Branding Yourself

Ouch!

I watch The Cooking Channel from time to time when I get hoarse from screaming at the TV when One Life To Live is on.  (Go more wrong, folks, see how that works for ya.)  There's a show on I keep missing called Bitchin' Kitchen.  At first I thought she was using Rachel Ray's orange stove and maybe she is.  She's dressed like a crazy biker chick from the 50s.  I didn't get it.  So I googled her.  From Montreal, apparently she references pin-up girl Betty Page

and rockabilly.  Now the rockabilly I get 100 % because that's an integral part of Bad Apple 3.  And actually the character of Babes is quite a bit like Nadia.

I went a little farther and this was a web based show that got picked up by mainstream television.  In the article I read, Nadia Giosia talks about branding yourself.  She comes from a design mindset and how you present yourself on the web/to the world is crucial.

Nadia created a strong character or persona that's instantly identifiable.  We may not like her but she flies out at you and you recognize what it is.   Bold colors, bold attitude.

I realized as I was reading, there was much to be learned from this.  When presenting your blog or your book to the world, simpler is better visually.  Bold colors and bold attitude garner attention.

What if you don't have a bold attitude?  Be bold in your reticence.  

The point is to have a point.  Let people know what they will be getting from you.  We all know what we're going to get from John Locke (who came from a marketing background and sells 1 digital book every 10 seconds so he claims and I don't doubt him), Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking or someone who writes erotica.  Be the go-to guy or girl (I want to say gal but even girl isn't PC, can I say doll?)  Be the go to guy or doll (yea!) for what you do.

I'd be the last one to tell you you should only write one thing although I'm sure it helps.  The agent Michael Larson said I was a victim of my own talent because I did too many things well.  Concentrate on one thing, brand yourself.  It could be genre, or your target audience like the Christian readers or middle readers or Baby Boomers. 

Well how about you brand yourself as offering a really good story, really good writing, and a sensibility the audience identifies with.  Let that be your brand.

Find something for yourself and after you identify it, do it.  Readers will find you.

Take Delight in Small Accomplishments

I am so thrilled.  Not Low Maintenance has been chugging away all month and today it reached its highest ranking ever.

• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #3,763 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal
  • #34 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Legal
  • #100 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor

This is the first time I've broken into the humor category.  (People do say I write funny but in real life, most people say I have no sense of humor.  In reality, I have the same sense of humor while walking around but most people are too flatfooted to get it.  Sorry, there's no point in not telling the truth at this point.)

For the last 2 weeks its been Amanda Hocking everywhere you go.  She's had success that's just unbelievable, right?  I don't want you getting all despondent and compare your sales to hers.  Or King Joe.  It'll only make you feel bad.

I had a contract to write a book for Simon & Schuster with a psychic I knew.  Don't ask for further illumination or stories, it was a big fat mess and negatively impacted my career for years.  Anyway LadyMoon had a guided imagery thing where you would drive to the ocean and the point was to get as much water as you could because it represented prosperity.  It was kind of interesting to hear people say they drove up in their Beetle and and filled a bucket, while other people drove up in a tanker.  Still others didn't get the point of the exercise at all and were still stuck back at the house wondering about a storage facility or something.  The whole thing about the world is that abundance is truly unlimited.  If X runs out someone will invent something to replace it provided there aren't people clutching to lack and preventing innovation.

So don't feel bad about your sales if your work hasn't caught on yet.  Rejoice that there's a great market and someone achieved such success.  There is a world full of readers and lots of them speak English.  Indie Ebooks are so affordable, they're like a pack of gum or a huge, give you a headache it's so big Snickers bar.  There's plenty of success out there for everyone.

Do your best work.

The Lowering Bar

Without getting into too much background causality, it's obvious to nearly every1 that how language is being managed now has changed.  U can C it everywhere.  Texting probably contributes.  (Personal disclosure: I don't have a cell phone. We don't have service here anyway and I don't have need for such a gadget.)

So okay we're not going to get very upset with typos in our books because we see tehm all the time.  What are we going to value?

In the very early days of movies,  such things were shown in storefronts in the city.  Who was in the city at the turn of the century?  Immigrants.  It became quickly obvious that many people in the audience had difficulty reading English if at all.  The story had to be told in images.  It had to be simple because the moving images move very quickly and details are lost and not remembered. 

I think we're reverting to this style of storytelling in ebooks and I'm only talking about indie books, not those that began life in tradpub.  Broad, simplistic, easily understood at speed, lacking resonance.  

In screenwriting, I think I've said this before, the opening image is supposed to tell the audience what the story is about.  I'm sure this isn't the only example but this is the one that I remember most clearly.  In The Bodyguard, the first scene is Kevin Costner standing over someone on the ground and there's a firefight going on.  You know he's a bodyguard, you know he will risk his life standing unprotected in a hail of bullets in order to do his job.  Okay we can go home at that point as far as I'm concerned.  Or to quote from The Player "The thing writes itself."  You know whatever dame is introduced will face a similar situation but that since she's a dame and he's a guy, they'll have deep feelings for each other.  There will be an obligatory sex scene where the formerly cold guy shows unbelievable heat.  You know she will act like a bitch, but that's just verve/whatever, she has reasons for acting like that but is not actually like that.  (Oh let her actually be like that, who cares.)

So what part of this movie is worth watching?  I have no idea.  I guess if you like Kevin Costner.  Of course with this specific movie you're waiting for Whitney Houston to sing I Will Always Love You which is spectacular and written by Dolly Parton.  This movie is going to change nothing, move nothing, say nothing.  It's a way to pass a couple hours.  It's...well no, I was going to say it's like eating potato chips but since I don't eat those very often, when I do, it's always very exciting.  This movie is never going to be exciting and we've seen it all before.  It's like robotic eating, you don't remember you've done it.  You don't remember watching this movie.

