Al Katkowsky: The Book As App

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Earlier this week I went to see a talk given by author Al Katkowsky at the Apple Store in Santa Monica. If you’re wondering why an author would be speaking at the Apple Store, it’s because Al has published his book, Question of the Day, in both print and iPhone application (a.k.a. “app”) editions, and the app edition has been hugely popular. It seems that in addition to self-publishing in print, ebook and podcast/audiobook formats, indie authors now have yet another publication opportunity at their disposal.

Question of the Day began life as a simple, workplace pastime. Al would pose a question to co-workers, providing fodder for discussion. Eventually someone suggested Al turn his questions into a book, and he did, classifying them on a scale of “Light” to “Heavy” based on how serious or easygoing each question is. Once the manuscript was finished, he spent about a year querying on it. He received a lot of encouragement but no offers, and started thinking about alternative routes to reaching a readership.

Al was a fan of Urban Outfitters, which stocks books in addition to clothing, home furnishings, electronics and miscellany. He approached an UO buyer, who was very enthusiastic about Question of the Day and expressed interest in carrying it. Al knew that the timeframe from contract to release for a traditionally-published book is a year or longer, and he worried that UO’s interest might wane if he couldn’t get the book to them right away. So he self-published 1,000 copies through Cafepress (correction – Al only ordered a few samples through Cafepress) and returned to the UO buyer, who sent the idea of carrying QotD in UO stores up the chain of command. Unfortunately, the answer was ultimately “no”.

Disappointed but far from defeated, Al arranged for distribution through Baker & Taylor, and booked a launch event in a Borders store. Following the launch, Al partnered with a speed dating event, in which the content of his book was used for easy icebreakers between the speed daters. Next, he gave a talk to an 8th grade Social Studies class whose teacher had been using the book for class writing prompts.

Al was a bit at loose ends and unsure what more he could do to build a bigger audience for the book. Then a friend suggested he consider releasing the book as an iPhone app, since the iPhone was hot and only getting hotter, and app sales were growing exponentially.

After making some inquiries among Apple- and tech-savvy friends, Al commissioned a developer to turn QotD into an app. Where you’d page through the book, in the app you can look up questions based on how “light” or “heavy” they are, and also get a little help from ‘prompters’: brief suggestions to get your mind working. When Al added videos of sample responses to the app in May of this year, interest in the app increased dramatically. Since then, the app has had 500,000 hits and 80,000 downloads, and has been in the top 25 of all book apps ever since. Al has continued to promote the book and app via speaking engagements in Apple stores, at conferences, and elsewhere.  

Al suggests that authors who intend to release their books as apps think outside the box of a typical ebook, which is just static text on a screen. Adding multimedia capabilities, such as sound and video, will make a book app much more appealing. Any interactive functionality you can add that makes sense in the context of your book is worth considering. For example, the next edition of QotD will add the capability to answer and share questions, and the edition following that one will add social networking functionality, enabling users to “see” when someone else is using the app and, if the other party is interested, discuss the questions and their answers with one another. However, Al warns against relying too heavily on hyperlinks as a means of introducing interactivity to your app, since once you’ve escorted a reader out of your app via an internet link there’s no guarantee he’ll come back.

Al thinks a combination text/audiobook with bookmarking capabilities would be a popular type of book app. Users could read the text onscreen, then turn on a voice to pick up reading where they left off when they need to get in the car, or any other time reading the text onscreen isn’t practical.

Since apps can be updated at any time, and iPhone users love getting updates that add new value or functionality to apps they’ve already purchased or downloaded, Al strongly encourages authors to release a large chunk of their books for free, one chapter at a time. “Hook ‘em in,” he says, “then charge them to finish reading the book.” In an app you can display a message to the user asking him to please pay a fee to continue reading, and the user can do so immediately right on his iPhone or iPod Touch. Alternatively, you can release an updated version of the app that includes the final chapters and can only be downloaded for a fee. If your content is good and you’ve provided enough of it, conversion rates from the free app to the paid app should be high.

Hiring a developer to create your app can be costly, and will definitely require some research and an interview process. There are some new companies popping up to offer simple, affordable app creation services as an alternative; I’m starting to investigate these and plan to report my findings in the future. But you may be wondering why it’s worthwhile to release your book as an app in the first place, given that considerable time, effort and money can be required.

The first reason is that you’ve created a podcast version of your book, and would like to sell it as an audiobook through iTunes. Currently, the iTunes store has an exclusive deal with Audible whereby only audiobooks released by Audible can be sold in the “Audiobooks” department of the iTunes store. Any other audiobook must be released as a podcast, and audiobooks are lost among all the other podcasts offered on iTunes. However, there’s no exclusive deal governing the “Books” department of the app store. Your audiobook app can coexist and be listed right alongside NYT bestsellers.

The second reason is to enlarge your book’s exposure. The books of authors who publish through Smashwords are already available to iPhone/iPod Touch users who use the Stanza reader app, the books of authors who publish through Shortcovers can be read by users who have the Shortcovers app, and the books of authors who publish in Kindle editions can be read by users who have the Kindle reader app. However, those authors’ books aren’t listed right on the iTunes site, or in the app store. Users have to find the books by browsing the virtual shelves inside each respective reader app, and each virtual store has thousands of titles to choose from. Your book won’t be discovered by any users who don’t have the appropriate reader app installed. If you publish your book as an app, however, users don’t need to have any special reader app to find or read your book, your app isn’t hidden inside another app. You still have the same promotion and marketing challenge as any other author, but you’ve removed a barrier to discovery.

