Publetariat

25 Things A Great Character Needs

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 1/13/14. Note that it may contain strong language.

1. A Personality

This seems rather obvious, sure — in a way it’s like saying, “What makes a really good tree is that it has an essential treeness” — but just the same, it bears mentioning. Because some characters read like cardboard. They’re like white crayon on white paper. Sure, the characters run around and they do shit and say shit but none of it has anything to do with character and has everything to do with plot — as if the characters are just another mechanism to get to the next action sequence, the next plot point, the next frazza wazza wuzza buzza whatever. Point is: your character needs a personality, and the rest of this list should help you get there.

 

2. Agency

The character should run an advertising agency. *is handed a note* Oh! Oh. I mean, The character should belong to the FBI and– *gets another note* JESUS CHRIST WITH THE NOTES, PEOPLE. But fine, yes, okay, I get it now. Agency means that the character is active, not passive. The character makes decisions and is attempting to control her own destiny as an independent operator within the story. She is not a leaf in the stream but rather the rock that breaks the river. *receives one more note* Oh, thank you, what a wonderful note! I do agree my beard is sexy, yes. I know! So rich! So full! So shiny. I oil it with secretions from squeezed ermine scent glands which also lends it that musky zing that sort of… crawls up your nose. *flicks beard sweat at you*

 

3. Motivation

Characters want things. They need things. They are motivated by these desires and requirements and they spend an entire story trying to fulfill them. That’s one of the base level components of a story: a character acts in service to his motivations but obstacles (frequently other characters) stand in his way. We need to know what impels a character. What are her motives? If we don’t know or cannot parse those motivations, her role in the story is alien to us.

 

4. Fear

Everybody’s afraid of something. Death. Taxes. Bees. Dogs. Love. Carnival workers. Ocelots. (I am afraid of the number 34 and the color “puce.”) Characters suffer from their own personal fears relevant to the story at hand. Characters without fear are basically robots who use their pneumatic doom-claws to puncture any sense of engagement and belief we have in the story you’ve created. The great thing about being a storyteller isn’t just giving characters fear — it’s ensuring that that their fears will arise and be present in the tale at hand. You shall be cruel. This cruelty shall be great fun and a veritable giggle-fest because storytellers are dicks.

 

Click here to read the full post on terribleminds.

Also see Chuck Wendig’s The Zero-Fuckery Guide To Kick-Ass Characters, from the same site.

 

The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction

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This post, by Dana Beth Weinberg, originally appeared on Digital Book World on 12/4/13.

Is self-publishing an amateurish endeavor, a means of sharing stories, a strategic move in a writing career, or an entrepreneurial activity? To gain insight into this question, I have been analyzing the responses from the nearly 5,000 authors who responded to the 2013 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey in relation to whether an author is aspiring (not yet published), self-published only, traditionally published only, or hybrid (both self-published and traditionally published). In Part 1, I compared the top priorities of these 4 types of authors, and in Part 2, I examined the differences in their stock of published [and] unpublished manuscripts. Now I turn my attention to the differences in their income from their writing.

Not surprisingly, most aspiring authors in the sample reported no annual income from their writing. About 19% of self-published authors in the sample also reported no annual income from their writing, compared to 6% of traditionally published authors and only 3% of hybrid authors. While most of the survey respondents clustered at the lower end of the income distribution, some authors did report earning $200,000 or more from their writing, the highest income choice on the survey: less than one percent (0.6%) of self-published authors, 4.5% of traditionally published authors, and 6.7% of hybrid authors who reported on their income. (In the chart, I have collapsed the top categories to $100,000 or more for better visibility. These aggregated category represents 1.8% of self-published authors, 8.8% of traditionally published authors, and 13.2% of hybrid authors.)

 

Click here to read the full post on Digital Book World.

 

Amazon, World Adult Content Police?

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This post originally appeared on Adele Journal on 5/23/13. Note that it is on the topic of book listing challenges faced by authors of erotica and other adult-oriented fiction, and the full article (link at the end of this excerpt) may include content that’s NSFW and inappropriate for children.