And there are an enormous number of ebooks we're not going to remember reading.  I'm not making a judgment because I really do believe people need to be distracted at times.  If your loved one is terminally ill, you need a few hours of a mind vacation.  Nurses, doctors, firefighters, police, all kinds of people have stressful jobs and just need a break.  A challenge isn't needed, it's not helpful.  But challenges make you stronger, they test your muscles and your mettle.

Right now we're in the storefront era of ebooks.  We're all learning what this new medium is.  But do you know what happened in film after the creators learned how it all worked?  There was 2 decades of creativity that has yet to be rivaled.

Romantic Comedies

I love 'em.  I mean the movies.  The older ones more than the newer ones.  I love Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray together.  I love Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable or Joel McCrea.  Very enjoyable movies.

When I started my writing career I thought I was going to make movies.  I wasn't so keen on the whole book thing, so everything I did was directed to getting me to Hollywood and making movies.  When I got into television (thank you, Kate) I thought I was on the medium fast track.  But there was so much I didn't understand about the process and the culture out there.  I was the wrong age and the wrong sex.  And I wasn't going to consider a sex change and plastic surgery.  

So I came back home and took the romantic comedy script I had written and turned it into a book.  Oh guess what, no one wanted it.  Then one day I happened to meet an editor from NYC.  I think she was at Three Rivers Press, not small peanuts.  This is about 15 years ago just to put the thinking into a time-frame.

I told her about this book and I pitched the whole romantic comedy thing.  People love the movies so dearly and there are no books on the market like that, it seems a natural.  She looked at me kindly but as if I was indeed quite pathetic and said "If there was a market for that kind of book, you'd see them in the stores."

I think it took me a long time to recover from this.  I mean a really long time.  I think I actually went to non-fiction for a number of years and did a book on gingerbread construction that was published by Harry Abrams, then went on to the cook books.

Meanwhile over in England people like Jill Mansell, Helen Fielding and a host of others were busily churning out romantic comedies (aka chicklit) to great success.  Soon it had caught on here.  Apparently women who loved romantic comedy movies did want to read them as well.  Hmmm.  But I was doing something else.  And that's fine because I'm not a chicklit writer and we were years away from digital.

So here I am today with a book NYC couldn't understand in a category they didn't believe was viable nominated for the Best Romantic Comedy of 2010.  Isn't that just something?

Yes it's personally very gratifying but I spent all that time, typing with 9 fingers (did I tell you I cut the tip of my finger off?  It bled for nearly 3 days and I was in the hospital that whole time) to tell you, to assure you that the great smart muckymucks in NYC publishing do not know everything.  They do not sense the trends, they don't even recognize them.  They don't know what's good.  They can only pontificate after the fact.

I find it distasteful in the very least that the same NYC publishers who rejected and ignored Amanda Hocking in March 2010 come crawling back mere months later offering her a contract they wouldn't have deigned to consider earlier in the year.  You think that demonstrates their editorial wisdom?  I don't.  I think it demonstrates how venal they are.  Their imprimatur counts for nothing.

But as my television agent, Barry Weiner, so wisely said "If they treat you badly and then come back to you, make them pay."  Money is the only thing they understand.

Vampires From The Id

You know how I am about vampires.  If not, it's simple.  I don't get it.  Actually, Amanda Hocking's trilogy MBA went a long way to my coming up with an explanation.

Here is another, a blog post written by a psychiatrist, Shrinkwrapped.

February 28, 2011

Vampires and Zombies: Monsters from the Zeitgeist

In Amazon's Top 20, there 6 books about vampires (including 3 in the top 5), 6 books that are some variation of sword and sorcery fantasy (2 in the top 10), 2 books about witches, 2 related  books about Roswell aliens (a variant of hard sci-fi apparently), 2 books about Magic, and 1 hard Sci-Fi epic. The remaining book is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories which more properly would be considered detective stories but make it onto the Amazon Science Fiction and Fantasy list.

This very unscientific mini-survey reflects a change in the zeitgeist. 

In the heyday of monster movies, the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Japanese monster, Godzilla, was recognized to be a manifestation of our fears of nuclear annihilation.  Godzilla was unstoppably destructive and razed most of Tokyo to the ground (repeatedly, in sequels.)  Godzilla was our nightmares become real. 

At the same time Science Fiction was the most optimistic of genres, introducing us to worlds in which anything and everything was possible.

In the 21st century, our nightmares have changed.  Why vampires?  Vampires serve many different functions as a repository of anxiety.  On the most personal level, the relationship between parent and child, in the setting of economic anxiety and modern notions of "helicopter parenting", reflect a deep seated anxiety over supplying and receiving sufficient emotional nurturance.  Parents often experience their needy children as insatiable while children often experience helicopter parents, who cannot tolerate their separation-differentiation, as sucking the life out of their youthful bodies for the support of the older, waning parent.  The fantasy of relationships as Vampire-Prey experiences is a common feature of modern relationship anomie. 

Consider a recent article in Slate magazine.  The imbalance on college campuses between successful young women and the relative paucity of successful young men (a result of long term trends de-emphasizing typically masculine work versus typically feminine pursuits) means that the sexual marketplace has shifted.  Men find women easier to find for casual sex, leaving young men and women in trouble

Sex Is Cheap

A woman who is anxious and desirous of emotional sustenance which is withheld can easily see herself and be seen as a Vampire, while the man who takes what is most precious from her with nothing in return can easily see himself and  be seen as a Vampire.  Further, the lack of depth to sexual relationships, casual sex without commitment or emotional connection, leaves both being little more than Zombies.  After all, what is a zombie but a hollowed out person who can no longer do anything productive?

