Tag Archives: publishing

A Literary Agent’s Comments on Nonfiction Opportunities

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The guest speaker at the local California Writer’s Club’s June lunch meeting on Saturday was Matt Wagner, founder of Fresh Books, Inc. Literary Agency:  http://www.fresh-books.com/

Wagner specializes in nonfiction titles.  His clients include several “Dummies” book authors, Dave Crenshaw, who wrote The Myth of Multitasking, and Michelle Waitzman, whose Sex in a Tent:  A Wild Couple’s Guide to Getting Naughty in Nature evoked a lot of interest when he passed it around.

Here’s the bad news:  Wagner debunked any notion that nonfiction writers are thriving in our current “legacy publishing” environment.  With Borders in bankruptcy, a suitor seeking to buy Barnes&Noble just for the Nook, and the explosion of epublishing, confusion reigns in nonfiction as well as fiction.  If things are uncertain for publishers, they are worse for agents, some of whom are trying to reposition themselves as coaches to stay in business.  This leaves mid-list authors who are trying to break into print at the bottom of the food chain (Wagner defines mid-list as, “You are not Suzy Orman”).

Several categories of non-fiction are doing well.  One are the series books – the “Dummies” and the “Idiot’s Guide” titles.  Part of the secret is, of course, that these books are not for dummies.  I’ve read several that were excellent introductions to their topics.

Wagner also cited, “vertically integrated niche publishers” as prospering, and gave an example I recognized:  O’Rielly Publications, which specializes in books on open-source software.  For the quarter century I worked in electronic design automation, O’Rielly titles occupied at least a third of my bookshelf, and the same held true for my colleagues.  Need a reference on the Linux operating system, or the PERL or TCL programming languages?  O’Rielly has it, often written or co-authored by the developer of the language.  In addition, they have websites, blogs, and webinars.

This, according to Matt Wagner, is a route for nonfiction authors that is opening up in our internet world.  Do you have an area of expertise?  Is it something someone might subscribe to a newsletter to learn?  An example jumped right to mind:  Randy Ingermanson’s Advancedfictionwriting.com (there’s a link on my blogroll).

Ingermanson, author of the traditionally published, Fiction Writing for Dummies, offers several free articles on his website, including his “Snowflake Method” of plot design, which I have discussed here (it is very worthwhile).  He also gives you the option of purchasing software to guide you through the process.  There’s a free e-zine, and as well as other articles and lecture series’ available for nominal fees in several electronic formats.

Check this site out, both for its free content (solid suggestions on plotting and building scenes), but also because it’s a great example of the kind of “vertical integration” that agent, Matt Wagner believes is the emerging model for how nonfiction writers can survive and even thrive in our emerging new world of publishing.

Some Notes on Short Stories by Stephen King

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Last Sunday, as I walked into the Borders where my SCBWI critique group meets, I spotted a winner in the discount racks near the entrance:  The Best American Short Stories of 2007 was marked down to $3.99.  This was a no brainer with the added bonus of featuring Stephen King as editor.

I bought the book without even checking the contents, so I was delighted when I got home and found a story by John Barth called, “Toga Party,” about a group of sixty and seventy-year-olds in a posh retirement neighborhood who all receive invitations to one of those parties, “like that crazy Animal House movie from whenever.”  The story begins humorously but doesn’t end that way.  In a similar vein, Stephen King’s comments on the state of the American short story begin humorously but don’t end that way.

King wrote about going into a large bookstore in Florida in search of that month’s stories to read.  The first thing he saw was a table upfront with titles by James Patterson, Danielle Steel, and himself.  Disposable stuff, but it pays the rent he says, “because money talks and bullshit walks.”   He continues:  “Bullshit- in this case that would be me – walks past the bestsellers, past trade paperbacks with titles like ‘Who Stole My Chicken?,’ ‘The Get-Rich Secret,’ and’Be a Big Cheese Now,’ past the mysteries, past the auto repair manuals, past the remaindered coffee-table books.”   He finds the magazine wall, next to the children’s reading area.

