you a legitimate author today.

What is a book?

A book is a unique publication with a beginning, middle and end aimed at a specific target audience. Length can range anywhere from a few dozen pages to over a thousand. Readers can enjoy real books either in physical (print) format, or in electronic format on any of the hundreds-of-millions of ebook readers, iPads, and computers in the world. Real authors publish their work as ebooks and don’t even think twice about it.

What counts as a “published” author?

In the “old” days, a published author had a traditional publishing house and everything that went along with that (including tying up your rights for eternity, doing all your own marketing, and earning a pittance on each sale). NOW, a published author is someone who has their book for sale where people can find it and buy it (online or offline).

Amazon Changed The Game

I got my first taste that the world of publishing had changed in the late 1990’s when I was still selling real estate. I’d written and self-published a book about how to sell your house yourself, and was using it to help build my business. A home seller in the area told me “Selling Your Home Alone” wasn’t a real book, not because I didn’t have a publisher, but because she couldn’t find it for sale on Amazon!

 

Read the rest of the post on Book Marketing Made Easy.

The Smartest Thing In Publishing Is To Be Flexible

by

This post, by Kassia Krozser, originally appeared on the fortykey publishing blog on 11/5/12.

The only certain thing in publishing nowadays is that everything moves really fast. If you should describe the actual situation with three adjectives, which ones would you pick and why?

I’m not so great with adjectives, but here are three words I think describe the current state of publishing:

 

Uncertain. Nobody knows what the next year will bring, much less the next ten years. In 2007, people were brushing off digital as "less than 1% of our business". Or, it wasn’t something that needed serious attention. Today, trade publishers (U.S., particularly) are seeing approximately 20% of their business coming from digital sales. The thing is, the changes in the print/digital selling mix are uneven.

On top of that, *nobody* really knows how big the digital marketplace is. If you poke around outside traditional publishing, you know self-publishing is seeing huge gains. But what only gets attention is a small portion of that self-publishing market. Beyond the stories that make the headlines (or invite scoffs and skepticism among certain ranks of publishing insiders), there is a a massive marketplace. Now maybe most of those people aren’t making a fortune, but they are disrupting traditional publishing channels.

Exciting. Technology is making it possible for us to reimagine storytelling. It’s also allowing us to get books and other things we read (the list is so long) into the hands of more people than ever before. Right now, I am particularly interested in how innovation plays out in the world of education. The State of California is making a huge push toward open source digital textbooks. This is going to encourage new entrants into the marketplace, and, if history holds true, they won’t be thinking of textbooks in the same way established players do.

Entrenched. One major problem I see across all types of traditional publishers is a desire to maintain business as usual. This is completely understandable — this digital thing is so new, so uncertain, and, frankly, the print model is still working very, very well for most publishers. But, as you note, everything moves really fast these days, and if anyone is stuck in the mode of "that’s how we’ve always done it", they will be left behind.

That sounds harsh, but the publishing industry (as we know it) doesn’t control "publishing" the way it once did. Or maybe it never did, but it seemed that way. Either way, there are smart innovators out there ready and able to fill voids left by publishers who are too busy standing in place to take advantage of how this market is changing every day.

Could you point out an example of innovation in publishing that is worth to look at in the next future?

 

Read the rest of the post on the fortykey publishing blog.

More Thoughts On Libraries And Ebook Lending

by

This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files on 10/31/12.

On Thursday of this week, I’ll be at the Charleston Conference appearing in a conversation organized by Anthony Watkinson that includes me and Peter Brantley. Brantley and Watkinson both have extensive backgrounds in the library and academic worlds, which are the milieux of most attendees at this conference. I don’t. I am being brought in as a representative of the trade publishing community. Watkinson believes that “the changes in the consumer area will break through into academic publishing and librarianship.” I am not so sure of that.