There’s a new sheriff in town, but I was quite happy with the land being lawless. Because, you know, us settlers were pretty good at regulating ourselves. From recent events, it’s clear to me, at least, that Amazon is trying to take control of the wilderness that is electronic publishing.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t be that surprising. They did make the Kindle, after all, and were pretty successful in making their name synonymous with ebooks for the general, mainstream public. But at the time, it didn’t look like Amazon was taking anything away from the ebook-reading people, just making it more available.

Now, they’re starting to impose their order on the wider landscape of all e-publishers, both amateur and professional, and they are taking things away from us.

 

The Amazon Adult Dungeon

If you haven’t heard of this, the Adult Dungeon is what some erotica authors are calling it when Amazon internally labels a work as “adult.” In itself, this is not problematic, as most erotica authors do a damn good job of laying out warnings and content labels in their descriptions. But when a work gets put into the Adult Dungeon, it is no longer searchable. If you search specifically for the title and author, you will not find it.

Nor will it get recommended in the “Customers who bought X also bought…”

They essentially blacklist any book thrown in their Adult Dungeon. They don’t tell the authors they’re doing this, and they don’t tell the readers, either. It’s done behind the backs of everyone involved. Amazon is taking away your right, as a grownup reader, to make your own decisions about what to read. Or, they think you can’t control your (non-mainstream) sexual imagination, so they feel like it’s their place to do it for you.

(This is also what happened, apparently, a few years ago, when they “mistakenly” marked all LGBT related books as ADULT. Of course, they claimed that it was a “glitch…”)

Author Selena Kitt points out — quite rightly — that erotica readers created the Kindle market. Why does anyone want an e-reader? For a private reading experience.

 

Click here to read the full post on Adele Journal.

 

William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

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Nominations are now being accepted for the Saroyan International Prize for Writing, which awards $5000 each to a fiction winner and nonfiction winner. Deadline for nominations is 1/31/14. From the Stanford University Libraries site:

The Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation jointly award the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, a biennial competition for newly-published books.

The prize commemorates the life, legacy and intentions of William Saroyan – author, artist, dramatist, composer – and is intended to encourage new or emerging writers, rather than to recognize established literary figures.

Entries are now being accepted for the 2014 Prize and must be received by January 31, 2014. Please view the FAQ page for further information.

Funding sponsored in part by Stanford Associates.

 

Click here to view the Saroyan International Prize web page, where full details of the judging criteria and award process can be accessed.

 

Invitation To Guest Blog For The Book Designer

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on his The Book Designer site on 1/12/14.

I want to make you famous.

Well, famous to a well-defined group of people; the readers of this blog.

As the world of self-publishing expands, it becomes more difficult for any one person to stay up to date with new services, advancing technologies, and the people who are making change happen.

At the same time I’m finding new ways to address the needs of indie book publishers by offering more and more choices for solid, well-constructed books.

This started with the articles on the blog that deal with
◾ Self-publishing basics
◾ Book design and production
◾ Distribution and discounting
◾ Marketing and platform building

It grew with the launch of my video-based training course for authors, the Self-Publishing Roadmap.

Now it includes the tools for authors at Book Design Templates, and will soon expand again.

However, this leaves me less time than ever before.

 

Write for The Book Designer

To accommodate all this growth, I’m looking for a few bloggers who would like to get “famous” by appearing on my blog. I’m looking for people who can make complex ideas simple, respond to what readers want to learn, and inspire writers to believe in their own publishing dreams.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post, which includes directions for how to contact Joel, on The Book Designer.

 

5 Key Trends in Self-Publishing for 2014

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This post, by Carla King, originally appeared on PBS Mediashift on 1/7/14.

The advancement in self-publishing tools and technology is a lot to keep up with, so here’s a roundup of the news that I think mattered most to self-publishers in 2013 and will continue to shape the industry this year.