King says he found The New Yorker and Harper’s without much effort, but had to search the floor-level racks to find the stash of magazines, like the Kenyon Review, that feature short stories:

“So think of me crawling along the floor of this big chain store’s magazine section with my ass in the air and my nose to the carpet in order to secure that month’s budget of short stories, and then ask yourself what’s wrong with this picture.  A better question – if you’re someone who cares about fiction, that is – what could possibly be right with it?”

With an ever dwindling audience, some writers who still care about short stories keep on working, but too often, King notes, their audience is simply other writers who read,“not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells…and this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next…There’s something yucky about it.”

King then says he read “scores of stories that felt…airless, somehow, and self-referring…show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self conscious rather than gloriously open, and – worst of all – written for editors and teachers rather than for readers (emphasis added).

There we have in a nutshell what I have been trying to put my finger on lately.  The last time I went to a large bookstore to browse for books, I went to the mystery section and found the number of rows had been cut in half.  Tough luck for those who like to read and write mysteries – the marketing department, which is after all, just trying to survive – has decided you are not cost effective.

No need for me to belabor the point anymore, it is what it is, but reading King’s editorial notes made me glance at all I have posted here about ebooks.  I certainly never set out to be their champion, in fact I started out somewhat skeptical.  My ideas have changed 180 degrees.  When half the mysteries and most short stories can disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with quality, who can argue with writers who look at a new way to get their books read?

Last week a writer in London asked me to review her ebook after reading this blog and noting that YA fantasy is “my thing.”  Now that I have finished my blog-break, it’s time for me to get back to her work, and with renewed appreciation for her and all the other authors willing to take a chance with a new way to do what storytellers have always done – tell their stories.

Four Key Ingredients – Part Two

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Wrestling with Originality:  A real-life Example.

It’s easy to talk in the abstract about things good fiction needs, but “originality” is an issue I have been wrestling with for real lately.  Recent “market research” – checking book jacket blurbs in stores and online – revealed a mass of new titles in the fantasy sub-genre where I have been working, in a two steps forward one back fashion, for several years.  Now that even the diehard fans are satiated with vampires, many hopeful writers have trooped to Faerie.

How many?  Well, two of the first half-dozen titles I sampled featured half-human/half-fairy protagonists – like mine.  A few discoveries like that throw the very possibility of being original into question.

I noticed something else too – several of these new books reuse a plot that was common in 1980’s adult fantasy – a war of good and bad fairies in which a human participant somehow tips the balance.  What I suspected then, I am sure of now – that storyline originated in the world of Dungeons & Dragons and online role-playing games.  It is simply not present in the original sources.

Given this seeming recycling of recycled plots, my choice seems fairly straightforward – give it up or dig deeper.  Donald Maass’ writing is full of encouragement for the latter choice, and I’m getting excited about some of the new ideas welling up since I started this process.  Here are a few of my current thoughts:

  • Go back to original sources.  In traditional fairy stories, there are no “good” and “bad” fairies – all encounters are problematic for humans.  Maass’ criterion of “inherent conflict” is built into the old tales and ballads of the relation between humans and the fey.
  • I’ve found a simple way around my heroine’s ancestry, since being half-fairy is now a cliche.  I like this even better.
  • I am probably going to rename the fairies and Faerie the way Sharon Shinn did in her 1995 YA story, Summer’s at Castle Auburn.  There the land and people are called, “Alora.”  Everyone gets it in “quack like a duck” fashion.

The point of giving these personal details is to underscore my belief in Donald Maass’ suggested lines of digging deeper.  “What if?” is a good question for any storyteller.  I have a long way to go, but I am enjoying the process again, and confident that I am on the right track.

Gut Emotional Appeal – Donald Maass’ Fourth Criterion for Really Good Novels:

There’s a formula for this:  create a likable character who must struggle to achieve something important.  Good as far as it goes, which is not very far.  And never mind that someone like Jonathan Franzen can throw out the advice and still win critical acclaim – the rest of us should not try that at home.  Most writers I know really care about their characters; the problem is how to make an audience care.

