Wimpy Kid Eats George Bush’s Lunch

 Last week George W. Bush’s memoir gave Random House their best opening day sales in seven years—170,000 print copies.

BUT—on the same day, Middle Grade fiction writer Jeff Kinney launched his fifth book for Abrams in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and sold—375,000 print copies.

Yeah. Do you wonder why so many agents are looking for KidLit and passing on that brilliant stuff you’re writing for grown-ups?

You kind of have to wonder if it’s time for us all to give up on our chosen genres and start penning middle-school-nerd/angsty-teen sagas. I admit to giving it serious thought myself.

Not only are children’s authors more in demand, but the whole KidLit industry is more fluid and open. Children’s publishing isn’t bound by the rigid agent-as-gatekeeper paradigm. My unrepresented YA writer friends get to go to conferences where they engage in actual editor-to-writer communication. That’s right. Without five or ten years of groveling in agent inboxes to get there. And then—even if the editors pass—they get detailed letters full of helpful suggestions.

If you’re a writer of adult fiction you probably suspect I’m deeply full of batcrap, but I swear it’s true. Ask any writer who’s a member of SCBWI. While a new writer of adult fiction can spend years—even decades—trapped in a Phantom Zone of  rejection and silence, children’s writers seem to live in a warm, welcoming world of rainbows, bluebirds, and effing unicorns.

Oh, do I sound a little bitter?

Well, yeah. I guess I’m kind of tired of reading all those articles on how if you aren’t getting partial requests on 75 % of your queries, you’re a bad writer. Or if you don’t have an agent yet, you must be calling your work a “fiction novel” and mass cc-ing every agent in AAR, addressing them all as “Snookums.”

The truth is, if you’re not getting any reads, it might mean you don’t write for people under eighteen. Full stop.

This phenomenon doesn’t just affect the unpublished masses trying to break in. Established writers are jumping into the kiddie pool as well—big name authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Carl Hiassen, and Stephen Hawking. Pay it Forward author Catherine Ryan Hyde says she can’t even get her adult fiction published in this country any more—even though it wins awards in the U.K.—but her new YA book, Jumpstart the World is getting huge buzz. 

There’s a reason why this has happened—and its name is Harry Potter.

As J. K. Rowling kept the industry afloat through an entire decade—while becoming richer than the Queen—publishers learned that one phenomenal kids’ book can outsell thousands of adult titles, and if it spawns a series, it can have the return-customer power of crack cocaine.

Why? Kids tend to group-think more than adults. The instinct to fit in with the herd is necessary for young humans to survive. This means children and teens can be manipulated into thinking they can’t survive without the latest fad.

The Potter/Twilight type-blockbuster doesn’t happen with grown-up books because adults individuate and outgrow the fit-in-with-the-herd-or-die instinct. No matter how well Dan Brown is selling, if a reader isn’t into religious conspiracy-lit, he won’t buy it.

The result is less risk-taking and diversity in adult publishing—why take a chance on something creative and new when there’s no likelihood of top-notch returns?

So a lot of us who are exhausted with fangs, gimmicky monster mash-ups, and serial-killer torture-porn are turning to YA when we want fresh contemporary fiction. But reliving the horrors of high school isn’t exactly escapist reading for a lot of us. The truth is, most grown-ups like to read about people like ourselves doing interesting/fun/stupid/brave/inspiring things—with maybe a little non-PG-rated sex thrown in.

But publishers say that kind of commercial fiction “doesn’t sell.” By that they mean a single title doesn’t earn six figures on launch day. And OK, when it takes approximately 2.2 U.S. Presidents to add up to one Wimpy Kid, I realize it would take hundreds of midlisters to compete with KidLit sales numbers. And each adult midlister needs an editor, cover designer, distributor, and at least a perfunctory amount of hand-holding while she sells the book. All costing $$$. Yeah, I get why we’re not the best business choice. Sigh.

But a ray of hope has emerged in the last year, and it’s coming from e-readers. Most Kindle owners are adults. Sales of Kindle books have already topped a billion.

So maybe we should all self-publish our adult books for Kindle while we’re researching that dystopian post-apocalyptic steampunk high-school-zombies-on-Mars epic that’s going to break us into the Big Six publishing fortress. (Can anybody lend me a teenager?)