1. Ingram Spark Gives Amazon CreateSpace a Run for Its Money

Ingram Content Group finally launched Ingram Spark, the much-anticipated print-on-demand and e-book distribution service aimed at self-publishers. It’s a welcome alternative to their publisher services tool Lightning Source, and competes with Amazon’s CreateSpace. Spark offers one author dashboard to handle both e-book and print distribution, while Amazon forces authors to two different places (CreateSpace for POD, Kindle Direct Publishing for e-books). And, unlike CreateSpace, Spark also allows authors to set the 55% discount and returns programs that bookstores insist upon. Do note that Amazon, being the pushy gorilla it is, sometimes lists print books not produced by them as “Out of Stock.” So this author continues to use CreateSpace in conjunction with other services, just to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

2. E-book Subscription Services Entice Readers to Buy in Bulk

 

Click here to read the full post on Mediashift.

 

Scribd's New Ebook Subscription Service: Partnering with Publishers, Profiting from Piracy

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This post, by Michael Capobianco, originally appeared on Writer Beware on 1/9/14.

I was contemplating what to write for my first Writer Beware blog post, when a subject popped up out of the blue, packed with all kinds of fascinating questions.

Some of you may remember when SFWA tangled with the online “digital library” Scribd back in 2007. Scribd was loaded with unauthorized uploads of copyrighted material, but SFWA screwed up big time by sending a sort-of DMCA notice (it wasn’t really) to get works by many sf writers removed from the site. It was an embarrassment for SFWA, and over time made it less and less likely that the organization would do anything directly about illegal uploads, even though a plan had been developed to do so for members who had specifically authorized SFWA to act as their agent.

Since everything to do with online piracy left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth, I decided I would not go looking for illegally uploaded copies of my or other authors’ works, and I didn’t check to see if Scribd was following through on the promises it made at the time to provide real-time checking of works uploaded to the service.

Jump forward six years to now. The subject of Scribd came up on a SFWA forum as part of a controversy that I needn’t go into here, and I decided that it was finally time to check it out.

Six years has made a big difference. Scribd has set out to become a full-fledged bookstore to compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and takes it one step farther with the addition of an all-you-can-eat subscription service that allows access to an unlimited number of ebooks for $8.99 a month. They are now partnering with HarperCollins and various other publishers, such as Smashwords, E-Reads, and Rosetta Books, with the promise of more to come. They cover a lot of ground; not only do they sell ebooks and subscriptions, they offer what look like unauthorized “previews” of many other books, with links to authorized retailers.

But finally, beneath all the new things, the old Scribd–offering not-necessarily-legal user uploads of copyrighted works–is still there. Only now Scribd has monetized them, since you can only see a “preview” of the material for free, and must be a paid subscriber to access the whole unauthorized upload.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Beware

 

How To Sell Your Integrity, $470 At A Time

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 1/9/14.

Here are two new questions authors need to add to their vetting process when considering hiring out for author courses, services and how-to books:

Do you have an affiliate program for this product or service I’m considering, and if so, how much of the sales price will be paid to the affiliate advertiser?

Imagine that the answers to those questions are, “Yes, I do have an affiliate program, and half of the price you pay is sent back to the affiliate whose link you followed.”

So far, so bad. Now imagine the price you’re being asked to pay is $940, and $470 of that fee will be paid to the affiliate.

Pick your jaw up off the ground because I’m sorry to tell you, this is not some far-fetched scenario. Today I received this exact offer to become an affiliate advertiser for someone offering author and book marketing/publicity products and services.

I get affiliate requests pretty frequently but anyone who reads this blog or visits the Publetariat site regularly knows I don’t say “yes” to many of them. Today’s request is just about the best example I’ve seen to date for explaining why.

Here are the pertinent excerpts from the email invitation, with my comments below each. Note that any boldface emphasis in the quoted passages has been added by me.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

Brave New Bullying: Goodreads Gangs, Amazon Attacks—What Are Writers to Do?

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In this post, Kristen Lamb shares her own experiences with bullies, from childhood days right up to the present, as well as her tips for dealing with online bullies who may be stressing you out, wasting your time, or even negatively impacting your sales. From the post:

Brave New Bullying
Now we live in a Digital Age and bullies abound. The Internet gives them access to torment us 24-7 no matter where we go. I was so thrilled the day I was asked to blog for Huffington, yet unlike here, I have no control over the tone of the comments. There are people who are simply made of spite and hate and they will take it out from the safety of a computer behind the anonymity afforded by monikers. Now when I post, I simply scan and, if anything is hateful in tone? I won’t even read it.

