Month: July 2014

Authors Behaving Badly and Authors Who Aren't

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This post by J.A. Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing blog on 7/3/14.

So a bunch of legacy authors–many of them smart and who should know better–just signed a letter accusing Amazon of things that simply make no sense.

Some of the usual suspects are at the forefront. James Patterson, who continues to show he has no clue about how his own industry works. Scott Turow, whose tenure as president of the Authors Guild amounted to being a shill for Big Publishing. Douglas Preston, who once supported windowing ebook titles and keeping prices high.

Preston recently said:

“If I were Jeff Bezos, the one thing I would fear most is if authors organized themselves and took broad, concerted, sustained, and dignified public action.”

Konrath replies:

“If I were Jeff Bezos, I would know that legacy authors have no power, because they signed away their rights to their publishers. Patterson, Turow, and Preston couldn’t remove their books from Amazon even if they wanted to. But, strangely, I don’t hear any of them demanding it, or even mentioning it.”

Naturally, I’m going to fisk this letter. Then I’m going to link to a different sort of letter for authors to sign. Hugh Howey and I, along with Barry Eisler and others, have been fiddling with this letter for the last 24 hours, and it explains to readers what’s really happening with the Amazon/Hachette dispute.

 

Click here to read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

 

A One-Man Operation

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This post by Hugh Howey originally appeared on his site on 2/4/14.

So, my publisher in Taiwan is a badass. Yes, a singular badass. Erik runs Nautilus Publishing all by himself. He designs the cover art, writes the blurbs, translates the books, answers the phone, handles email, and tugs handcarts loaded with books to his booth at the Taiwan International Book Fair Exposition.

And everything he touches turns to gold. I have no idea how any of this is possible. I’m in awe of the man. Gobsmacked and awed. The #1 bestselling work of science fiction in Taiwan was translated and published by him, and he’s only been doing this since 2010. WOOL looks poised to overtake that work. There are 50,000+ copies in print. Fifty thousand! And DUST, which he launched last week, debuted at #1 in all of Taiwan.

Seriously. How? Where’s the sales team? Where’s the marketing team? Where is the person who runs to Staples for office supplies? How does he do it?

I grilled him over dinner, eager to divine the man’s secrets. Two books a year? And they’re always bestsellers? Spill it, man.

 

Click here to read the full post on Hugh Howey’s site.

 

10 Mind-Blowing Theories That Will Change Your Perception of the World

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This post by Anna LeMind originally appeared on The Mind Unleashed on 7/2/14. There’s some excellent fodder here for Science Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism and Dystopia authors.

Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean.

1. Great glaciation.
Great glaciation is the theory of the final state that our universe is heading toward. The universe has a limited supply of energy. According to this theory, when that energy finally runs out, the universe will devolve into a frozen state. Heat energy produced by the motion of the particles, heat loss, a natural law of the universe, means that eventually this particle motion will slow down and, presumably, one day everything will stop.

 

2. Solipsism

Solipsism is a philosophical theory, which asserts that nothing exists but the individual’s consciousness. At first it seems silly – and who generally got it into his head completely deny the existence of the world around us? Except when you put your mind to it, it really is impossible to verify anything but your own consciousness.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Mind Unleashed.

 

M. Louisa Locke: From Academia to Authorship, A Dream Deferred

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This article by Tim Knox originally appeared on Interviewing Authors.

Tim Knox: Hey friends, welcome in to Interviewing Authors with Tim Knox, another great show for you today. M. Louisa Locke is my guest, my friend Mary Lou Locke. She has quite the history. She’s a retired professor of women’s history, embarked on a second career as a historical writer and her Victorian San Francisco mystery series is based on the research she did to get her doctorate.

The series features Annie Fuller, a boarding house owner and pretend clairvoyant. The series thus far includes Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, Bloody Lessons and the new book soon to come out, called Deadly Proof.

Now if you are interested in writing historical fiction this is an interview you don’t want to miss. Mary Lou talks about all of the work that she puts in and the research she does to make sure things are accurate. But then again she also talks about things like bringing humor into the story and the mystery and the romance.

So just a really good interview with M. Louisa Locke on this edition of Interviewing Authors.

Tim Knox: Mary Lou, welcome to the program.

M. Louisa Locke: Well it’s very good to be here, Tim.

Tim Knox: To begin let’s hear a little bit about you. Tell us about your background.

M. Louisa Locke: Okay most of my life, career as an adult I was a college professor. I got a doctorate in history in the late 1970s, early 1980s. I spent most of my career teaching at San Diego Mesa Community College, so teaching freshman U.S. History and U.S. Women’s History. That’s what I did with most of my career but I always wanted to write historical fiction. In fact my high school yearbook when it said ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ I said I wanted to write.

I understood by college that most writers couldn’t make a living and so I decided that I would make history my profession and then the hope was that I might be able to write fiction on the side. In many ways that dream got deferred until I was in my late 50s and I was semi-retired. I thought I would give writing another shot. I’d written a rough draft of the book that became my first book years earlier. I published as a self-published independent author and it sold and I made enough money by the second year to retire completely. So I really now have a second career as a full-time writer. It’s really a dream deferred that I really did not expect to get fulfilled.

 

Click here to read the full article (or listen to the podcast) on Interviewing Authors.

 

The Art Of Using Correct Verb Tenses In Your Writing

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This post by Writer’s Relief Staff originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 4/2/14.

Enforcing consistent verb tense in your writing is crucial. Nothing makes an editor’s brain hurt more than trying to read through distracting or confusing verb tenses. If one sentence has so many varying tenses that readers don’t know if you’re coming or going, you can be sure your work is going to end up in the editor’s reject pile.

But choosing the right verb tense isn’t always easy. Let’s start with the basics:

The Simple form (aka stick-figure art)
Past: I drew.
Present: I draw.
Future: I will draw.

Jake drew a picture of Mary.

So simple and easy, you’re probably thinking: Thanks, Captain Obvious. So let’s take it up a notch. What if you want to imply action that ends in a specific time frame? Then, you would use the Perfect form:

 

Click here to read the full post on The Huffington Post.