The third reason is to make your book into something more than static content. If your book could benefit from embedded video or audio clips, embedded game experiences, or social networking connectivity (like Al’s book), publishing in ebook or audiobook format alone will not realize your book’s full potential. Imagine a novel about a fortuneteller that’s presented with various interactive divination games (e.g., tarot card readings, crystal ball, the I Ching, etc.) embedded in the app. Consider a fantasy adventure novel with an interactive map of the story world included. Imagine a cookbook with step-by-step instructional videos embedded, or a foreign language phrasebook with audio clips that demonstrate proper pronunciation. In books with invented languages or obscure technical terminology, the author can put a pop-up glossary at the user’s fingertips. In a young adult novel where the hero must solve a series of puzzles or riddles to prevail, the author can present the same puzzles and riddles for the user to try his hand right alongside the hero. The possibilities are endless.

One more reason to consider releasing your book as an app is the fact that any author or publisher of content sold by Apple can book speaking engagements in Apple stores all over the world. According to Al, most Apple stores are built with a presentation area somewhere in the store, and store managers have been put on notice that they should be offering speaker events to store clientele at every opportunity. You will be welcome to demonstrate and talk about your app because your talk will essentially serve as an advertisement to buy more stuff from Apple. While Apple will not allow you to put out a press release to publicize your Apple store speaking engagements—they are all about image and brand control—, you can publicize them on your website, via Facebook, Twitter, and any other means you’d ordinarily use to publicize a speaking engagement.

There is one caveat of which authors should be aware before releasing their books as apps: trade publishers don’t tend to view apps as books, even if the app began life as a manuscript. Once it’s an interactive app, it’s possible publishers no longer recognize it as something they can release in print, ebook or audiobook formats. If you have a manuscript or self-published book, ebook or podcast audiobook which you hope to sell to a mainstream publisher, it’s probably unwise to release it as an interactive app in the current publishing climate, but hopefully, that will change in due time. Al has found that despite the great success of his QotD app, he’s not seeing a lot of interest from publishers or literary agents because it no longer looks like a book to them, and they don’t quite know what to do with it. Al is confident that in time, publishers will come to see apps as a publishing opportunity.

For now, if you’re an entrepreneurial-minded indie author who intends to stay indie, apps can be yet another valuable avenue for building readership and selling books.

Learn more about QotD at http://www.questionofthedaybook.com. 
 

Marty Qualls reviews Scraps

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  10/21 Marty Qualls gave 4 stars to: Scraps: Fictional Fragments by David Luck
bookshelves: fiction
status: Read in October, 2009

I really enjoyed the scenery of the book set in Colorado and Wyoming. It was just like coming home for me! (born and raised in Cheyenne and a regular visitor to Colorado when growing up). Especially enjoyable was any reference to the cold, wind, weather, smells in and views of the mountains. Characters in the stories crossed my mind several days after reading about their life experiences, so my "intrigue factor" was on high alert as I thought about the well drawn out characters and puzzled over how complex they were (but yet in many cases, they were in simple settings, leading simple lives). Reading the stories was very entertaining and emotional. I would like to read more of David Luck’s work and will be purchasing his "Men Are" to see what his unique perspective is on us men!

Viral Loop Chronicles Part 1: Forget Everything You've Heard About Book Publishing

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This article, from Adam Penenberg, originally appeared on Fast Company on 10/22/09.

Forget everything you’ve heard about book publishing.

For instance, recently at a party to celebrate the publication of my latest book, a number of people asked, "Is your publisher sending you on a tour to promote your book?"

Dicl;dsCKWDfce9qdck. Sorry, I was laughing so hard recounting this story that I hit my head on my keyboard.

These friends/colleagues/acquaintances/random people I met were inquiring about Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. It tells the stories of the fastest growing companies in history–Skype, Hotmail, eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many more, all of which grew virally. By amassing such huge numbers of users without spending a dime on marketing, they were able to create multimillion and in some cases billion-dollar businesses practically overnight. They did it by creating a product that its users spread for them. In other words, to use it, they had to spread it. Never before in human history has it been possible to create this much wealth, this fast, and starting with so little. I’d like to think Viral Loop is partially inspirational. If they can create billion-dollar companies from scratch, why can’t you? (Read an excerpt here and here.)

Most people have a vision of publishing that ceased to exist years ago: writers of yore traipsing bookstore to bookstore across America to offer readings and scrawl inscriptions to the handful of strangers who bothered to show up. It sounds so quaint. Alas, today’s publishers have little patience for such low-yield marketing efforts. Building a writer’s career isn’t part of the equation. It’s all about the bottom line. If legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, who patiently guided some of our nation’s greatest writers (Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe) were alive today, he’d probably be working in public relations.

Publishers don’t pump serious marketing money into a book unless they know it’s a hit, even after coughing up a six-figure advance. They don’t commit to ad budgets in contract negotiations and are loath to spend a dime on authors’ Web sites, travel, or any other expenses. That’s because so few of the books they publish actually "earn out," that is, sell enough copies so that the author’s advance is covered by his or her sales. A book that sells enough copies to justify an author’s advance is about as common as a kind or thoughtful anonymous comment on Gawker.

Read the rest of the article, and continue to follow the series, on Fast Company.

Theme As Technique

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Today we continue Mark Barrett’s series on theme, which originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. You can read the first entry in the series, ‘Axing Theme’, here, and the second installment, Thinking Theme For Fun and Profit, here. 

On Monday I introduced you to Thomas McCormack and his devastating critique of the way theme is taught. On Tuesday I talked about how emphasizing theme and ‘important’ literary works actually discourages some (if not many) students from reading and learning. A helpful reader provided more ammunition in the comments.

The consistent theme in these arguments is that theme should not be deployed as an analytical tool. Readers, students and teachers have more insightful measures by which to judge literature and writing — a sampling of which awaits you in the conclusion of Mr. McCormack’s document. Too, at the highest levels of academia criticism is always in flux, meaning determinations of theme are not simply potentially speculative but inherently transitory.