Sad to say, this is why I don’t read reviews before buying any book. There are too many sock puppets and trolls. Goodreads and Amazon are RIFE with bullying. I’ve had friends bullied on blogs and even once had someone start a hate blog directed toward me, “Kristen Lamb The Face of Misandry” which is “Man-hating”, btw. I had to look it up.

It’s sad to say, but when researching for this topic, it seemed most of the information was for kids, schools and teens. But bullies never go away. They often can’t be stopped, but maybe we can make it tougher for them to spread their cruelty.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes concrete steps you can take to discourage online bullying of yourself and other authors, on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

7 Ways To Deal With Troublesome Facebook Fans

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This post, by Aubre Andrus, originally appeared on Mashable on 1/4/14.

Social media managers know what’s up — with thousands of fans on a Facebook Page, there’s bound to be at least one who ruins the fun for everyone. He shoots down every post, is the first to call out a typo, and loves incorporating profanities into even his most positive comments.

Add your textbook spammers, angry customers and historically unhappy people to the mix and it’s no wonder someone has to keep an eye on your company’s Facebook Page at all times. It’s easy to consider banning every user who ruffles your feathers, but you should weigh multiple options before planning your attack strategy. Here are seven ways to deal with your least favorite Facebook fans: the a-holes.

1. Hide the post or comment.

To hide a comment, hover over the top-right hand “x” and click “Hide.” Now the post can only be seen by the person who wrote the comment and his or her friends. They’ll have no idea the post is hidden, and you can always click “Unhide” later if you like.

When someone posts on your Page’s Timeline and you’d like to delete it, click “x” in the top-right corner, then “Hidden from Page” from the dropdown menu. Be warned: If you hide a photo from your Timeline, it will still appear in your Page’s photo album. So be sure to delete it from the album if you’d like it to disappear for good.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Mashable.

 

A Writer’s Greatest Crime

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This post, by Shannon Donnelly, originally appeared on Writers In The Storm on 1/6/14.

There are a lot of crimes a writer can commit—the torture of sentences, the mangling of meaning, the wrecking of words through using the wrong one at the wrong time. However, the greatest of these is the crime of lack—to forget to put in the emotion.

Now, emotions come in lots of ways and there are lots of opportunities to layer them in, but you have to remember you’re not just putting down words. You are constructing a believable scene with what should be memorable characters (people in other words). And people come with emotions.

Let’s look at the ways to make sure you get the emotion into your scenes.

 

1. Add emotion through actions.

This goes back to the old ‘show, don’t tell’ advice. You want to show your characters in action so the reader sees who your characters are. Does a character slam a door when he’s angry, or talk softly? Does a character laugh when nervous? Or pick her nose?

Little bits of actions can say a lot about a person. The man who stops to polish his side mirror on his corvette and wipe the speck of dust from its apple-cherry paint job reveals his love of his car. The woman who is always twirling a strand of hair is a flirt. The boy who pops his gum whenever his mother is talking is showing how little he listens to her. Those actions all say something about that character—they show emotions at work.

 

2. Let emotion color descriptions.

 

Click here to read the rest of the article on Writers In The Storm.

 

Inside The Box: People Don't Actually Like Creativity

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This article, by Jessica Olien, originally appeared on Slate on 12/6/13.

In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.

Even people who say they are looking for creativity react negatively to creative ideas, as demonstrated in a 2011 study from the University of Pennsylvania. Uncertainty is an inherent part of new ideas, and it’s also something that most people would do almost anything to avoid. People’s partiality toward certainty biases them against creative ideas and can interfere with their ability to even recognize creative ideas.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.

 

For Major Publishers, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?

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This post, by Rachel Deahl with additional reporting from Jim Milliot, originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/25/13.