At a recent conference, a presenter used the Michelangelo analogy – chipping away what doesn’t belong – for the writer’s craft as well.  I think this is pertinent to the character breakthroughs I watch others make – they keep working, and eventually come to characters who somehow embody some of their own deeper truths.  In practice it isn’t nearly as weighty and ponderous as it sounds.

One critique group friend has long been enamored of Raymond Chandler type hard boiled detectives, with a dash of James Bond thrown in.  My friend worked and worked, creating better and better versions of characters we have seen before.  Recently, his own humor and mischievousness got into the mix, and a hero emerged who parallels, in my opinion, the tongue-in-cheek charm of the chick-lit detective who curses the bad guys if she breaks a nail while taking them down.  My friend’s character, Jonathan, a wastrel ex-Royal Marine, returns fire when assassins attack him on the golf course, furious that they ruined his score.  The battle had me in stitches as it caught up a foursome of startled ministers who realize the Lord moves in more mysterious ways than they had imagined.

Another critique group friend, writing about a troubled teen, made a quieter but equally profound breakthrough.  You see it in a little shift.  The bravado falls away, and the character is quietly real and telling her truth beyond any stereotype.

We have to start with characters and situations that matter to us, and then go deeper into ourselves that we expected – this much I am sure of.  How and when that happens is a mystery.  None the less, I find Donald Maass’ criteria:  Plausibility, Conflict, Originality, and Gut Emotional Appeal valuable questions to ask of my own or anyone else’s writing.

You can’t always say what or how but you know writing that has these things.  And if they are missing?  It simply means there is more chipping away to do.

A Seven Figure Contract for Amanda Hocking

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Thanks to my friend Rosi Hollinbeck for sending me a link to the latest episode in the ongoing eBook “explosion.”  (Be sure to check out Rosi’s excellent blog, The Write Stuff, at:  http://rosihollinbeckthewritestuff.blogspot.com/ ).

Amanda Hocking, the poster-girl for rags to riches in eBook publishing, sold  the rights to an upcoming, four book YA fantasy series to St. Martin’s Press for a reported $2 million dollars.  http://tinyurl.com/4l2kddj

One year ago, Hocking, after repeated rejections by traditional publishers, uploaded two books to Amazon, hoping to make several hundred dollars by October to attend a Jim Henson exhibit in Chicago.

Something in our national character loves pathfinders and likes to see “ordinary people” get ahead, especially when they have Amanda Hocking’s humor and sense of irony.  Too bad Oprah is going off the air; that would have been a fun interview.

Several other points come to mind:

  • This is confirmation of the buzz I’ve been hearing, most recently at a local agent’s workshop, that good ebook sales have become another viable avenue into traditional publishing – arguably with better odds for some kinds of books than the query-an-agent route.
  • A critique group friend who runs her own small press and follows the publishing industry reports that genre fiction does especially well in the ebook format.  I would imagine it has to do with the price spread:  $9.99 these days for a paperback at Barnes&Noble vs. $0.99-2.99 for Indie ebooks.  Are the “official” books better written?  Based on my limited sampling, in general they are, but not in every case.  One nice thing about Smashwords.com is that you can sample half of the text of their ebooks before purchase, so you pretty much know what you are getting.
  • Most surprising to me is that segments of the writing community do not get it either.  Case in point:  I just got a card announcing the 19th annual “Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards,” which completely ignores the world of ebooks.  (Can we say it?  “Hard-copy is sooo last year!”)

A few years ago, I attended one of the better writing conferences.  I booked some appointments with editors and agents, but I wasn’t really trying to sell anything; I wanted feedback on my WIP.  I had several plot ideas and wanted to sound them out, and it was very valuable overall.  Other people were suffering in the job interview mode, all their self-esteem on the line with their manuscripts.

I made a mental note to myself – my manuscript is not my self.  I forget it from time to time but the principle is still valid.