In short, using theme to reveal meaning in a story is like using divining rods to discover water underground. Many people swear by it, but it has no basis in fact. Theme as a creative technique, however, can be a powerful means of organizing and expressing ideas. By understanding theme in this context we not only learn how to use it appropriately, but also gain insight into why theme is poorly taught, and how theme can be so easily turned to nefarious purposes. (A subject I’ll tackle tomorrow.)  

Now, suppose you and I are going to build a house, a car, or almost anything you can think of. In our collaboration we will have functional requirements to discover (it must not blow up, it must turn on when you press a button), we will have usability requirements (it must not be confusing, it should provide positive feedback when operated), and we will have aesthetic requirements (it should be cool, sexy, retro, whatever.) Unfortunately, completing these design tasks only reveals two new obstacles. First, there are a lot of requirements to organize. Second, there is no inherent consistency to the requirements.

For example, if we’re making an outdoor grill we could satisfy our aesthetic requirements by putting different stickers or paints on the same functional model. Or we could make different functional models with varying capacity and burners, yet present all models with a common paint scheme. Or we could emphasize usability and give everyone a Model-T grill: basic and black. We might even decide which choices to make based on a set of priorities, but that would only kick the can down the road. How do we know what our priorities should be?

The answer, as you might imagine, is to employ theme as an editorial tool to help determine which requirements to keep or emphasize, and which to omit or diminish in importance. But even here we need to be careful, because all themes are not equal. Proportionality in theme is also critical to our ability to integrate theme in any instance.

For example, it would be tricky to make an outdoor grill based on a theme such as ‘war is hell.’ I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but the end result would probably be so obvious as to make it no longer a war-is-hell grill but a statement in which the theme detached from the object. Yes, the grill might function as a grill, and particularly so as a conversation piece (hold that thought for tomorrow), but the theme would exist apart from the grill’s functionality. Meaning we could just junk the grill and go with the message, or vice versa.

(Note that this is exactly what happens when a student proposes a theme that seems preachy relative to the story being analyzed. The student goes too far in trying to find deeper meaning and ends up under hot lights, accused of moralizing. When an author writes a preachy story the same dynamic is at work. In such instances theme — meaning a message the writer is trying to communicate — separates from the story. The end result is that story dies at the hand of theme. And yes, you should consider that a cautionary tale.)

Scaling our thematic grill goals back, then, we could probably embrace themes like ‘the future,’ ‘masculinity,’ or even ‘heat’ in a way that allowed us to harmonize the elements of our grill without beating cooks over the head with a message. (It’s not that we’re trying to hide our theme per se, just that we don’t want it to separate from the object.)

In picking the theme for our grill we could simply make one up, but we are not obligated to conjure out of thin air. For more focused inspiration we could look to the intent of our object (cooking), or to knowledge about people who might want to experience or use that object. Because we are making a grill, and because we intend to sell it, we might distill marketing data about grill sales into a generic customer profile: male, mid-forties, overweight, meat-eating, stubble-faced, beer-can-crushing, etc. This profile, in turn, might suggest a variety of possible themes that could be used to harmonize our grill requirements.

If we chose ‘masculinity,’ for example, that one word and its attendant (real or imagined) traits would become both a filter and editorial point of focus. Each part on the grill could be shaped and machined to look burly. We could also comb through our usability and functionality requirements and make thematic choices there: eliminate a few conveniences to make the grill seem more rugged (and save on manufacturing costs); engineer the grill’s functionality to require more muscle (firm detents on the burner knobs, a heavy lid).

Ideally, at the end of the design and manufacturing process, our theme would be indistinguishable from the final product even though it informed every aspect of that product. We would not want someone looking at our grill to see our theme standing apart because that would mean we failed to integrate and harmonize our requirements. (In that case, again, we could have saved ourselves the trouble and simply put up a sign.)

Yet this is exactly what students are asked to do with stories. It should also be clear from this example that the easier it is for a student to identify a theme, the more likely it is that integration of theme into story was bungled. Ideally, integration of theme in a fictional work should be indistinguishable from the work itself, yet students are routinely told that they should be able to make such distinctions.

(It is possible for thematic obviousness to be a marketing goal in itself. A line of light-weight Cute Tools in various shades of pink would be a fairly obvious appeal to cultural norms of femininity. It is also possible for thematic obviousness to be an artistic goal, as demonstrated in the works of Andy Warhol. It is not, however, possible for thematic obviousness to be a storytelling goal because storytelling requires suspension of disbelief, where thematic obviousness destroys suspension of disbelief. Again: bad storytelling makes theme apparent while good storytelling makes it organic to the whole — yet students are routinely told that being able to identify a theme is central to being able to appreciate the best literature.)

Earlier I suggested one of the things we might do, short of harmonizing our imaginary products thematically, would be to paint them all the same. Readers steeped in marketing may have noticed that this projected our grill-making operation into the realm of branding. Not surprisingly, it’s possible to inject theme into branding, just as we used it to help organize the product requirements for our grill.

In fact, it could be argued that branding in its purest form equals theme at its most abstract. If our product line is widely varied — say, appealing to beer-can-crushing goons as well as more genteel shoppers — specific themes may actually thwart our objective (sales). Acting as both a filter and editorial tool, theme in the guise of branding can be used to unify elements of our business and products such as color, type style and logo design, which will in turn inform all resulting advertising in all media.