Format has been a long-simmering topic of debate in book publishing, and the question of when, and if, a title is published in hardcover, paperback, and/or digital has become even more pressing as bricks-and-mortar bookstores dwindle and e-book sales grow. The idea that any standard deal from a major publisher guarantees a print format release—which was previously a foregone conclusion—is something agents no longer take for granted, with some expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business.

While sources acknowledged that contracts from print-first imprints (as opposed to e-only ones) featuring clauses that give the publisher the freedom to decide on format are not new, the feeling is that these clauses are the exception, not the rule. Recently, though, a handful of agents have expressed concerns about print imprints refusing to commit on this issue.

Most of the big five houses PW contacted declined to respond to inquiries on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on contract negotiations. While some agents said they fear that Random House (and, possibly, the larger merged entity of Penguin Random House) is preparing to add a clause to its boilerplate indicating that it doesn’t commit to a format, a spokesman for the publisher shot down this notion. Penguin Random House’s Stuart Applebaum told PW that no change has taken place: “The suggestion that Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Random House LLC are changing their standard boilerplate contracts so as to limit publishing formats is not correct. Each of our author contracts continue to be negotiated individually, and confidentially.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Publishers Weekly.

 

The 38 Most Haunting Abandoned Places On Earth

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This largely pictorial post from Jake Heppner on Distractify can provide some instant inspiration for authors of all kinds, not just horror or thriller writers. Included among the sometimes creepy, sometimes tragic, sometimes poignant photos:

Pripyat, a city of nearly 50,000, was totally abandoned after the nearby Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Due to radiation, it has been left untouched ever since the incident and will be for many thousands of years into the future. Nature now rules the city in what resembles an apocalyptic movie.

[An] abandoned farmhouse in New York state also acts as a graveyard for many vintage cars which are now empty shells of their former selves.

The Ryugyong Hotel is a true display of North Korea’s madness. Work started on this 105 story hotel only a few years before a massive famine plagued the country. Abandoned for 16 years, work once again began in 2008, when it was coated in $150 million worth of glass. Foreign guests have reported that although the structure now looks complete on the outside, a lot of the interior is still abandoned and incomplete.

Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane was built in 1869 and closed in 1995. Housing 4000 patients at its peak, more than half of the 50,000 patients who called Willard Asylum their home died within its walls. This makes the asylums morgue (pictured above) one of the creepiest places we can imagine. By its closure, most patients were eventually integrated back into society, but in the early days “people didn’t leave unless it was in a box.”

 

Click here to view the full post on Distractify.

 

The Getty and Google Unleash Free Art — And Your Creative Potential

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This article, by Drue Kataoka, originally appeared on Wired on 12/30/13. Those who do book cover design or who want photos or illustrations for books or marketing purposes will want to pay particular attention: you now have 5,400 more pieces of free, unrestricted artwork and photos to use.

Open sharing has been around forever, accelerating progress in diverse fields. Computing (e.g., Homebrew Computer Club), code (open source), and even academic publishing (“open access,” which goes beyond peer review) are just a few that have multiplied their social impact thanks to this openness. Art may be next, and here, too, technology will play a central role.

Just a couple months ago, The Getty quietly released 5,400 new, high-resolution (800dpi) images from its Getty Research Institute for public use. But here’s the revolutionary part: They did it without fees or restriction. To put this in perspective: Not one of New York’s largest museums — the MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan, or the Frick have done that yet.

The big deal here isn’t just that a premiere cultural institution is making so many images available to all, but that it signals a broader, emerging “open content” art movement.

Besides the Getty, the other art institutions leading this open content movement include Los Angeles’ LACMA (which made 20,000 images available for free, albeit in a smaller file size than Getty did), as well as D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. And Google. Yes, Google: its Google Art Project (now called the Google Cultural Institute) has been working since 2010 on changing attitudes towards digitization among cultural institutions. The resulting meta-museum now includes high-resolution images of artworks from over 300 institutions available online. Google’s collection is the largest and, not surprisingly, has the most sophisticated and user-friendly UI. However, unlike the Getty, LACMA, or the National Gallery, Google restricts image downloading and sharing.

Open content in art is a huge shift in attitude compared to fairly recently, when art museums viewed the web cautiously, at best.

 

Read the rest of the article on Wired.