I truly enjoy the brave-new-world of ePublishing because it supports that realization by giving me a look behind the curtain.  Traditional publishers and even Writer’s Digest are run by busy business people who are doing their best but sometimes miss the boat and make mistakes.  I find it refreshing to find we have a thriving alternative that few of us even knew about six months ago.


More on the eBook Gold Rush

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I live about two miles north of the American River.  In 1848, “Captain” John Sutter, who owned this part of the territory, hired John Marshall to build a sawmill on the American not too far upstream, in the town of Coloma.   On the morning of January 24, Marshall spotted some flecks of yellow metal in the mill race.  He knew gold when he saw it.  Marshall tried to keep his discovery a secret, and we all know how that worked out.

Replica of Sutter's Mill at the Gold Discovery Site

 This bit of local history came to mind when I spotted an article in Forbes called, “Who Wants to be a Kindle Millionaire?”  http://blogs.forbes.com/kiriblakeley/2011/03/06/who-wants-to-be-a-kindle-millionaire/?

I would not have bothered with another post about Amanda Hocking, except this piece is writen by a traditionally published author, Kiri Blakeley, who writes in a very measured tone about Hocking’s success and the reality of traditional publsihing:

There used to be a time, not too long ago, when traditional publishing had many benefits…Publishers…used to do all kinds of nifty things for their authors, like throw them a cool book party, send them on a book tour, get their books reviewed in the press and give manuscripts loving yet eagle-eyed editing. Now, chances are an author doesn’t get any of those things—unless she’s on a reality TV show.

Blakeley continues:

… going with a traditional publisher can be extremely expensive. Authors are generally expected to pick up costs for their book’s website, a book’s outside publicist, marketing materials like postcards, and any costs associated with readings or tours. All of this can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Trust me, I know.

This post is also worth reading because Blakeley’s interview with Amanda Hocking shows the young author to be very savvy about the uniqueness of her success, and dismissive of all the talk about the death knell of traditional publishing. 

Still, with the flurry of articles, you have to assume that every writer, editor, and agent with a computer has heard that Amanda Hocking struck the mother lode.  I have to think that when Forbes runs an article asking who wants to be a kindle millionaire, there are writers buying mules, covered wagons, and gold pans,and  firing up their laptops, and googling, “vampires.”

I find myself humming the naughty verse to “Oh Susannah,” and trying to make up more.

Read an eBook Week and Amazon in the News

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Read an Ebook Week

This is Read an Ebook Week according to Catana, whose blog, “Tracking the Words,” is dedicated to exploring and entering the world of ebook publishing.  Check out the article here:  http://writingcycle.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/read-an-e-book-week/

Among other things, you can find special freebees and offers on Smashwords this week (a permanent link is now on my Blogroll).

And in case anyone hasn’t checked, you do not need special hardware to read an ebook.  All the major sellers have free apps for pc’s, macs, smart phones and tablets, so this might be a good time to take a look.

Amazon the Tax Evader?

A scathing editorial in the Sacramento Bee this morning condemned Amazon for refusing to pay state sales tax, and threatening California based affiliates if the legislature forces their hand.  http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/07/3454226/amazon-refuses-to-pay-its-share.html

Weren’t all online sales initially tax free?  After that I thought it had to do with whether or not a company has a brick and mortar presence in the state in question.  Now with so many states in dire financial circumstances, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until every online purchase is taxed.

There seems a bit much hand-wringing in this editorial though.  Noting that the state deficit is $26.5 billion, and uncollected taxes from Amazon total $300 million, it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest we blame Amazon if there’s not a cop when we need one, or if a disabled family member can no longer get in-home care.

Still, there’s the issue of fairness, and the local paper quotes the Seattle Times:  Amazon is a giant. It has helped drive hundreds, and maybe thousands, of bookstores out of business. The Internet retail industry already has a cost-of-real-estate advantage over free-standing stores. It should not have a tax advantage as well.