 

I am imagining that what creates interest, and concern, among all librarians about trade publishing has been the well-publicized tentativeness of trade publishers to serve the public libraries with ebooks in the relaxed and unconcerned manner with which they have historically been happy to sell them printed books. Big publishers have expressed their discomfort with ebook library lending in a variety of ways. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, up to this writing, have declined to make ebooks available to libraries at all. HarperCollins instituted a 26-loan limit for ebooks with libraries a little over a year ago. They received apparently widespread — certainly loud — criticism when they announced the policy, but it seems now to have been accepted. Penguin and Hachette delivered ebooks for lending and then stopped. Now both are putting toes back in the water with experiments. And Random House raised their prices substantially for ebooks delivered to libraries for lending.

So, six for six, the major publishers have struggled publicly to establish a policy for ebook availability in libraries.

The concern, as I’m sure my conversation-mate Peter Brantley will point out, extends to what rights libraries have when they obtain ebooks. I’ve expressed my belief before that all ebook transactions are actually use-licenses for a transfer of computer code, not “sales” in the sense that we buy physical books. When Random House declared the opposite in the last fortnight — that they believed they sold their ebooks to libraries — it only took Brantley a wee bit of investigation to find that Random House’s definition of “sale” didn’t line up with his.

Of course, his doesn’t line up with mine. I believe (he’ll correct me on stage in Charleston, if not in the comments section here, if I’m wrong) Brantley accepts the one-file-transferred, one-loan-at-a-time limitation that has been part of the standard terms for libraries since OverDrive pioneered this distribution over a decade ago. That control enabled ebook practices to imitate print practices (except for the “books wear out” part, which Harper was addressing with its cap on loans). Without it, one ebook file transfer would be all that a library — or worse, a library system — would need of any ebook to satisfy any level of demand. The acceptance on all sides of that limitation says clearly to me, without resort to any other information or logic, that there is an agreement — a license — that the library recipient of an ebook file accepts in order to obtain it.

People who spend a lot of time with libraries and library patrons are quite certain that the patrons who borrow books and ebooks often also buy books and ebooks. (Library Journal offers patron data that supports that idea.) Although library services are many-faceted and not primarily designed to serve as marketing arms for publishers, the libraries themselves see the ways in which they aid discovery by their patrons.

And they also see the patrons that couldn’t afford to buy the books or ebooks they borrow and therefore wouldn’t and couldn’t read them if they weren’t available in the library. Since these patrons become part of a book’s word-of-mouth network by virtue of being able to read it, it looks like this behavior by publishers is not only anti-poor and anti-public, but also counter to the interests of the author and the publisher itself. (In fact, most publishers acknowledge the importance of libraries to the viability and marketing of the midlist although that, until very recently, was adequately addressed with print alone.)

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Publetariat Observes Veterans Day

by

Publetariat’s staff is off in observance of Veterans Day, which is a national holiday here in the United States and is also observed in some other countries as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day. No new content will be posted to the site until 6pm PST on Monday, 11/12/11, when we will resume our normal editorial schedule. Members can still post to their own Publetariat blogs, and the forum will remain open, but new registrations, moderated comments and contact form messages will not be processed during this break.

(no need to click through – this is the end of the post)

Want To Be Read 100 Years From Now? Here’s How.

by

This post, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her The Business Rusch.

 

So, you want to be an artist. You want to be one of those writers everyone has read, even though you’re long dead. You want your work in libraries, on bookstore shelves, and in digital format. You want professors to assign your work, or kids to sneak that “crap” that everyone decries but everyone loves.

There are two very simple ways to do this:

 

 

1. Write a lot of good stories. Not beautiful words. Good stories. Remember, fiction gets translated into a variety of languages, and in those languages, your original words get lost. Only stories get translated, stories with great characters, great plots, and unforgettable moments. I wrote a lot about this over the summer. Start with my post titled, “Perfection.”

2. Establish Your Estate Long Before You Die. Your copyrights will outlive you. That’s how they’re designed. If you don’t know what I mean by this, then get yourself a copy of The Copyright Handbook, and start reading it now. You don’t sell fiction; you license copyright. Learn what that means, and learn how it will impact your estate, your heirs, and your legacy.