In instances where a product line is more focused, theme as branding can be extended to the look and feel of objects, and I think Apple is a good example of this. I can’t tell you what the theme of Apple’s products is — it may or may not have been articulated in-house — but when I see an Apple product I see it as thematically connected to other Apple products, which reinforces Apple’s branding. Even Apple’s preference for look and feel over usability is thematic: control systems that are unintuitive for novices ultimately provide a deeper sense of community and mastery as users becomes more familiar with them.

In these examples we can also see that theme as a technique owes nothing to sophisticated language, deeper meaning or valuation. Theme is quite happy to operate apart from concerns about worth, merit, the human condition or anything else we might want to saddle it with. This doesn’t mean we can’t employ theme in these ways, just that these are not inherent aspects of theme as a technique.

Which brings us back to storytelling and literature. As I said in my first post on theme, I gave up chasing art for something more useful to me as a writer: craft. By extension, viewing stories as machines that are made up of parts and subsystems which function to create specific intended effects means there’s little difference between our grill-making venture and any story I chose to write.

In the same way that theme can be used to edit and filter the requirements and components of our grill, we can employ theme in storytelling. But note: this does not alter theme in the least. Theme is not suddenly more important or powerful in fiction than it is when used in grill-making or branding. Theme is theme. It is a tool of creation and it is used in the same way in all instances: to filter and edit and harmonize.

For example, let’s say our grill business falters. You go back to what you were doing, I slink off to a shabby one-room hovel situated beside a polluted waterway. Night after cockroach-infested night goes by until the last lightbulb fails. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep for fear of being eaten. I am in agony.

Fortune smiles on me, however, when a typewriter and 500 sheets of 20-pound paper fall out of a passing truck. Seized by a desire I cannot name I set to work, determined to tell my story. Maybe it’s fiction, maybe it’s non-fiction, maybe it’s the stuff that guy and Oprah had to apologize for. It doesn’t matter. All I know is it’s ultimately going to be about one thing: pain.

That’s how complicated (not) theme is as a storytelling technique. Every word, every scene, every aspect of what happened in my document can be filtered and edited by one over-arching thematic point of reference — yet this says nothing about the subject matter or the facts or the events I might choose to portray.

(The previously-mentioned requirement of thematic proportionality doesn’t just apply to grills. If you are determined to write a story based around the theme that war is hell, you pretty much know going in that you’re going to have to show a lot of war and a lot of hell. War-is-hell short stories, to say nothing of war-is-hell flash fiction, usually end up about as convincing as a war-is-hell grill. Then again, if you’re going to include a lot of war and a lot of hell, to what extent does adopting war-is-hell as a theme impact the final product? The answer is that it doesn’t because you’re simply replicating the subject matter. Writing a war-is-hell story with a war-is-hell theme is as helpful as designing a grill with a grill theme. The first conclusion you should draw here is that theme should vary in some way from the object it relates to. The second conclusion you should draw is that asking a student to elicit the theme of a war-is-hell story is pointless.)

To continue the example, imagine that what I write gets published, pipelined into schools, force-fed to students, then analyzed by students and teachers alike. What are the odds that any of those down-steam analysts are going to figure out my theme, particularly if it varies from the subject matter? And to what extent is what I wrote even reducible to the original theme? Is my story, loaded with characters and events, really only pain? If so, why did I put all that other stuff in there? Why didn’t I just write PAIN on a single piece of paper? Or make PAIN posters and put them up all over town? More importantly, why didn’t I skip writing the story altogether and deal with my pain?

The question is: If pain is my theme, is pain the meaning of my story?

The answer is: No.

Pain as theme is simply one tool I use to shape the end product, just as character selection, setting, dialogue and every other aspect of storytelling should conspire to create a whole. The blindingly obvious proof of this is that I can neglect theme entirely as an author and still complete my project. I don’t even need pain as a theme in order to write about pain.

If you haven’t read Thomas McCormack’s essay, I urge you to do so. You’ll see clearly how theme as an analytical tool foisted on students is entirely misplaced, while theme as an editorial tool used by authors makes sense.

In the same way that a compass can tell you where you’re going, but not where I have been, theme seems only genuinely useful to the person employing it.

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry.

Calloused Hands.

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I’ve been spending the last 2 weeks trying to spruce upp our NM home for possible sale.  The stucco repairs are never-ending — one of the joys of owning a home made of dried mud!  The more I rub stucco into cracks, the more places I notice need patching as well.  It reminds me of something…..

Editing.  During my recent re-formatting battles to convert my first novel, The Red Gate, into a general e-book format, I began seeing cracks that needed patching.  At what point does a writer consider their work finished?  I’d love to hear from you laboring authors out there.  I know there must be a few clues that the end has been reached, but somehow, I’m still missing them.

My hands are getting calloused, and so is my imagination!  This coming Saturday, I’ll write up my observations about what to do while waiting, since waiting seems to be an author’s primary pastime.

How To Get Your Book Reviewed: Online Book Reviews

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This article, from Annette Fix (with research assistance from Carrie Hulce), originally appeared on the W.O.W. Women on Writing site in 2007.

As each month goes by, there is more and more evidence that proves the internet has taken the publishing industry and pulled the dusty rug from beneath it. The Web 2.0 Quake as shaken many of the industry giants right down to their ink and paper foundations. And, bit-by-bit, the hallowed halls of the untouchables are crumbling around them.

In case I’ve instilled unnecessary fear into your heart about the impending publishing apocalypse, I’ll reassure you by explaining why and how the power is actually in your hands now.

With most major magazines and newspapers cutting their book sections, book reviews are moving back into the hands of the people—the readers, not the critics.

The power-house reviewers: Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist, and ForeWord will still sit atop their jeweled thrones—at least for a little while longer. But readers are done relying on the dictators for the “good book” nod.