In addition the dearth of traditional hard Science Fiction on Amazon's list reflects the current pessimism arising from an accelerating pace of change that has us all feeling at times as if we are living in a Science Fiction novel.  In reaction, the ability to transport oneself to realms where Men are MEN and wield swords in manu a manu conflict, and where damsels are distressed (or alternately, powerful independent spirits, desirable and beautiful)  offers a ready wish fulfillment for those who are burdened by too much reality in their lives even as it harkens back to a halcyon (imagined) past where one knew one's place in a stable world.

[On other levels, Vampire fantasies can relate to the sense that the current arrangements that most of us have established between work and play and love have become destabilized.  The changes taking place in the economy as globalization grows means that the traditional, post-war arrangements are changing in unpredictable ways.  ... We have workers feeling drained by the demands of their work and the diminution of sustenance (wages) that almost everyone is undergoing.  The ubiquity of Zombies relates as easily to the dread of our foreign competitors (faceless hordes who threaten to overwhelm us) as to the spiritually deadened young men and women who couple and share physical intimacy without ever sharing emotional intimacy.  These are topics for another post.

Read the whole thing if you'd like but I chose the most salient points-- Vampires from the Id.

Saturday Treats

One for me, one for you.  Well, two for me.

I'm very excited to be fitted for new contact lenses.  I know it seems like a small thing but I've been wearing rigid lenses since college and my eyes have gotten too dry to continue.   It was a real life changing moment to accept that.   It's been hard working at the computer or even reading a book.  I couldn't switch to the soft lenses because until recently they didn't correct for astigmatism.  Now they do and I can see again!

Not Low Maintenance has been nominated The Best Romantic Comedy of 2010 by reviewers  at The Romance Review.  So how lovely is that.  Thank you to whomever is responsible.

Here's a television interview with Amanda Hocking.  I'm glad to see her face and hear what she has to say.

And there's another snowstorm planned for this weekend.  Enough already!  

But I'll just keep plowing ahead on Bad Apple 3.

Handwringing Over The 99 Cent Book

There's an article in ZDnetAsia about the 99 cent ebook.

http://www.zdnetasia.com/rise-of-the-99-cent-kindle-e-book-62207374.htm

Read it if you'd like.  I can hardly untangle it.  It's bad it's good.  You can't tell the vetted/tradpub books from the crappy indie books except by price.  

Wait.  What about my tradpub books whose rights reverted to me?  My perfectly vetted books published by Atheneum.  Are you gonna turn your snoot up at those?

So wait again.  We're to believe the heavily in-house rewritten Danielle Steele books are better literature than anything indie.  I've read tradpub books (well, I started them I couldn't finish them) that were unreadable as well as stupid.  One was a historical mystery that was grossly anachronistic.

I don't think much of this argument.  There are very badly written and edited indie books.  I wish that wasn't so but it is so.  There are also very badly written and produced tradpub books.  In my book for Avalon, one editor rewrote a passage for me because I'm a big fat dope.  Unfortunately she doesn't know the first thing about flying beyond sitting in the seat and watching the movie and I have a pilot's license so I had to explain the difference between altitude and attitude.  Not an unimportant difference if you'd prefer not to drill the plane into the ground.

You know you're over the target when you start taking flak.  Ebooks are a threat to them or we wouldn't keep hearing this bs.

Dream Horse

As I've said, Amazon hasn't been great for me.  For months the juvenile books didn't sell at all.  Most of them still don't while at B&N they're stars.

So imagine my pleasure over Dream Horse's performance lately.  The audience changes, there are shifts in the tides.  Put your best work out there and keep going forward.

• 1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children's eBooks > Animals > Horses
• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Animal Care & Pets > Horses > Riding
• #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Sports > Individual Sports > Horses > Equestrian

 

I feel like I should say something about reviews.  I learned early in my career to ignore them.  The notion that you can treat them all equally is silly.  One that praised you will be processed differently than one that doesn't appreciate the work.  I find them somewhat entertaining at this point.

I had a poor review on Kate recently and it didn't have to do with the inability to download the file.  Yes, B&N still hasn't managed to remove those rants 8 weeks later.  People are quirky.  They've had their own life experiences, educational experiences and have issues going on around them which can all impact how a story sits for them. 

It's good to reflect on what the review says.  Do you think there's any truth to it?  Does that make a difference to you now or in the future?  

The reality is you can't please everyone and you're better off not trying.  If you're not already the kind of writer who can attract a broad audience by not offending anyone, then you sort of hit the jackpot.  If you're not that kind of writer, I don't know how you become one.

Sweeps

Sweeps was a difficult book in some ways.  It must have had about a half dozen titles and at first I was thinking about Pride & Prejudice in a television studio.  I rewrote it many times.  It was more heavily invested in Judaism originally.  It was rejected by many agents.  I don't know if it ever got as far as a publisher.

There's a scene of anti-semitism that essentially happened to me early one morning and then I had to go to the studio.  I was completely unglued.  Luckily the staff at One Life was great.  

I thought it was good writing and I was baffled year after year to have it rejected.  Geez, they didn't get it at all.  There was nothing redeeming about this book for any tradpubber who read and plus !!!!! The printer was too light for one very astute agent.

Today Sweeps had its own little milestone.  Fleeting tho these milestones are...

• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #18,552 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Entertainment > Television > Screenwriting
  • #32 in Books > Entertainment > Movies > Screenwriting

Sailing Into Sales

Amazon has never been as great for me as some other authors.  It's a different readership than B&N.  Last month, Not Low Maintenance started coming into its own and reached a nice milestone by yesterday midnight.  It was very pleasant.  Like Sweeps, it's been in the Top 100 of its category for quite a while so it gets found.  No, there's no graphic sex.  Yes, it's more about food than shoes.  Definitely, it's about setting the groundwork for a relationship that will last the rest of Viva and Joel's lives.  So sure it's not like everything else.  If it was like everything else some agent and editor would have recognized that much--they're not schtoopid.  I'm not in the least bit disappointed it wasn't tradpubbed.  I'm glad I got to do it myself.

I just want to cheerlead for a moment.  Don't be disappointed if you start slow.  Just keep writing.  Maybe it'll take a year for your readers to find you.  Don't be discouraged.  You know the reality as well as I do.  There are always new readers coming online.  There are always new outlets and new ways to be found.   Be proud of being a non-conformist.  If you give your audience your best work, you have nothing to regret.

Where We Are

In the film LadyHawke the bishop  says "Great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze, Captain".

Whether the breeze of ebooks is announcing a storm or not is hard for some to say.  I had a conversation with a Christian writer this month who was very sure this breeze is announcing nothing.

From her POV it may look like that.  Christian publishing is extremely vital and she's selling books like crazy.  I don't know there's a market for digital Christian novels.  Yet.

For others in the legacy business, many are in denial.  The barbarians are at the gates while the elitists continue on as though nothing has changed.  To them, they have every reason to continue the pretense they are still in control.  Some people can't bear to confront reality no matter how much they claim to be "reality-based".

The storm is announcing itself.

Listen!  The Storm Also Calls To Us: Be Daring

What Floats To Shore On Saturday

Apparently a wholesaler is selling ereaders for £ 30 in the UK.

<5% of YAs are digital sales.  (When this changes, yippee!)

I read a blog post on Writer's Digest about effective covers.  Most of it I have said to you already--readable, big title, think in terms of thumbnail-- except they basically said don't do it yourself. 

I also read a blog post which said traditional publishing is like Marxism.  Bleed the proles dry.

These last two paragraphs are linked by the confidence those in traditional publishing have that you cannot do your book better than they can.  Joe Konrath said a short while back that no one in the real world works on a royalty basis like publishing (or entertainment).  You give them your book.  They edit it once, they make a cover once, they do the publicity once, and in perpetuity for all known and unknown reaches of the galaxy they are entitled to more profit than you receive.  Everything is weighted in their favor, it is in their best interests to assure you that you are dope without them, you need them and you're not "certified" until you are published by them.

Off-Topic slightly--Introduce yourself to the great American writer, Walker Percy.  He was a physician from Louisiana and so marvelously a clear thinker that you will do yourself a favor to read his work.  That's where "certified" comes from.

Yes, I understand, easy for me to say.  I've been certified.  But it's still illusory.  Be certified in a new way this century by creating your own lovely, intelligent digital book and finding your audience.

And while you're introducing yourself to marvelous writers, read Laurie Colwin.  You can learn more about writing from her than anything I can think of.  What do these two have in common?  Clean, crisp writing, sleek, pointed, aerodynamic.  They're both compassionate observers with an intense understanding of human behavior.

I'll end by saying Not Low Maintenance is (for me) skyrocketing in sales at Amazon this month.  It's #40 in it's category.  Even if its review says it's too much about food for people on a diet.

Ruminations While Waiting For The Storm

Sure, another snow combo storm is predicted for today and tomorrow.  I've had enough of winter as I'm sure most people have.

I used to write for One Life To Live.  I have a peculiar history with this show as I watched it for years before I was hired.  That made it very easy to step in because I knew everything.  But every few years they take a bad misstep and I wind up quitting them.  When they killed off Dave Siegal I quit for years.  Then when they had a Dr. Mengele style whackjob implanting devices in Larry Wolek's brain, I quit for years.  I may quit now because it's just so poorly written.  I'm starting to miss the dialogue because I'm shrieking so loud.  I think audiences are extremely forgiving but you can't mistreat them forever.

Are soaps a reflection of the society or not?  I think they are.  Unfortunately they are reflecting a culture I'm not so crazy about.  When I was at Another World Betsey and I protested a teenage girl moving in with a late 20's doctor.  We said "Mothers across America are screaming." Last night on OLTL two teens were desperately attempting to have sex, the mother knows this is going on and is ok with it and I thought mothers across America are not screaming.  Couple yeah, but not enough to make the producers take notice.

There was an incident last week.  A young Catholic boy defaulted his wrestling match because his opponent was a girl.  One thing he said was so poignant.  "This is some man's future wife and he wouldn't want her touched in this manner."

I believe this is true and correct.  I also believe any man who will marry Cassy won't care.  She'll probably be atouched plenty before she gets married, if she bothers to do something as retro as getting married, because that's the way it is now.  Sex is commonplace to most young people now.  It's not sacred, it's not special, it's an activity. 

I'm sure I'm in the minority.  There are people irritated by the notion that she could be perceived like chattel (favorite word) and she's not a possession that can be sullied by a mere man.  It's her choice if she wants to wrestle or be touched.  It's none of any man's damn business.  Okay.  That is the other POV.

One thing I can say for sure, there were mothers across American screaming for Joel's phone number because that's just the lovely kind of young man their daughters deserve.

Building a Cover

Okay.  Let's see if we can have this make sense.