Meanwhile, we can take heart in knowing we’re not alone—and even the former leader of the free world gets his keister kicked by wizards, sparkly vampires, and wimpy kids.

*********

If you want to read more of my bon mots: starting next week, I’ll be on staff at the Best Damn Creative Writing Blog—one of the fastest growing online destinations for publishing industry news, essays and commentary. Whether you’re looking for MFA application advice, Twitter tips or you just want to stay informed on the latest in all things literary, they have something for you. Check it out. It's unstuffy and full of information. Kind of the HuffPo of publishing news sites.

How to Promote your Book with a Blog Tour—essential information for the 21st century writer

As promised, here’s a guest blog from Janice Hardy. I’m a long-time fan of her blog, The Other Side of the Story. It’s always full of great, solid advice on craft and navigating the publishing business. When she said she was doing a blog tour to promote her new YA Fantasy book, Blue Fire, the next installment in her Healing Wars trilogy,  I asked her to write something for us about the new phenomenon of the blog tour: how it compares to the old fashioned in-person book tour, and how to conduct one of your own.

Going On Tour? Just Go Online

Guest Blog by YA author Janice Hardy

Book tours have always been a great way to connect authors to readers, but with the travel and expense, it’s not something every writer can afford do on their own. It’s also not uncommon for publishers to only send their “bigger” authors on tour, since those are the folks who will draw the largest audience to the store, making it effective as well as cost-effective. Unless you’re one of those breakout debut bestsellers, odds are it’ll be a few books before you’re sent on tour.

My debut novel, The Shifter, came out last year. I did four local bookstore signings. One had about 25 people, one had around 15, one had maybe 10 and one had six. That’s actually not bad for an unknown author, but add them all up and that’s 51 people I spoke to about my book. For the second book, Blue Fire, I’m doing 52 blog tour stops. Even if no one but the people hosting the blog tour read my posts, I’m already ahead.

I have three local in-store signings set up so far for Blue Fire. I imagine the turn out will be bigger since more folks know about me now, but it still won’t be anywhere near the numbers I can reach on a blog tour.

So what exactly is a blog tour?

What you’re reading now. An author writes a guest post about a topic, or does an interview with the blogger, and they post it. The author does a lot of these guest posts during a set period of time, usually the month of that book’s release. Readers can “stop by” the blog on their schedule and follow the author from blog to blog. Author and blogger both publicize the tour, drawing new readers to each.

How do you arrange a blog tour?

Since I already blog about writing, I simply asked my readers and fellow bloggers if they’d be willing to host me on my tour. I also asked my Facebook friends. Most of them are book lovers, so they have blogs that will help me connect to other book lovers. My only cost was postage to send out some ARCs (advance reader copies) to those who were doing reviews.

Most of the people I contacted I “knew” in some fashion (even if it was just a friend on Facebook or someone I saw frequently on a blog or forum) so it didn’t feel as awkward as reaching out to a total stranger. But those friends offered suggestions for other blogs I might want to contact, so I grit my teeth, sent an email, and figured, why not? Worst case they ignore me. But most of them were happy to help out.

How do you pick which blogs?

Book reviewers, other writers, readers who talk about books are all good prospects. If you spend any time online, you may even read a lot of these blogs already. Beyond that, look at your book. If there’s a tie in with, say, cooking or horseback riding, look for blogs about those.  You can talk about that aspect of the book and how it inspired you.

What happens next?

Once you set up your tour, then the hard work begins. You have to write all those posts. Getting them done ahead of time is important, because it takes more time than you’d expect, and you’ll probably have other things to worry about when the book actually releases. You also want to be courteous to your host blogger and get them the post ahead of time so they can schedule it. And don’t forget to include the cover of your book, an author photo, links to your website, blog, and a place to buy your book, as well as a short blurb about the book, and an author bio. Not every blog will use all of it, but it’s nice to offer options.

What do you write about?

Once someone agreed to host me, I asked if they had an idea for the topic. They know their blog readers, so they’d know best what might interest them. As with any kind of blogging, you want to provide content someone wants to read about. No one wants promotional fluff. Most bloggers had an idea and made great suggestions. Those who didn’t said I could pick.