One of the biggest influences in this trend has been Amazon.com, the behemoth of book reviews. This is the one-stop shop where an author can find reviewers for her book. It is, by far, the greatest resource to target reviewers, in any genre.

When you are ready to seek reviewers, keep in mind that your goal is to look for the badges for “Top 10 Reviewer, Top 50, Top 100, Top 500,” etc. These are the most prolific reviewers who are serious about their craft. You will find that their reviews are carefully and thoroughly written, much more comprehensive than what you will find posted by the casual reader. The Top Reviewers love books, are avid readers, and are committed to reviewing. Many of them also work with other sites to submit their review content, so being reviewed by these reviewers will give your book visibility on other sites as well.

There are two ways to seek out the best reviewers for your book. It is research, so yes, it will be time intensive. First, you can do a search for books that you know are similar to the book you have written. Cookbook? Historical romance? Dog-Training Guide?

Scroll through the reviews and look for the Top Reviewer badges. The names are clickable links to the reviewers’ Amazon pages. Once you go to their page, click on “Browse profile” and you will be able to see their lists of interests.

There is also another feature, once you are on their profile page, scroll down and see every review they have ever posted on Amazon. Read their reviews. See if you like their voice and their style. Are they overly generous with their stars or stingy? Do they give useful and fair commentary?

After you’ve analyzed their reviews, if you believe they would be a good fit, look for the contact information in the “Your Actions” box in the upper right corner of their profile page. There are several options, but look for the “Send this person email” link. When you click on it, it will open in your mail program or if you hover over the link, the email address will appear in the lower left corner of your browser frame.

Read the rest of the article, which includes numerous links to online reviewers, on the W.O.W. Women on Writing site.

Thinking Theme for Fun and Profit

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Today we continue Mark Barrett’s series on theme, which originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. You can read the first entry in the series, ‘Axing Theme’, here.

Yesterday I posted an important excerpt from Thomas McCormack’s book, The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist. In the excerpt, Mr. McCormack dismantled the way theme is commonly taught in schools and colleges, and I urged readers to forward his essay to others so that we might collectively stop this abuse.

Today I’m going to explain why this is not simply a goofy idea but actually important. By which I of course mean that it involves making money.

If you remember my post referencing the 90-9-1 Principle, you’ll recall that 90% of the people interested in anything are passive about their interest. They want to watch movies, not make them. They want to watch cooking shows, not cook anything. They want to read books, not write them.

In the publishing business, this 90% is variously known as The Audience or Our Customers. Yes, writers read other writers’ books, and editors read books other than the one’s they’re editing. But when it comes to the people who buy and read books and generally provide the medium with a return on investment, that’s the 90% who are not interested in writing books or even in analyzing books. They just want to read.

So it stands to reason that booksellers and book writers would want as many such readers as they can get, and they would want those readers predisposed to enjoy the process of reading, as opposed to, say, hating it. Which is why the way theme is often taught to students is a serious question, and one that deserves addressing.  

In fact, it seems to me there is no better time to look at every aspect of the publishing industry than right now, while it’s collapsing under its own weight. (As an aside, when was the last time that an established entertainment medium went through a rebirth akin to what’s happening in publishing? The music business is certainly being transformed by the internet in similar ways — and faster — but revolutions in the music biz are common: wire recordings to vinyl to 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 to whatever. In publishing you have the printing press…27 million years of human history in which nothing changes [give or take]…then the internet.)

I understand that everyone is in a hurry to discover the next big bandwagon, but there are some serious structural problems with the book business. One of them is the fact that of all the entertainment mediums in existence, no audience gets hassled more than people who read books. And all that hassling — at all levels — drives people who might otherwise enjoy books to look for alternatives like fast food, heroin, overthrowing the government and watching television.

The whole thing starts in grade school. Not in individual homes (unless your parents are snobs), but in the educational system that kids encounter across the entire country. Some teachers, administrators and librarians believe that children should read specific material so they will be properly educated. Others believe that children should be encouraged to follow their passions, because promoting and preserving a life-long interest in learning and knowledge is critical to the long-term health and welfare of that student.

These battles rage up to and through high school, and there are valid points on both sides. You can’t have everyone reading comic books and nobody reading about global events and history: that leads to stupidity. But you also can’t force everyone to read Shakespeare and Chaucer and allow no one to read popular fiction because that leads to hating school and hating reading. (My own personal belief is that anyone who does anything to discourage a student from reading anything should be shot.)

Somewhere in late junior high or high school, a new wrinkle is added to this tug of war between being educated and being interested. At some point a teacher assigns a book report which is not only about what happens in a book, or about who wrote the book and when, or even about how that book fits into the history of books. At some point someone asks what a given book means.

And this is where the real trouble begins. Because moments earlier each student was thinking, “Well, I enjoyed this book,” or, “Gosh, this book is super stupid,” and all of those reactions were honest if perhaps also youthful and maybe even uninformed. But now something different is in play. First, there’s the possibility that there is a right answer, meaning the student can be wrong. Second, this new meaning may have nothing to do with emotion and existence, “It made me feel cold,” and everything with thinking and abstraction: “It made me wonder about global warming.” Third, the reader’s subjective experience and all that went with it is now being superseded by objective meaning as a point of educational focus.

As Thomas McCormack notes: the student is now being asked to perform an autopsy, rather than being asked to understand a living being:

The remaining counts in the indictment—that the professors’ “theme” hunt misleads the student about, indeed positively shields him from, a good book’s best reward—is something that would be corroborated by many adults looking back on their school days. Picture the student, told that he must derive an abstract generality that “accounts for” and “explains” all the major details of a story. He figuratively dons his white clinician’s smock and knuckles down to his grim task. He lays the tale out on a slab and begins his joyless dissections—not in search of its beauty of feature, grace of movement, charm of voice, vitality of nature, but in search of its ‘idea’; in search not of its feeling but of its ‘statement’; not of what it does, but of what it ‘says’.