I read Chris' book years ago.  I don't remember much about it.  Someone is reviewing a murder case.

While he did have Photoshop experience in the past, he hasn't worked with it in years.  And it wasn't on any of his computers at home.  Chris sent me this image he tinkered together with some program.

Wrong shape.  1000 pixels X 1500 pixels.  Start with the correct shape and configuration.

It's arty, good for a gallery show but you can't tell what any of this is.  Too much text for a novel.  

Then he sent me this.  Apparently the book has something to do with a doll but I'm not sure.  This did give me an idea. What are the lines over the image?  They're supposed to represent puzzle pieces, some are missing, that's the black parts.   I don't think it works.  It's cluttered, you can't tell.  Or at least I can't tell.

I did a quick image search and turned up this

Wrong shape.  But I specifically looked for something with high enough resolution that could be manipulated and I wouldn't lose clarity.  It was also way too dark.  So I tweaked it and configured it correctly.  (Come on, it's not that complicated!)  And I added a watermark just now but ignore it.

I was happy.  Now to the text.  I wanted something bilious.  You can get fonts that are distressed looking, but I did it myself.  You simply use a grunge brush on the text.  There are tutorials you can follow.  It's easy.

Didn't show up.

This didn't work either.

This was it.  I placed it on top of the image.  You know me, I like to echo colors that already exist in the image.  I used the blue of the eye for his name and I was done.

I'm sure I haven't convinced some how really easy this is.  I didn't convince Chris!

I'll let you know when he gets it published and I certainly encourage you to buy a copy because he has pushed the envelope of what is being done with graphics and images in a digital book.

Monday Morning Thought Dump

Heather asked yesterday what promotion I do for my ebooks.  I don't.  I did try to hang around the Nook Forum and Kindleboards but I actually don't think of it.  I think there is logic behind it.  My books don't fall into what they seem to be excited by.  I encourage everyone else to do it.

Reviews.  Great.  No one that I know of  is reviewing middle reader books.  Or YA for that matter.  If you wrote a thriller kind of thing you can approach Red Adept for a review.  Of all my books only Not Low Maintenance was reviewed.  It got 5 stars, I'm sure the review is buried by now so I don't see how it can be a help.

So do I have a reason why my books are found at all.  What sell sells.  If you get on a list--the top 100 or whatever--it's easy to be found.  Because the book is selling, it sells more.  Charlie (Dream Horse) and Summer Horse have both been on the top something lists at Amazon and Nook for about 3 months.  They sell because they're easy to find.

There is no better advice than from King Joe himself.  Have a good, eyecatching cover.  Write a scintillating description--yes, I hate doing it, it's like writing a query letter in that I have to be in the right mood for it.  Tag your books.  I still don't know the alchemy of how you're found.  People must search based on their own preferences or desires of the moment.

One thing I have most writers coming to this don't have, is my entire lifetime of being a writer.  So I have lots of books listed on amazon, some aren't digital, some I don't have the rights to.  It's all self-referring.  And I've going through most of my digital books to put in pointers to other works.  If you liked Not Low Maintenance, maybe you'll like Sweeps.  

The best advice I can offer and always offer is--DO YOUR BEST WORK.

A friend wrote a very inventive book quite a few years ago.  Again mainstream publishing didn't understand it.

He has finally decided to go forward with it.  He's such a good writer but like some of our compatriots here, he has no faith in his ability to do a cover.  So I'm going to do one for him and perhaps he'll let me use the images as a tutorial for you.  It's likely to be a very simple cover.

Let me stress now that you are better off with something simple.  If you have a strong image, you don't need anything else.

Take a look at the Bad Apple cover.  What's that.  A close-up of a bad apple.  And the title.  I don't think I'll change it.  Someone suggested a gun on the cover would be stronger but here's the thing--it's not what I want.  Apparently I'm willing to lose potential sales in order to offer my sincere artistic vision.  The whole Bad Apple series isn't catching on the way I would like but I want to write it.  

So that's something a writer always faces.  Do you write for the market or do you write to express something in you.

In Bad Apple 1, I quoted from The Thomas Gospel.  This is part of the Nag Hammadi Library, fragments of original Biblical writings discovered in a cave in the 20th Century.  There are some scholars who believe The Thomas Gospel may well be the only recording of what Jesus actually said. 

If you bring forth what's inside you, what's inside you will strengthen you.

If you do not bring forth what's inside you, what's inside you will destroy you.

Making Enemies of The People You Need

I'm on a list for Avalon writers.  Most of them just love everything about it.  I don't get it, to be honest (and you know I'm honest).  

Say it takes 6 months to write a book.  Say you can't get it published anywhere else.  Then a flat fee of $1000 and a professionally (I had to look for a word) produced hardcover book as the result, under certain circumstances can seem to be a good thing.

But, still, it's nothing to rejoice over.  You sold your hard work for a pittance, you've experienced a parade of editors and you're not going to reach the public.  You're going to reach library sales.  Of a certain kind.  You're not getting any royalties and if you are so misguided is a possible word you would sell them forthcoming books as well, you have dug a hole for yourself.  You now have no money and not much of an audience.

Avalon has certain procedures which benefit them (as if it all doesn't benefit them) and don't consider the writer at all.  Blah blah blah.  Like they don't pay in a timely fashion.

Someone wrote a long rant against the publisher recently (well-founded and well-stated) crickets chirped in response.  I think most of the very nice ladies were shocked into silence.