Now, this is where it got tricky. With 50+ blog posts over 30 days, I had to make sure that I wasn’t saying the same things over and over. Each post had to be different so those following the tour would get fresh material every day. The pure guest posts (like this one) were easy. If someone wanted the same topic, like say world building, I made sure I approached each post from a unique angle and covered different things.

Interviews were the hardest ones, because I had no control over the questions asked. For any similar questions, I tried to angle my answers so they focused on a different aspect. For example, if someone asked where I got the idea for the book (very common) I picked one part of where the idea came from instead of going through the whole story every time.

How did you keep track of it all?

I used a spreadsheet and listed the blogger, the address for the blog, the date, the topic, and the status. Trying to keep it all straight wasn’t easy, and having that spreadsheet made a world of difference. It was also a good way to make notes on folks who still needed to get back to me or who needed ARCs sent.

How do you promote the blog tour?

I have a master schedule on my blog, plus each day my blog links to the blogs on the tour stop for that day. To show the different topics, I give a little description so folks know this post on point of view is not the same as the point of view post from last week. I also link them to Facebook, and announce them on a writer’s forum I frequent (Absolute Write). The bloggers I’m visiting usually promote the tour as well, as they want to drive new readers to their blog. Just use websites, Facebook, Twitter, whatever networking tool you have available to you.

What do you do on tour day?

Another important aspect of the tour is to follow up. The whole point is to connect with readers, so I make sure I check back and read the comments, join the discussion, answer questions, and be a part of that blog’s community. If the blog offers the “email me on new comments” feature, use it. That way you can keep up with what’s going on and not have to constantly check. It’s also helpful to arrange a schedule for checking back so you know every two hours (or whatever you pick) you click over to that day’s posts, or even the last few days if the comments are still active. Bookmarking the tour in its old folder makes it a lot easier to follow up.

Isn’t a blog tour an awful lot of work?

Absolutely. My average post runs about 700 words (this one is actually twice that), and over 50 blogs, that’s 35,000 words. I wrote blog posts every day for weeks, several a day, to get them all done. But here’s the thing—all this work is going to reach more readers than if I went store to store. I’d never be able to arrange 50 book signings, and if I did, I’d spend months going to them. Better still, these posts are on the web now, so months and even years after this tour is over, folks will continue to stumble upon that post. The promotion never ends as long as that blog is active.

Wait a second, if this is about promotion, why haven’t you said much about the book?

Remember that “no one wants to read promotion fluff?” That’s why. Would you have stayed with me this long if all I was doing was talking about my book? But hopefully I’ve given you helpful and interesting information, and you might click over to see what my book is all about. Most bloggers provide a little bio and some information about their guest bloggers, so there’s probably a little something about my book at the end of the post.

I’m finding the blog tour a fun and effective way to reach out to readers and let them know I have a book out there. It was hard work, but it was work I got to do on my own schedule in my own way.

And I didn’t have to stay in any cheap motels to do it.

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Blue Fire 

Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.

Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer—if she doesn’t destroy it first.

Janice Hardy Bio

A long-time fantasy reader, Janice Hardy always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy THE HEALING WARS, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her books include THE SHIFTER, and BLUE FIRE from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins.  She lives in Georgia with her husband, three cats and one very nervous freshwater eel.

Link to Blue Fire Online Retailers

http://www.harpercollins.com/book/pre-order.aspx?isbn13=9780061747410

Website

www.janicehardy.com

The Other Side of the Story Blog

http://storyflip.blogspot.com/

Enjoy the Luxury of the Unpublished Life

 “WTF?” Sez you. “Luxury? Getting daily rejections? Living in this mousehole on a diet of ramen and generic Froot Loops? While the few friends I have left laugh at my “delusions” of being a published writer? I’m supposed to #%&!ing enjoy this?”

Well, yes. It’s the only time in your career when you will have the freedom to just…write.

OK, calm down. I know sometimes you think you can’t stand this torture one more day. How long can anybody be expected to live on hope alone? Time’s wingèd chariot hurries near! You’re tired of the rejection, humiliation and frustration!! You’re desperate to—

• Show all those skeptical friends and relations you really do have talent.

• Let your significant other know all those pep talks weren’t wasted.

• Show up at Thanksgiving dinner and tell your brother-in-law who always makes digs about your “career in navel-gazing” to #%&! off.

• Say to all those condescending customers at McChili’s that you may be bussing tables now, but you’re a WRITER dammit.