Given that eventual taxation is inevitable, the statement that really interested me is that Amazon “helped drive hundreds, maybe thousands of bookstores out of business.”

I’m skeptical of this one, for several reasons.

1)  I can think of several towns, like San Luis Obispo, where it was big box brick and mortar stores, rather than Amazon, that drove the appealing Indies away.

2)  Businesses big and small that ignored the web, including Tower, which I loved, are going or gone, but lavish web sites do not seem necessary to survive and thrive.  I’ve bought several rare editions from mom and pop used bookstores, with simple small-business type web sites.  You could argue that Amazon is one of the two major venues (eBay being the other) that give such enterprises a place in the virtual mall to display their wares.

These certainly are rapidly changing times.  How do you feel about it?  Is Amazon an enemy of the little guy?  A champion of the little guy?  Both?  Neither?  Email if you want more space to voice an opinion than a comment allows.

Some Words About Smashwords.com

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My thanks to Brandon Halsey for pointing out a great oversight in my last post.  I completely neglected to mention smashwords.com, an increasingly popular site dedicated to publishing and distributing ebooks in all the popular formats:  Kindle, Nook, iBook, Sony, Stanza, as well as plain .html.

I don’t know a lot about Smashwords yet, but a place to start looking is this Q&A page by Mark Coker, the founder http://www.smashwords.com/about.

Another resource is Tracking the Words, the blog of Catana, a writer who posts almost daily about preparing for publication on Smashwords, and is now including reviews of titles they have published.  http://writingcycle.wordpress.com

Publication on Smashwords is free, but it’s worth looking at the “How to Publish” page to get clear that it isn’t easy.  Assuming your text is really ready, after numerous drafts and third-party checks for typos, the first requirements are outlined in the site formatting guide, which is checked electronically before a submission is accepted.  Apple iBooks have additional rules.  Then there’s a checklist for inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog, which gets your book distributed to Sony, Barnes&Noble, Apple, Kobo, and (soon, they say) Amazon.

How about a catchy cover?  How about a one sentence tag line?  How about a compelling book-jacket blurb in case the title and cover are so compelling that someone stops to click on your title?  How about uploading a free short-story or novella, as some of the authors do, to encourage readers to search through their other titles?

Clearly, there is a lot of effort behind even the most stunning success stories, but I’ll end with an upbeat set of predictions for Indie publishing in 2011, made by Mark Coker in an interview on December 28, 2010.
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing-predictions-for-2011-from-smashwords_b18421

We are already seeing some of these predictions come true.  Here, for example, is one of them:

4. Self Publishing goes from option of last resort to option of first resort among unpublished authors – Most unpublished authors today still aspire to achieve the perceived credibility and blessing that comes with a professional book deal. Yet the cachet of traditional publishing is fading fast. Authors with finished manuscripts will grow impatient and resentful as they wait to be discovered by big publishers otherwise preoccupied with publishing celebrity drivel from Snooki, Justin Bieber and the Kardashians. Meanwhile, the break-out success of multiple indie author stars will grab headlines in 2011, forcing many unpublished authors off the sidelines. As unpublished authors bypass the slush pile, publishers lose first dibs on tomorrow’s future stars.

Writers Going Their Own Way in the eBook World

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Over the last month I’ve seen a flurry of articles on hugely successful ebook authors, and indications that their success is part of a wider trend.  In January, the month when Amazon announced that ebook sales had overtaken all forms of print volumes, 12 of their 20 ebook best-sellers in the horror genre were by self-published authors, in a field that included Stephen King.  http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-by-terri-reid.html

Twenty-six year old Amanda Hocking is the best selling ebook author on Amazon’s kindle store.  Since April, 2010, she has self-published nine ebooks and sells 100,000 a month, at prices ranging from $0.99 – $2.99.  Amazon’s pricing allows her to keep 70% of the profits, where traditional publishing would give her 30%.  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381193,00.asp

One of many articles on Amanda’s success quotes an anonymous publisher as saying there is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.  http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer

Terri Reid’s self-published ebooks are in Amazon’s top 20 lists for 10 different genres.  Her previous day-job included advertising and market research, and she references she some interesting discussions on the meaning of “ownership” and “value” in the digital age.  Everyone instinctively feels that an ebook is not worth as much as a paper copy and shops accordingly.  (One mathematician calculated the optimum price for ebooks as $2.99-$3.99).  Reid suggests that the traditional “agency model,” where the publisher sets the price is not going to work in this arena, and says, “Apparently Ken Follet’s publisher raised the price of his ebook from $7.99 to $9.99 and sales dropped 48%.“

Reid further claims that:  “Publishers were, and still are, trying to slow the growth of ebooks in order to protect their business model, which is built around selling paper.  How has that been working out for them?  Not very well.”  (I referenced Reid’s article in the first paragrah, but here it is again:  http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-by-terri-reid.html Note:  last night I downloaded Reid’s The Ghosts of New Orleans for $2.99 from Amazon and will review it here when I finish).

***

Not long ago – like maybe last year – traditional publishing offered writers a huge carrot – the certification of legitimacy.  USA Today reported that Hocking sold 450,000 ebooks in January, 2011, so I doubt that she worries too much about that.  http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-02-09-ebooks09_ST_N.htm

For a traditional game with winners and losers to endure, winning has to be possible.  At the 2007 San Diego Writer’s Conference, I heard an editor of adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy explain that traditional publishers, with their “stable” of known authors who are guaranteed to sell, have no financial motivation to risk an unpublished writer.  “If you want to break into this market, your best bet is to get some short stories in print,” he said.

I heard the same thing at the CWC February lunch, from a prolific local author of romance and romantic suspense, Kimberley Van Meter – that increasingly, not just editors but agents too, are not willing to risk unpublished authors, no matter how good the work seems, and that was always the sustaining idea:  if I write something really really good, I will make it into print.

Let’s assume that is still true, and I hustle and get some short stories or articles in print, and then write something really really good and, dream come true, in a couple of years it’s on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. Then what happens?  I suspect that despite all the hype about “building your online platform,” Donald Maass is still correct – bestsellers happen by word of mouth.  How did you hear about Harry Potter or The DaVinci Code? Somebody I knew raved about the books in both cases.

That seems to be what happens with ebooks as well.  After writing her whole life, Amanda Hocking had tried the agent submission route with no success.  The self-described muppet enthusiast was broke, but wanted to attend a Jim Henson exhibit in Chicago in October 2010, so at this time last year, she told her roommate: “I’m going to sell books on Amazon through Kindle, and I bet I can make at least a couple hundred bucks by the end of the summer to go to Chicago.” http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2010/08/epic-tale-of-how-it-all-happened.html.  She uploaded two books, sold 45 copies in two weeks, and thought that “wasn’t too shabby.”   In her case, the breakthrough came when she discovered book review blogs and asked the authors to consider her work.  Those digital voices launched her path to success.

Hocking writes young adult fantasy, and as word of her success spreads like wildfire online, you can almost hear the keystrokes of 10,000 writers hurrying to finish their vampire ebooks.  Everyone knows about gluts and bubbles from recent economics.  There’s not enough time to read all the good stories now (or separate the wheat from the chaff), and there will be even less as the ebook revolution kicks into gear.

Still, there is a democracy-loving part of me that loves this kind of populist development.  Different, but similar to they way I felt watching how cell phones and Twitter helped spark the revolution in Egypt, and how it made me feel to realize my own career in technology had, in however small a way, helped it happen.

These are exciting times to be a writer.  I’ll close with a quote from Joe Konrath (link in the first paragraph).  Konrath, a traditionally published author, was an early adaptor and advocate of epublishing, who writes:

The future isn’t Big 6 publishing houses vetting manuscripts, rejecting the majority, taking 18 months to publish, and then insisting upon ebooks with high prices and DRM, all the while paying authors one third of what the house makes. The future is smart, talented writers doing it on their own.