I would think this is the very last thing you would want is to have authors really furious with you and praying you will hate their next book so they don't have to deal with the right of first refusal.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.  We are moving to a point where the only people who will submit work to traditional publishers will be unpublished writers or those who haven't been....(searching for a word) mistreated (didn't think I could find something that wasn't a vulgarity did you) by tradpub already.

Joe Konrath had a good post about the numbers of it all.  You make money FOREVER on an ebook.  That book that the publisher gave you $1000 or $100,000 was underpriced.  It will be remaindered, pulped, forgotten in less than a year if traditionally published.  It will never earn back its advance.  I don't know what more to say.  

So I wrote to Ms Ranter and told her my situation.  Ebooks aren't attractive to her and they're so much work, time, investment in promotion.  She has a niche market and she could well be right.  For now.  We don't know what's going to happen in 6 months or a year.  No one knows.  Not even Joe.

But promotion?  I don't do it.  I should.  I still don't.  I put The Virgin Warrior up this week to no fanfare.  Someone found it and bought it.  If you have a good book, readers will find you.  That's not true in traditional publishing.  Books aren't given time to find an audience.  Difficult, challenging, off-genre books aren't published at all.

Have I said this before?  Not Low Maintenance is all about Jews.  No one wanted this book because it was too nichey.  It's not only my bestselling adult book, it grows in strength every month.  And readers either don't realize all the characters are Jewish or it doesn't matter.  It's just a good book (although very far-fetched as we've discussed earlier).

the great Helen Hokinson

OMG best book ever

Wow, how can I be unmoved by a review like that?  But I did what?  And I need to write another book?  Read Summer Horse and then we'll talk.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Dream horse, February 18, 2011 By  Joyce M. Friedman - See all my reviews This review is from: Dream Horse (Kindle Edition) OMG best book ever. I really loved this book.but u wrote l's as a one.U really half to write another book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think what makes these 2 books work is they're actually about girls dealing with horses.  It seems that some of the Saddle Club or whatever books are more about bitchy girls, heavy on the competition and not so much of the riding life.  I'm sure that appeals to many readers because they like did a tv show about the saddle whatever, right.  Well Disney was interested in Charlie for a time, so I don't feel ignored.

I would also like to point out to ALL the agents who said I and my writing style is hopelessly mired in the past that this book is 30  years old and it's selling like hotcakes at Amazon this month.

Isn't this just too cute?  (Look at how nice and tight his knees are, good little jumper pony.  He probably took a really big leap to propel her that far out of the saddle but she's keeping the form so well.)  Good job!

Creating the Framework

I don't know how instructive this will be but I'll try to explain the steps as I think about a new book.

My horse books sell well so I've been encouraged to write a new one.  Problem--no idea.  Then I remembered, vividly, an incident from when I had my stable and was teaching quite a number of students.  It wasn't just the incident, it was the situation this student was in.  She may not have been particularly interesting in real life but dramatically, there is something there.

Now I have to think about whether she's the main character or is the story told through someone else's eyes.  Does she have the biggest transformational arc or does someone else.  What do I mean by transformational arc?  Usually the main character starts at A and winds up at Z.  You want to see them change and grow.

Okay say Miss Smith goes from A to Z.  Good for her.  What if Miss Smith makes this journey but we have another character, Miss Williams, that also goes from A to Z but for other reasons? That's another layer of complexity to the story.  It also gives us an A and a B story.  I like that better.

We need a C story.  Do we need some comic relief?  That's always good.  And it should have nothing to do with the plot of the A or B story although it may intersect at times.  I have a thought about this.  It's a little like mud daub.  When you build a wall, there are always spaces that need to be filled in.  This C story can be thrown in whenever the story needs a little tweak, when it needs a respite.  I'll bet the characters learn from it, too, but I don't know how right now.

No, I'm not going to start writing, I'm going to look for incidents that move the characters from A to Z.

What's Z?  Plotwise, I have no idea.  Thematically, I want the characters to get to a place where they have sacrificed for someone else.

Already this becomes a story that has something to say.  That's not very commercial.  It would be better to have no one sacrifice and someone just win the Grand Championship at the horse show.  That's really easy to understand.  I doubt if I could maintain my interest in the book for that long and I have to live with the thing.  I'll think about dumbing it down, though.

Still More Talk About Covers

I was dismayed (as much as I could muster which admittedly wasn't a lot since I'm still under the weather) to see the comments from yesterday's post about covers.  I am o'er washed with a feeling of sorrow to see anyone limit themselves.

I never designed a cover before Impossible Charlie.  Yes I was a photographer, so yes, I was exposed to composition early in my adult life.  You can find sites where artistic or photographic composition is explained with many illustrations.  You can look at great art.  You can study covers.  You can learn.  You can grow.

This is a moment in history when writers should be feeling empowered.  Try to expand your skills.  Try to create a cover.  It took me probably 8 hours a days for about 4 months to become somewhat competent in Photoshop basics.  I did the tutorials online, I researched every question until I had the answer.  All knowledge is power. 

To be brutally frank, far too many writers feel quite confident and empowered to be publishing their work with no reason to be so pleased with themselves.  I've never yet heard (I was a creative writing teacher for a while) a writer express doubt that the work was good enough and they just didn't have what it took to keep going.  Even when that was so obvious to everyone who read the material.

Have you ever seen the American Idol auditions?  Does anyone try-out thinking they didn't put in enough effort?  That would be a big no.

So maybe our commenters are 100% correct in their assessment of their design capabilities.  Not everyone can design.  Not everyone can write.  Maybe a cover designer is needed.  Maybe an editor is needed.

But I'm still going to be encouraging those brave souls to take everything in their hands and give it a whirl first.  The great thing about ebooks is you can change them endlessly until you get it right.