I know how it feels to be filled with that desperate longing to see your work published. I lived with it for over a decade. And felt the euphoria when I finally got my first book contract—I doubt there’s a drug in the world to match that high.

But it doesn’t last long. Because after you sign is when your real work begins. And if you thought you were finished with rejection, humiliation and frustration, think again. This is what could be in store—

• Hate-hate-hating that stupid cover that makes your dashing Scottish hero look like David Lee Roth in a dress.

• Praying your new editor will see your book through after the old one leaves to start her own literary agency.

• Sending out press releases, blanketing social media sites, haunting forums & being nice to people you’ve been trying to ignore for years.

• Sucking up to the local talk radio guy whose show has always pissed you off, begging for an interview.

• Groveling to the editor of the local fishwrap to get him to run maybe an inch on your launch.

• Begging bookstore managers to let you do a signing—and get enough copies into the store to make it worthwhile.

• Typing your fingers to the bone in a marathon blog tour. (There will be a guest post here next week from YA writer Janice Hardy telling all about blog tours. A must-read.)*

• Getting your obnoxious friend who went to film school to help you put together a book trailer.

• Traveling to strange cities on crowded planes to talk to people who don’t have a clue who you are and care less—if you’re lucky enough to get a book tour at all.

• Checking your amazon ranking twice a day and agonizing every time it goes down.

• Trying to wheedle reviews out of anybody you can press a free book upon.

Ah yes. Reviews.

Begging someone to do a review is daunting. But dealing with a bad review is soul-torture. If you had trouble dealing with that guy in your critique group who hated your heroine because she didn’t get herself a blunderbuss and smoke that cheating hound of a duke, wait until the trolls hit your amazon page and give you a few of those clueless, nasty one-star appraisals that bring down your ratings..

Bad reviews. Everybody gets them. They can be brutal. More on that in a couple of weeks.

And remember—all the time you’re launching your new career in marketing, you’ll have to be writing a second novel. Probably in less than a year. While still bussing those tables.

Won’t you be happy you’ve got all those rejected novels stacked up in your files? Think of them as inventory. A novel that might not be the break-out blockbuster to launch a career may make a nice follow-up once you’re established.

So revel in the luxury of writing in your mousehole. With no marketing responsibilities. Or the public humiliation of bad reviews. While you build inventory.

But tell off your brother-in-law anyway. And let those condescending people at table three know you really are a writer, published or not.

*******

*Tune in next Sunday for a fantastic guest post from Janice Hardy, who writes the super-helpful blog, The Other Side of the Story . She’s going to give us an in-depth look at the newest book promotion tool—the blog tour.

I’VE WRITTEN A BOOK—NOW WHAT?

I’ve had a number of people ask me that question in the last few months. There’s tons of info out here in Cyberia, but not everybody knows how to access it. And along with the good info, there’s plenty of bad—especially from predatory vanity publishers and bogus agents. So here are some basics for the newbies around here.

Your book has been critiqued, edited, and polished to a glittering sheen. What do you do next?

1)     Celebrate! Break out the champagne, chocolate, fireworks, old Prince CDs, or whatever puts you in a festive mood. Contact a few people who remember who you are after your time in your writing cave, and toast your accomplishment. 80% of people in the US say they want to write a book. A fraction of a percent actually do. You’re one of them. Woo-hoo!!

2)     Make sure you know your genre. This isn’t always as easy as it sounds, but pick one to three genres as a tool to help agents and publishers know what kind of book they’re dealing with. Make sure you use established categories like “paranormal romantic suspense” not “vampire bunny western.”  Creativity doesn’t work in your favor here. But you are allowed change genres according to who you query. Genre boundaries are oddly flexible these days. Both Charlaine Harris’s “True Blood” vampire books and Lisa Lutz’s dysfunctional-family comedies are categorized as mysteries. Women’s fiction is an umbrella that covers everything from Danielle Steel to Anne Tyler. And anything with a protagonist under 19 can be YA (the most sought-after genre these days.)

Two caveats here: 1. don’t call it “literary” unless the writing is to-die-for gorgeous (& an MFA helps.) 2. Never use the term “chick lit.” You’ll still find it listed on most query websites, but it’s the kiss of death.

More on all this in my post “Let’s Play What’s my Genre?”