When he has finished his examination, he then must write up his report, a tricky business requiring that all the x’s, y’s, and z’s be encompassed in the algebraic formula. In the end it no more conveys the meaning of what’s on the slab than the coroner’s report that starts, “A well-nourished Caucasian female of one hundred eighteen pounds, aged between twenty-five and thirty . . . ”

Again, if the 90-9-1 Principle is even remotely accurate, then 90% of the people who are being subjected to this kind of teaching have no interest in going on to become English majors or professors or authors. If they enjoy reading at all, they enjoy it as a reader. Yet during much of their ride on the educational conveyor belt these readers are being bombarded with the idea that there’s more to writing that what you get out of it — particularly if what you get out of it is enjoyment. Writing is IMPORTANT and MEANINGFUL and other big words that don’t get hung on movies and music and TV and video games until you’re in college and decide you want to do that to yourself.

Worse, writing has the fewest (meaning none) bells-and-whistles of any medium. It’s got nothing going for it other than content, while at the same time the one thing the educational system seems determined to do is make sure that content is not fun. Imagine how much less enjoyment kids would have playing video games if they had to anatomize the theme of a game in an MLA-certified five-page paper. This is the minefield the publishing audience must navigate until they grow into adults with free time and disposable income, at which point a certain percentage of them decide to blow that time and money on anything and everything other than books.

And yet….even as we admit that books are inherently boring as objects, we also know that you get things from books that you can’t get anywhere else. Catch-22 comes to mind — and particularly so given how impossible it would be to turn it into anything else even if you set your mind to it. The depth, complexity, breadth, richness and power of a good novel or biography destroys everything in its path.

Amazingly, the necessary skill to access a book is taught to most children before they are taught anything else, yet somehow swaths of kids ultimately decide that reading for entertainment isn’t for them. I wonder why that happens?

The movie business faces none of this. Television, unarguably the greatest brain-destroying invention since the cudgel, gets little notice in school, even as legions of marketing weasels plot daily how to inject corporate brand loyalties into the minds of three-year-olds. Music is subjected to none of this: in fact it’s a relief to students who have to study music precisely because no one makes them think it to death. Interactive entertainment doesn’t even exist on the curriculum radar: it’s all fun.

My point here is that our audience — the 90% who are simply interested in reading books — is inevitably smaller than it should be because of this intellectual gauntlet. If this were any old time I wouldn’t dare to dream of changing the status quo. But this isn’t any old time: it’s a pivotal time because the status quo is already changing. Today we have an opportunity to go beyond transformation for its own sake to making changes we should have made a long time ago. Because of the way the internet is impacting publishing, we have an opportunity to revisit the entire evolutionary process by which itty-bitty babies become book-reading kids become book-buying adults become book-buying parents.

If readers are always important then they’re even more important when the publishing industry is hurting. Every reader is one more customer that we can satisfy or disappoint. Richard Nash gets it. It’s all about the readers, and I don’t mean the damn devices.

Yes, what I’m talking about would be a revolution. But the internet is a revolution. Teachers are inevitably going to have to adapt to new technology and writing that uses that technology, so we should be trying to help them and their students avoid fumbling live grenades like theme if they haven’t been trained in demolitions. No child should go to school and learn that reading sucks. Chemistry can suck. Or biology. Or gym class for all I care. But not reading.

That’s why I’m asking you to think about theme and the damage that it’s doing to our readers. I mean, our customers.

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

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Now that my online bookstore, Booksbyfay Book Store, ( www.booksbyfaystore.weebly.com) is up and running, I have found out everything is in working order. I made a book sale. Now I need to get busy and advertise, advertise, advertise.

I proudly tell you my farm house was built in 1899. I’ve lived here eighteen years in November. My husband and I knew this home and the surrounding land was for us the minute the real estate agent showed it to us.

With Halloween coming up I am reminded as with most homes as old as ours, there has to be quite a history if our house could talk and maybe even a few deaths within these walls. Once in awhile in the dark of night, the groans of this old house settling could easily be mistaken for someone sharing this abode with us. There’s what sounds like soft patter of bare feet, step by step, coming up the stairs in the middle of the night, putting a creaking pressure on the old steps The sound of one of the bedroom doors opening or closing can be quite loud because the doors tend to stick. We’ve gotten used to the noises and our wild imaginations. One of us usually whispers, "Spooks."

I love a ghost story now and then. The stories from the area of haunted homes and cemeteries that are believed to be true are fun to read. Do I believe everything I read? No. Am I going to some haunted cemetery in the middle of the night to prove someone wrong? Definitely not!

"A Teapot, Ghosts, Bats & More" ISBN 1438233698 is a collection of short stories I wrote for contests. Actually, I have written three short story books filled with contest entries that won from second to sixth place. When I was dividing the stories up into categories, I found I had written quite a few spooky stories.

Take for instant, the story about the ghost in the Iowa barn, Jacob’s Spirit. That came about because on a summer day years ago when we lived in the trailer house by my parents, two women stopped and talked to my son. They wanted to see this place the older woman had called home. Of course, many of the outbuildings she remembered had been gone along time as well as a grove of walnut trees in the pasture. The old barn, she remembered well, was the reason for a younger brother’s death around 1900. He was helping roof the barn, fell off, broke a leg and died of blood poisoning. He was buried at the back of the pasture, but the lady wasn’t sure of the exact spot. Perhaps, the parents had thought to start a family cemetery, but years later they retired and turned the farm over to a son. With the passing of time, whatever they used for a marker disappeared, and no one remembered about the grave. How my story plays out is what happened to my husband and I one winter when we had some mischievous sheep. Can’t tell you anymore without giving the plot away. Wait until Thursday and I will put "Jacob’s Spirit" on my blog for Halloween.