You’d be surprised how much of the entertainment news you consume is about estates. You’d be surprised how much of the books, movies, games, and television you consume exists because someone handled an estate well or someone handled it poorly.

Or didn’t have an estate at all.

Don’t be like our friend Bill Trojan who, long before he died, would say about his (considerable) estate, “I don’t care what you do with it. I’ll be dead.”

My husband Dean Wesley Smith fought Bill for years to get a will, because Bill had some very collectible books and extremely rare pulp magazines, things that had only one or two copies left in existence. Dean thought it a crime for those copies to die with Bill, and badgered Bill into getting a will.

Bill finally executed one, an annoyingly inadequate one, that caused us a lot of legal problems just to get validated. Dean blogged about this entire saga (including the legal issues) earlier this year. If you want a scare story about estates and what you might leave your heirs with, read this.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Business Rusch.

When Bad Ideas Sabotage Killer Concepts

by

This post, by Larry Brooks, originally appeared on his Storyfix site. 

Also known as, “The Attack of the Whopper Coincidences.”

Or, “Four Plot Points and a Funeral.”

Or, “Dancing with the Deus ex Machina.” 

A good story is very much like a romance.  Not terms of genre – what you’re about to read applies to all genres – but in the sense that the relationship between concept and execution, as well as writer and reader, is a love story.  

It’s about initial attraction and chemistry.  Gratification, fascination, and soon, a deeper meaning and purpose. 

It always starts out so… well.

Then, ultimately, it becomes about something else, too.  Like, living together.  The pursuit of harmony.  Always the intention, rarely the case.  Because the deeper you go, the harder it gets.  The deeper you go together, the more it relies on work instead of the hormones that got you into this.

And that’s where the wheels come off in many stories.  But you don’t see these stories… because they don’t get published.  Not matter how sexy the original idea.

There are so many ways to mess up a great idea.

The first is to actually try to turn an idea into a story… before you turn it into a compelling concept.  Maybe your idea arrived fully cooked as a viable concept, but that rarely happens (which begs the question, can you tell the difference?). 

You can plan or you can pants, but the search for story is an inevitable part of the romance between you and your original idea.  Skip that courtship phase and you’re likely to end up with a broken heart.

A story is never built on a single idea. 

Launched, perhaps, but the ensuing exposition is nothing if not a series of subsequent and subordinated narrative ideas – decisions – along the way. 

Each one is a chance to make or break the whole dramatic enchilada.  Thus…

The second realm of story death comes with the inevitable challenge of making those ideas work.  It’s a qualitative thing, the very essence of art (and you thought art was the sum of all those pretty sentences)… the difference between superstar authors and the rest of us.

This is where so many writers trip up, falling victim to the siren song of the original idea (which, you soon realize, was only in it for the money from that first sizzling glance across a crowded room…).

The mechanics of exposition can kill your concept.

Because this is where writers get desperate.  They are in a corner (one into which they have written themselves) and they know it… so they jump the shark.  They change lanes from credible to unlikely, from necessary to eye rolling.

Happens all the time.  I know this because I read unpublished stories for a living.  And I’m here to tell you, it’s a deal killer.

An effective story needs to change along the way to the climax.

It needs to evolve.  Hidden things need to be unearthed.  Old assumptions need to be overturned.  Surprises need a door through which to enter the narrative.  

Your hero needs to discover things.  Find out stuff. 

This is the machine of your story.  The backbone of dramatic exposition.  Every story is a machine, and it is the concept that defines the scope of what the machine needs to accomplish along the way. 

Each story beat is a connection, a weight-bearing moment of forward-motion. 

And too often, writers make those connections using the prize from a Crackerjack box or a page from an old comic book instead of a finely calibrated fire-forged, finely milled, ingenious steel bolt welded solidly, logically into place. 

 

Read the rest of the post on Storyfix.