3)     Research and read the latest books in your genre(s) if you haven’t already. It’s important to have an idea of the market. A query letter is more effective if you can offer “comps”—similar titles that are selling (but not blockbusters—that looks like bragging.) Also, the authors of these books may blog or Tweet and you can follow them and get advice. Network. Find out who represents them. Eventually you might even get a recommendation, which is a golden ticket out of the slushpile.     

4)     Write your synopsis, hook, author bio and a basic query letter template. You can find helpful guides in any number of places. Agent Query provides solid basics. Most agents have similar information on their websites. Nathan Bransford’s “ESSENTIALS” list on his blog provides the info in a fun and friendly way, and Janet Reid’s Query Shark blog is a boot camp for query writers. Public Query Slushpile is a great place to get your query critiqued by other writers. There’s not so much on author bios, but I give the basics here. 

5)     Start a blog or build a website. An inexpensive Web host and a template design is fine. You want a nice, professional picture and a simple bio, with your contact information and something about your book and other publications. Nothing fancy. No bragging. Nothing is sadder than a pretentious website for an unpublished writer. And please! NO MUSIC!! People visit websites in libraries. And at work. Nothing is more annoying than unexpected music blasting from a website. (And it's not expected unless you're a professional musician selling your wares.)

A professional blog will do as well, but Facebook or other social networking sites that require membership won’t. Be Googlable, reachable and professional.

6)     Start researching agents. You can subscribe to WritersMarket.com but up-to-date information is available free at AgentQuery.com  where they provide a searchable database. You can put in your genre and immediately find what agents represent your work. Then check QueryTracker for further information on the agents you’ve chosen and get valuable comments from other queriers. (I also recommend subscribing to QueryTracker’s great newsletter for up-to-the-minute agent updates.) Then start Googling: look for interviews and profiles of agents to fine tune your queries. The wonderful Casey McCormick’s blog is a treasure trove of agent profiles and interviews.

7)     Send out five queries.

8)     Start your next book.

9)     Get rejections. Mourn.

10) Send out five more queries.

11) Get more rejections. Mourn. Fine tune your query.

12) Sent out five more queries.

13) Maybe get a request for a partial! (the first few chapters of your book.) But before you send it, go to the agent’s website and double check guidelines for formatting and sending documents. Most formatting is pretty standard, and they will probably ask you to send it as a Word (.doc or .rtf) attachment. But some agents are quirky and will request something like “no italics” or “number your pages on the bottom of the page.” Do whatever they say, no matter how silly.

14) Get the partial rejected. Maybe with a note. This will say something like “I couldn’t connect with these characters,” or “the protagonist wasn’t strong/sympathetic enough,” or “the plot is too complex/simplistic” or even “this is perfect, but I have no idea where to sell it.” DO NOT take these too seriously or start rewriting your book. They’re mostly just polite words to say, “It didn’t give me screaming orgasms.” Mourn.

15) Get a request for the full manuscript!! Remember to check those guidelines. Some agents still want to see a ms. on paper. If so, put a big rubber band around it—do not bind—and mail it in a flat-rate box from the P.O. with a #10 stamped, self-addressed envelope inside for their reply. NEVER send it in an annoying way that requires a receipt. 

16) Get another partial rejected. And another. Start building calluses on your soul. But—if the rejections start to sound the same—like everybody says the same thing about your unsympathetic, wimpipotamus hero, this is when you might give your ms. another once-over to see if you can figure out how to tweak things without doing serious damage to the book.

17) Get the full rejected. Mourn. You may get some more detailed feedback on this one. Pay attention, but don’t despair. It may not be your book that needs a rewrite. Maybe you’re targeting the wrong agents or pitching your book wrong. Maybe it turns out you’ve written a domestic drama (women’s fiction) not a romance. Try changing your query and hook before you change your book.

18) Finish book #2.

19) Start all over again with #2, but keep sending out #1 until it collects 100-150 rejections.

If you’re luckier than me, you may…

20) Land an agent somewhere along the way here.

21) If you don’t, you may want to consider a small press, regional press or self-publishing. Self-publishing for Kindle has proved  very lucrative, even for new writers, so if you’re good at marketing, this may very well be the way to go. It certainly is the wave of the future. But I’d try the agent route first. They are awfully handy to have on your side.