　

Axing Theme

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Mark Barrett recently published a fascinating series of posts on the subject of theme on his Ditchwalk site, and has graciously given his permission for the series to be reprinted in its entirety here on Publetariat. This first post in the series appeared on Ditchwalk on 10/18/09.

You were right not to trust theme. You knew it in your gut, but you couldn’t prove it.

Today I am going to give you the proof. If you are liberated by it, as I was when I first came across it two decades ago, I ask you to join me in putting a stop to this fraud. I did not have the internet available to me then but I do now. And I have the generous permission of the author to spread this dismantling of theme far and wide.

Thomas McCormack is a playwright. He is also the former CEO of St. Martin’s Press — a position he rose to in little more than a decade after entering the publishing industry as an editor. While at St. Martin’s Mr. McCormack wrote a book titled The Fiction Editor, drawing on his long experience in that capacity. Composed of an essay and supporting chapters, The Fiction Editor addressed storytelling not from the point of view of criticism or marketing, but solely as craft.

Included in the book (later revised in a second edition and reissued as The Fiction Editor, The Novel and the Novelist), was a chapter called Axing Theme. Which did exactly that:

Let’s start calmly: Each appearance of the word ‘theme’ in a literature appreciation textbook should be marked with that yellow crime-scene tape. Samples of the way ‘theme’ is taught should be sent to Atlanta so the Centers for Disease Control can get on it.

Is your heart leaping? Is your mind saying, “Yes!” If so, read on:

I seriously pursue this crusade here, albeit in condensed, almost outline, form, because I believe that what’s being done in classrooms stunts, and even kills, the ability and appetite of many of the best students. This deprives our globe of much talent that would otherwise find itself in writing, teaching, reading . . . and editing.

My relief at being liberated from theme by Mr. McCormack has never left me. As a writer and storyteller it is one of the most important events in the development of my craft. After searching in vain recently for the text of Axing Theme, I changed keywords and sought out Mr. McCormack himself. Finding him on his playwriting website I wrote to ask if I might post the contents of Axing Theme in order to further his crusade.

His response was immediate and unequivocal:

I have no objection to your posting the piece wherever you will — the primary motivation behind my writing that book was not to get rich but to promulgate some helpful things I’d learned in many years of association with storytelling.

The version Mr. McCormack sent me is from the Second Edition. It was retitled as ‘Theme’ and Its Dire Effects, but it is still the weighty axe I remember, honed to a razor’s edge and swung with might.

When you have finished reading it, if you agree it is the proof you always sought, I would like to enlist you. Please take a moment, today — right now — to forward a link to this post, a link to Mr. McCormack’s doc, or both, to anyone who is:

    * In college or high school
    * Teaching writing or criticism in any discipline at any level

I mean this assault to be viral. I want every student and teacher on planet Earth to get this document. Enough is enough.

Swing the axe.

 

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry. 

Stop Apologising (for the things you’ve never done)

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This post, from Joanna Young, originally appeared on her Confident Writing site on 10/22/09.

One of the defining features of confident writing is that it’s not apologetic.

Yes, I know it’s good to signal that you’re human, that you’re not perfect, that you have doubts and concerns and things you’re insecure about just like the next person. That’s part of being engaging, warm, human. It’s part of making connections, and writing with rapport.

But we can take that too far, to a point where the writing starts to become apologetic. I seem to have been doing battle with this over the last few weeks, and I’ve been jotting down some thoughts on its various guises:

 

8 Tell-Tale Signs that You’re Being Over Apologetic:

1. Your writing is littered with verbs in the passive voice (and I don’t just mean a few, I mean littered)

2. There’s an explicit apology in the text (when there isn’t anything to apologise for)

3. You spend as many words justifying what you’re saying as saying it

4. There are too many words: too much wrapping, too many abstract words, too much clutter, all getting in the way of the bit that really matters (the point)

Read the rest of the post, which includes 4 more signs that your writing is apologetic and explains how being apologetic weakens your work, on Confident Writing.

Opertion EBook Drop now Has 201 Participating Indie Authors

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Operation EBook Drop has past the 201 Indie author participation level. The program donates eBooks via links and coupons to our brave deployed coalition forces throughout the world. For further informtion on the program or to join, go to:

blog.smashwords.com/2009/09/smashwords-supports-operation-ebook.html

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The DumbLittleMan Guide To Comma Use

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This post, from Steven Aitchison, originally appeared on DumbLittleMan on 10/23/09.

If all the punctuation marks got together for a party, the party wouldn’t come alive until the comma arrived. The comma is such a versatile little animal. Often abused, under-used and over-used, the comma can be a readers best friend, but a writer’s worst enemy.

Whilst the full stop is the red light to a sentence, the comma has the ability to keep the green light on a sentence for a long time. With its versatility it can keep complex sentences coherent, it can add additional information, add afterthoughts, and enlarge upon thoughts.

I bet you didn’t think a little curl of a pen mark could evoke such passion.

I have been fascinated with the comma ever since an English teacher told me, ‘The best way to use a comma is to think of it as a way of pausing before moving on to the next part of the sentence.’, whilst this is a myth it is a good way to get started thinking about commas. However, there are so many other ways it can be used.

9 ways to use the comma

 

  1. To glue two sentences together
    When two complete sentences (independent clauses) are joined by a conjunction such as the words; and, but, or for.

    Example:

    The post about commas seemed like an unusual topic, but it managed to bring in over 100 comments.