The golden rectangle in artistic composition

Learn More About Artistic Composition

More Talk About Covers

It occurred to me that yesterday there were probably some who said "Yeah, easy for you to say, you have Photoshop!"

There's nothing easy about Photoshop as everyone well knows who's been here since the blog's inception.  But yes, if you don't have a copy and cannot for the life of you figure out how to get a copy, here are a couple suggestions.  GIMP is a freeware graphics program that will make it possible for you to build a cover.  For a smallish amount of money, compared to Photoshop, Corel Draw is excellent and is quite sympathetic to newbie users.  Shop around for a legacy version and you'll be very pleased.

Once  you know a couple common techniques, using these programs will enable you to create the same kind of covers you see on traditionally published books.  I do advise you to learn the whole layer thing.  You might not know what that is now, but once you start learning the program, you will be confronted with it  Layers are your friends.  They will isolate potential mistakes and make changes simple.

Cover images for ebooks are still in their infancy.  I expect that over the next year they will become far more sophisticated and designed more for the thumbnail view.  Tradpub books are designed for bookstores.  That they are displayed at BN or Amazon, is an afterthought.  This will change.  So you do want to be aware that anything you design must be understood in a quite small size.

I think I probably failed that test with Virgin Warrior.  There's an awful lot of detail in the image and the text is fairly small in thumbnail size.  But it was a trade off because in the large size, it all looks swell.  Like anything, it was an artistic choice as well as time and energy investment.  If it was a book, I probably would have done it differently but since it's one story, I was willing to do halfway there.

A Brief Cover Discussion

I had a retold Carolingian tale so I decided to take out all the Pre-Raphaelite art and publish it.  But I needed a cover.

 I found this

Obviously sort of Arts & Craftsy, William Morrisy,  tail end of the Pre-Raphaelites.  And from 1913 so in public domain.  Not perfect perhaps but then again, free and no one is going to come back complaining.

I had to take out the Capitol Building because it wasn't going to exist for another 900 or so years.  I had to photoshop out their text and replace it with mine.   I'm not sure what the big grey thing is that looks like a sheep but it's too hard to remove so it stays.  I did a minimal outer glow around the text to make it stand out from the background a little better than plain white did.

I like to stay with colors that already exist in the artwork.  You can easily duplicate any color that's there with the photoshop sampling tool.  That "orange" comes from her cloak.

I think it's successful and I mention it so you can see how simple a pretty attractive cover image can be. 

Far-Fetched

As I've said, Not Low Maintenance is my strongest selling adult novel.  I'm very gratified.  I like the characters, I liked being with them and I still like being with them.

I got a review (!) on this book at Amazon.  It's always nice, well, it's most of the time very nice, to think someone took time to write their impressions down provided (unlike urrgg) they read the book.  This reader actually read the book, and closely.  Thank you for that.

I will readily admit I'm someone who is easily confused.  I don't make any pretense of understanding modern life or pop culture.  I understand, not for me to decide how well, my little corner.  It took a long long time to figure it out, and I give all the credit to my rabbi for giving me the tools to do so.

Ms Reader says Not Low Maintenance is far-fetched.

Excuse me?  No, really, I want to understand.  Since when have romantic comedies been reality-based?  (Does this hold true for all fiction?  Are we going to say Amanda Hocking's books about vampires are a little far-fetched?)

The filmic peak, perhaps, of romantic comedies was in the 1930's.  Preston Sturges invented the screwball comedy and everyone's been copying him ever since.  You remember Bringing Up Baby where Kate Hepburn had a pet leopard (whatever it was) and Cary Grant was trying to piece together a dinosaur skeleton?  Do you remember My Man Godfrey where William Powell was a wealthy man living at the city dump, found and rescued by Carole Lombard in a treasure hunt?  He went on to become the family butler/babysitter.

Here we have one of my favorites (because I just love Joel McCrea), Palm Beach Story.  The husband has a plan to build an airport suspended over NYC.  In order to help him achieve this goal, the wife, Claudette Colbert, leaves him to find and marry a millionaire in Palm Beach to invest in this project.

So compared to that, I thought Not Low Maintenance was quite reality-based.  Even if there was a murder by poppyseed cake.

Coyotes

Our coyotes don't wear bandanas.  They're not cute.  But I was very upset when I hit one with my car a while back.  My rabbi had to explain it all to me, then I felt a tiny bit better but I still didn't want to be the instrument of its passing.

The coyotes in the hills are singing this evening.  Maybe they're celebrating that it's a good 40 degrees warmer than last night.  Last night was brutal cold.  Everyone had problems.  The man up the road had his fuel oil congeal.

There's no salt in the valley--the kind you put on ice so you don't break your neck or can get the car out of the drive.

Why am I saying any of this? 

This is the texture of life.  The details that tell the audience so much with so few words.  Paint your stories with all the colors your palette offers, don't get hung up on the monochromatic world.

Thinking Things Thru

I admit it, I'm in the lifelong habit of watching soaps.  But gimme a break with the doppelganger stories!

When I was working on One Life I thought Days of Our Lives was superbly written.  I was in awe of Sherry Anderson and her staff.  Things have changed, of course.  People burn out, they leave, they whatever.  What soap writers don't do is go on to writing movies to my knowledge.  They can barely make it to nighttime.

Writing a soap opera.  This is really really hard to do.  I can't convey how difficult it is to put out an hour show (thanks, Paul, that was a bad idea) 5 days every week of the year for freaking ever.

Now on Days Sami is sleeping with Faux Rafe and doesn't notice?