Just don’t let that book languish in a drawer!

12 MYTHS ABOUT GETTING PUBLISHED

When you’re a beginning writer, you’re likely to get bombarded with advice from all quarters—your family, your friends, your hairdresser, and of course that know-it-all guy at work. I don’t know why, but everybody who’s ever watched a few minutes of Oprah seems to think they know all about the publishing business. But chances are pretty good they don’t. And chances are even better that whatever they may have heard is out of date. The business is in a state of rapid change

If you don’t want your heart broken in this ever-more-difficult, soul-crushing process, you need to keep those myths and outdated ideas from infecting your brain. Here are twelve things to disregard when you hear them from those well-meaning friends and relations. (Be polite, but you might be forgiven a slightly condescending smile.)

1. Writers make big money. How many times do you hear “You’re a writer! Will you still talk to me when you’re rich and famous?” Tell them to rest easy. It's not likely to be a problem. Even “successful” writers need day jobs these days. Royalties and advances are shrinking at an amazing rate. Yes, J.K. Rowling is richer than the Queen, and Stephen King could buy the entire state of Maine. They are superstars. Of course you (and hairdresser) can fantasize you’ll become a superstar too—we all do—but the odds are mighty slim. 

2. Genre fiction is easy to write. People will tell you to start out with something “easy” like a romance/mystery/kid’s book. Don’t even try. If you don’t love a genre and read it voraciously, you’ll never write it well enough to publish.

3. Never write for free.  Professional freelancers will tell you this with the ferocity of union organizers, and they are absolutely right…when they’re speaking to seasoned journalists (although even they aren’t getting paid much these days.) But it’s a long way from writing your first essay to publishing in the New York Times. During your learning process, writing for free is good practice and a great way to get your name out there. Consider you’re being paid in clips and platform-building. And the truth is, if you write literary fiction or poetry, you may never be paid for it. (Most literary writers make their living by teaching.) But the lack of paying markets doesn’t mean your work doesn’t deserve an audience. Plus, it’s important to remember that literary agents work for free a lot of the time—sometimes for years when they’re getting started, just like writers

4. Don’t waste time on short fiction, because you won’t make any money on it. You won’t make much money on long fiction either (see above.) Working on short fiction is the best way to hone your skills. Publishing it makes you more attractive to agents and gives your self-confidence a boost. And it’s a whole lot easier to publish a short story than a novel. There are thousands of literary magazines and contests in the US, but only six major book publishing houses.

5. Don’t reveal your plot, because somebody will steal it. Everybody’s got a story. It’s how you write it that matters. Since the copyright law reforms of the 1970s, copyrighting your work before it’s published (especially a first draft) has been the mark of a paranoid amateur. It’s copyrighted as soon as you type it onto your hard drive. (And BTW, you can’t copyright a title.)

I should note this is not true of loglines,  If you have an especially high-concept, unique, and marketable idea—like the you’re the first guy who thought of “snakes on a plane”—you might feel more secure if you copyright it—but do NOT mention this when you’re querying.

6. With talent like yours, you don’t have to jump through all those hoops.  The old saw about 10% inspiration/90% perspiration is 100% true. Talent without skill is useless. That means skill at writing AND hoop-jumping. Learn the rules and follow them or nobody will ever find out about that talent of yours.

7. Spelling and grammar don’t matter: it’s creativity that counts. When you’re seven, maybe. Words are your tools. If you can’t use them properly, nobody’s going to hire you for the job.

8. Be extra creative so you’ll stand out.  Don’t write with animated emoticons, invent a new genre, or try to bring back the papyrus scroll. At least not when you’re a newbie. Follow genre and word count guidelines and the three-act structure, or you won’t get read. Publishing is a very stodgy business and if you don’t follow the rules, you won’t get in the door.

9. Don’t read other writers’ work or you’ll imitate them. Reading widely is essential to the growth of your craft. The more you read, the better your own work will be. If you imitate a bit when you’re a beginner, no harm done. Your own voice will emerge.

10. The sadder your personal history, the more publishers will be moved to buy your book. In spite of what you’ve seen on Oprah, readers are not likely to be interested in your personal tragedies, unless you write beautifully and have something new to say that will benefit THEM.