    You will see that the sentence above could quite easily be split into two sentences with the use of a full stop to read:

    The post about commas seemed like an unusual topic. It managed to bring in over 100 comments.

     

  2. To give additional information
    Commas are great in allowing us to give additional information in a sentence. The additional information is called an appositive phrase, which is a noun or a phrase placed next to a word to provide identification or give additional information.

    Example:

    Jay White, the owner of this blog, is seen as an authoritative figure in the world of blogging.

    You will see that, ‘the owner of this blog’, is not really necessary, but it does provide additional information, which could be useful.

  3. Writing a series of three or more words or phrases

    Example:

    He was tall, dark, and handsome.

    He opened the email, read it, and decided to publish the article he had been sent.

    Note that you do not need to use the last comma in each of the sentences above. However, this is a matter of personal preference. Whichever way you choose, use it as consistently as possible.
     

  4. Non restrictive phrases
    Non restrictive phrases give additional information to a reader, but it is not essential to the sentence to be understood.

    Example:

    My son, who is an artist, enjoys listening to trance music.

    You’ll see from the above sentence that if we were to take out ‘who is an artist’ the sentence would still hold. It is a non essential piece of information.

    However, if I had two or more sons, the non restrictive phrase ‘who is an artist’ would become essential for identification and therefore the commas would be left out because the phrase becomes essential to identify which of my two sons I was speaking about.
     

Read the rest of the post, which includes 5 more examples of correct comma usage and three of incorrect usage, on DumbLittleMan.

Publishing Choices

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There are three general choices for getting your book published:

  • Traditional Publishing
  • Vanity Publishing
  • Self-Publishing

Due to space restrictions, the following barely scratches the surface of this subject (after all, there are whole books on the subject, such as Dan Poynter’s excellent self-publishing manual which goes into much greater detail).

Traditional Publishing

This means finding a publisher willing to gamble that your book has enough commercial or literary value to justify their investment of good money in your creation. The publisher usually takes over control of all rights to the work. The process is usually slow (unless you are a celeb currently in the news). There may or may not be an advance on royalties (depending on the resources of the publisher). When royalties are paid (usually twice a year), generally half the royalties are withheld in case some books are returned by the booksellers. It often requires being accepted by an agent, who will want between 10 and 20% of the paid out royalties as a commission to place your book and to meter out any and all monies to you after they have extracted their commission.

Vanity Publishing

Usually provided by printing companies who represent themselves as publishers. The author pays all the costs, which are generally exorbitant. This a good approach for folks who want to leave a legacy for their family and friends. It will not produce best sellers and bookstores will normally not care to sell their products. The author generally keeps rights, although I’m aware of one company that ties the rights up for seven years.

Self-Publishing

This approach is not necessarily vanity publishing. The author has total control and all rights. It covers a wide variety of possibilities. They range from creating your own publishing company to handle your works to using established publishers who provide any and all publishing/marketing services, which the author pays for, and their distributing connections. One thing to be careful is their establishing very high retail prices, which will guarantee the booksellers won’t touch it.

With all these approaches, the author must get involved in the marketing effort. All approaches can include both books on paper and digitized versions (another subject in itself). Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. There are many sharks out there, so one has to be careful. In addition, all approaches requires the author to insure the manuscript is as well-prepared as possible. I highly encourage hiring professionals to help with this. Although I am a professional editor, many people get involved in my process. I use at least one and sometimes more than one editor who does that for at least part of their living. Another blog thread will cover the types and levels of editing and the people who provide them.

This is a cross-posting from the Book Trends Blog.

Brain Overload Warning!

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I have to apologize to Publetarians out there who follow my blather — I’m suffering from acute brain overload this week, and will have to postpone my weekly article until next Saturday. 

One really bright happening this week was the considerate reader who suggested I try OpenOffice’s word processor and office software.  It is open source code software, produced by Sun Microsystems, and is seamlessly compatible with Microsoft’s products, but it is nicely devoid of the cute graphics, odd heirarchy and dumbed-down menu layouts that Word is plagued by.  By the way, it is free for download.  I’ve used it a bit now, and would have happily paid for it.  It works.  That says a lot, at least to a crusty writer like me.

Thanks to all of you who have left your comments — I appreciate hearing from you and will fashion future articles, in a curmedgeonly fashion, of course, partly on what comes to me through comments.  Now, back to the keyboard…                                                                                                   [end of article – no need to click through]

Was Blind But Now I See– Text-to-Voice: An Underappreciated Editing Tool

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This post, from H.L. Dyer, originally appeared on the QueryTracker.net blog on 10/21/09.

So, we’ve already discussed the value of reading your work aloud during the editing process. This works amazingly well, especially for a specific scene or passage at a time. But, if you’re planning a full head-to-toenails edit, you’re gonna need an awful lot of tea and honey to read a full manuscript out loud.

Now, maybe some of you have spouses and/or BFF’s lining up for the chance to read your novel to you, but for most of us editing is a pretty solitary endeavor. 

If only there was someone else… someone who could read forever without getting hoarse or grumpy when you make them repeat the same sentence thirty-eight times in a row…

Well, if you have a fairly recent computer, chances are you do have access to such a person. Okay, fine, you have access to a robotic equivalent of a person, but still an amazing resource.

I’m talking about Text-to-Voice software.

I had heard that text-to-voice software was included on most recent PC’s (They are intended to assist users with visual impairments), but I’d never bothered looking up how to use it until a few months ago.

I find reading aloud to be a great editing tool, but impractical for completing a full edit at my (relatively high speed) pace. I have also noticed that when I read aloud from my manuscript, I sometimes still miss problems like missing or repeated words because I know what the text is supposed to say and my brain corrects the errors without my noticing.
 

Read the rest of the post on the QueryTracker.net blog.