When I used to go into story meetings the producer would say "Keep your main character smart".  How does this make Sami smart?

I'm perfectly happy to shout at the television set.  But is that good if you have the audience guffawing at you.  They will put their entertainment investment elsewhere eventually and for daytime television there has been a steady degradation in audience numbers for years.

Why?  They tell stupid stories.

Why do they do that?  There's not enough time to think anything through.  (Go back to the 5 days a week forever thought.)

Daytime will eventually die.  But digital books will be forever.  Again I find myself trying to give what's perhaps antiquated advice but it's a calling for me and you came here for me.  Unless it was for an image.

Everything has been said before but it can be refreshed, it can become new again if you think it thru.  If there are 15 plots, you're not going to be the 1 writer in 1000 years who comes up with something new.  What's new to the plot is you.  You can infuse it with your experience, your perceptions and your style.   You can make your characters smart and clever and lead  the reader to unexpected places.

At some point the excitement of digital books will wear off.  Yes, this is true.  Then we will be back to the audience expecting a cracking good story.

This is way, way fun!

Length

I know I've been rambling lately.  Probably because of a fairly large change in my life.  So for those of you interested in your work, let's have a reminder about dialogue.  Dialogue is not talking.  It's not conversation.  It seems like it is but it's not.  Keep it specific.  What is your character trying to convey?  Next, what are you trying to convey.  Can you say it in fewer words?

Why should you?

I honestly don't know.

I saw that HP Mallory's paranormal romances are over 100,000 words each.  In the past, only a book like Gone With The Wind was that long.  This is, to me, a very long book.  I'm surprised that with our much touted short attention spans, people actually rush to these books.  In order for me to read something that long, it would have to be beautifully written and realized.  Certainly with HP Mallory's success, many people think they are wonderful and I'll have to give it a whirl one of these days.

Are people actually reading all the words or are they just skimming to the "good parts".  Long ago I took out all the parts people, or I, would skim over.  I thought that was a public service.  Now we're into a Charles Dickens kind of mode where the more words you have the better.

If you have the sales, I suppose there's no reason to change anything.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

So in about 100 years we went from Robert Browning saying "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"  To "Git 'er dun!"

In a Perfect World I Could Include This in Bad Apple #3

One of the characters is dashing back and forth across the country.  This should be in the book.  For now, pretend.  Eventually such things will be possible.

Time Is Flowing Like a River

I've always loved The Alan Parsons Project.  As I was thinking about all the hours/days and yes even years I could be said to have been stalled because of tradpub, suddenly this song came to me.

Many years ago, Atheneum  was my publisher.  And, I know, unbelievably it was before computers or printers or copiers at home.  I needed to copy something so I went to my favorite town that had an office supply store.  That day I met a man I considered, for years,  my best friend.  Allen Atkinson was an illustrator.  He was so incredibly talented and creative.  We eventually worked together and it was perfect.  He would practically perform the scene and I would turn it into words.  We shared so much my husband at the time was irrationally jealous.  Allen and I both liked men.  We also loved Alan Parsons. 

Allen has been gone for many years now but I'm sure he would have been into computer animation and graphics and everything else.  He, too, was abused by tradpub, to some degree.  I'm sure he would have taken his career into his own hands and created unimaginable worlds the hacks in publishing can't fathom.

Many Months Later- Rejection City

Thank you for letting me consider BAD APPLE. I read your pages with interest, but after some deliberation I just don't think I'm the right agent for this project, although it's clear to me that it promises to be a fine book.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but others will surely feel differently and I certainly wish you every success.

Best,

Eleanor

Eleanor XXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXX Literary Agency

www.XXXXXX.com

Okay I give her points for being nice.

I don't understand it.

"It's going to be a fine book but I don't represent fine books, thank you for thinking of me!"

I had to think for a moment, what book is this?  Then I realized, that was the Bad Apple that is selling nicely. 

Just let me say this for anyone new to the blog.  The book is published and selling.  I have the satisfaction of knowing it's reaching an audience.  The 2nd in the series is published and selling.   I have the satisfaction of knowing it's reaching an audience.  

If I had put my life on hold for tradpub, I would be NOWHERE now.

Why did I bother?  I knew I was going digital with it the moment it was finished.  My books don't sell in the vast numbers that other more commercial writers do, and I can use the money from an advance. 

Fling

Quite a few years ago I wrote a book called Inhibitions.  I was attempting yet another foray into commercial fiction.  I got an agent for it, she loved it, and began sending it around.  By the response, editors weren't reading this book for meaning.  I was shocked.  This simple, straight-forward piece of women's fiction was eluding them.  I rewrote it to take out objectionable (graphic sex pretty much) material.  No one liked Fling any better than Inhibitions although one editor did say the writing was lyrical.

I put it aside and I think I did Not Low Maintenance next (which also no one wanted).  I proceeded with all the things you know I've done in the last few years but I resisted Fling for a number of reasons but the main one being--how many times am I gonna take a big hit on this one?  To me, there is so much specificity of emotion in this book, and an exhibition of far more emotional bravery than I possess (as proven by the years it took me to go forward), that I saw no purpose in opening it and me up to more uncomprehension.

I don't know what's changed but I'll get it published today.  It was born to be in the world and it was said well.

My sincere advice is to always write commercial fiction.  Copy what other people are doing and what's successful.  Don't bother yourself with plumbing the deepest depths.  No one cares.  Especially for digital where so many books cost less than a comic book, it's worth less than a happy meal. 

One thing I have noticed over my long career and I don't see this has particularly changed, is that it's a lot more acceptable to write difficult, important material for the Young Adult audience than adult readers.