11. Sell yourself. Show them you’re confident! Confidence combined with cluelessness will not help your career—unless you’re Will Ferrell. In publishing, tooting your own horn is more likely to make you the butt of #queryfail snark on Twitter or land you in  Slushpile Hell. So when the office know-it-all claims you’re “not trying” unless you query with lines like, “my poignant and exquisitely-written memoir will be bigger than the Twilight and Harry Potter books combined,” smile politely and change the subject to his impending mortgage foreclosure.

12. You wrote a whole book! It deserves to be published. Almost all successful writers have a few practice books hidden away somewhere. Getting something published—especially book length fiction—is like getting to Carnegie Hall. It takes practice, practice, practice. 

THE DORCHESTER BOMBSHELL—How Does it Affect You?

Las Friday, Dorchester Publishing announced it is ceasing publication of paper books and going to e-publishing only. This means that as of Monday morning, their authors will be out of print—but still under contract. Their work will be primarily sold as e-books, but they’ll only get the tiny royalty rate contracted for paperbacks.

In other words, these writers will be paid an 8%-10% royalty on books they could have put on Amazon themselves for a 70% royalty.

Perhaps a moment of silence is in order for our colleagues at Dorchester, which has been publishing mass market paperbacks for nearly forty years. Much of their sales staff have been let go, too.

This is yet another in a series of aftershocks from the Kindle/e-reader quake that’s been rocking the publishing business for the last year.

The reason Dorchester has made this move is simple: e-books are selling and paperbacks aren’t. Publisher’s Weekly says shelf space for mass market paperbacks in supermarkets and other non-bookstore outlets is constantly shrinking, and J.A. Konrath reports only about 20% of the paperbacks printed are actually selling.

The Recession had already put Dorchester on shaky ground, according to agent Kristin Nelson, who says she’s been moving her Dorchester authors to more stable companies over the past few months. But the boom in e-book sales seems to have made their decision for them. Dorchester will still produce some paper books for their own book club and plans to offer print copies of a few of their highest selling titles, but that won’t help most of their writers.

So what does this mean to the aspiring author—other than you should be really happy you’re unpublished and don’t have a contract with Dorchester? Should you give up your quest for the agent/traditional publishing contract and self-publish electronically to avoid all this heartbreak?

My gut feeling is—no. It seems to me this is a time when you need an agent more than ever. The more upheaval there is in the business, the more you’ll want the help of somebody who knows the ropes. The anybody-can-do-it e-book world will be even more competitive than the paper book world and—at least for now—traditional publishers still provide the best promotion and distribution.

Plus, I think once the novelty of the Kindle/iPad revolution wears off, paper books will still represent a big part of the market. Not everybody is jumping into Kindle-land.

And hey--we’ll all need something to read when the e-reader is on the fritz. A whole lot of things can go wrong with gadgets. This week’s New Yorker shows a sunbathing woman who has just dropped her Kindle in the swimming pool. Ouch. Plus there will be glitches and viruses and those long hours on hold when you’re trying to get through to the incomprehensible tech guy in India. Also, recessions don’t last forever. The market for books should pick up again like everything else.

But there’s no getting around the fact the publishing world is in crisis and fewer writers are making a living at it.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up the dream. But we’ll all have to work harder to make our work stand out—and present ourselves in the most professional way possible.

It helps to remember two things:

1. Publishing is a business. Editors aren’t high school English teachers judging manuscripts on literary merit. They’re looking for business investments. All publishers care about is acquiring books that will sell as many copies as possible. According to how-to-get-published guru Nicola Martin, they call selling books “shifting units” (how’s that for a buzz-kill term?) They won’t invest in your “unit” if you don’t come across as a skilled, reliable source of many units to come. 

2. Amateurs need not apply. There might have been a time when you could dash off a manuscript as a lark and sell it, even though you didn’t intend to write as a career. But these days, publishers don’t want to pay for the work of an amateur writer any more than you want to pay for the work of an amateur mechanic, plumber or hairdresser.

 That means it’s now equally as important to learn the rules of the publishing business as it is to learn to write a great sentence. An aspiring author needs to come across as a savvy professional—even though the bulk of your pay may come from just the one sentence: “You want fries with that?”

The Dorchester authors don’t deserve what’s happening to them, and we can only hope they’ll be able to negotiate better royalty rates or be allowed out of their contracts. And in that, the ones with agents will be way better off. So I’d say don’t self-Kindle your unrepresented work yet.

But talk to me after a few more bombshells and aftershocks, and I may have a different opinion.

THE ZOMBIE WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Zombies are HOT in the publishing world. I know this because pretty much every issue of Publisher’s Lunch for the past year has reported stupendous deals for writers of zombie fiction. This includes one headlined seven-book deal—planning for years of zombiemania to come.

So lock your doors and windows, fellow reader-persons. We are in the midst of an invasion of literary zombies, nonfiction zombies, romantic zombies, high school zombies, historical zombies, and anthologized zombies. All eating brains at a bookstore near you.

And to make way for all this zombification, our corporate masters (aka the Big Six publishing companies) aren’t buying much other adult fiction. At least I guess that’s why agents report editors aren’t buying the following genres: romantic comedies, family sagas, action-adventure, high fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, historicals, literary fiction, most mysteries, thrillers by anybody other than James Patterson or Dan Brown—and pretty much anything that does NOT involve women falling in love with angsty immortal beings.

And zombies.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how brain-eating, festering undead persons have such a universal appeal. Most book-buyers are women over forty. Zombies aren’t really our thing. Don’t get me wrong, I was as big a fan of George Romero’s classic Living Dead films as any college kid ingesting controlled substances, but I’M A GROWN-UP NOW

So I’m talking to you, fellow grown-ups. OK, Zombieland was a hoot, and you bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for the hilarious cover—although you probably never got around to opening it—but are you plunking down your hard-earned, Recession-era cash money for the latest Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Zombies, or whatever—and all six sequels?

Our corporate masters say you will. You will all stampede down to your local B&N and demand these books like a mindless horde of, um, zombies.

This is supposed to happen because of the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the religion of marketing strategists: severely limit people’s choices through distribution control, rationed advertising, and kick-backs—then declare “the people have chosen” your product.

You can see this phenomenon at work any time you shop for a utilitarian plastic object at your local mall. Maybe few years ago you decorated your kitchen in the Wedgwood blue that was everywhere, but now you can’t find a dishpan in any color but used-chewing-gum beige or coagulated-blood red. You go to Kmart, Walmart, Big Boxmart or wherever, and find the identical dishpan in the same two colors in every store. Acres of them—all the same. So you’re finally bullied into buying a used-chewing-gum beige dishpan…and THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN! Everybody LOVES used-chewing-gum beige.

And zombies.

I haven’t forgotten them. But, you know, when I look at the bestseller list, I don’t see a lot of zombitude. I see the top bestsellers for many months have been three mysteries by a dead Scandinavian, who probably couldn’t get published in his lifetime because “nothing was selling” but zombies, or vampires, or chick lit, or the faux-fad of that particular year.

I know all this is depressing as hell, but I do have something hopeful to say. This is it: I think the e-book revolution is about to eat the brains of that whole resistance-is-futile, one-size-fits-all paradigm.

When readers can buy $2.99 books, wherever, whenever the whim strikes, book sales can’t be controlled by simply paying chain stores to put certain titles in the front of the store and buying a full-page ad in the NYT Book Review.

Niche sites will start to review and market niche books. Readers will have more choices. Because it’s less risky to buy a $2.99 e-book than a $25 hardback, buyers can take chances on something new without needing to hear “it’s what’s selling” from their inner sheep.

Whether or not you decide to buy an e-reader (I’m personally not ready to take the plunge) they’re good news for writers. Especially if e-stores continue to pay high royalties for lower-priced books.

Most of us will probably still need agents and publishers, but they’ll serve slightly different functions. The market will fragment, but that’s not a bad thing. We may end up with a system like broadcast/cable TV where instead of a whole nation watching The Ed Sullivan Show on a Sunday night, some can see Mad Men while others enjoy watching tear-jerking home remodels or really rude people from New Jersey.

What’s happening is Chris Anderson’s “long-tail” theory at work. Long tail theory says niches, when considered collectively, represent a substantial market that shouldn't be ignored.

So don’t join the zombie march. By the time you hit chapter seven, zombie lit will probably have gone the way of chick lit—made toxic by frenzied over-buying. Keep writing in your favorite genre, hone your craft, join niche organizations and wait. I predict the e-reader will have a very long tail—which will be great for writers.

But maybe not for zombies.