On My First eReader

So about two, almost three months ago I ordered an ereader. I’d been wanting one, but I’m too cheap to blow a hundred bucks on the most boring of all models, and definitly not more on the more high falutin' models or devices. I like toys with all kinds of features to play with. So when my boyfriend found the Pandigital Novel on sale for half off at Newegg, I sprang for it.



The PDN is a gimped down android tablet--limited to serve as an ereader with a few perks and not a full tablet. I got the 7-inch white model, and I’ve been nothing but happy with it even though it doesn’t connect to the android market. But you can still install any apps you can get an APK for--I find the easiest way is to email them to myself. It runs Android OS 2.0, has 1Gig onboard memory with an SD card slot, a headphone jack and a USB port. It’s network is wireless, with no 3G. Email, facebook and a file navigator come preloaded, and oh yeah, as does the kindle software (B&N software is available on other models.)

So the technicals out of the way, I want to talk more about how, I the resolute book lover feels about reading books on a “device.”

I actually haven’t been able to use the thing much since I’ve gotten it, sadly. I have this here stack of to-read paper books that I actually want to read. However, I made an excuse to do some reading on it--I had to see what it was like. So, I read through the first four episodes of the Grit City emotobook serial novel; issues 1-5 are out now, and I cannot wait to read the fifth!

A lifetime of reading books has ingrained into me certain reading habits, and apparently, they haven’t changed with picking up an ereader. The only difference in reading on a device, as far as I noticed was the page turning. The screen did not bother my eyes, it wasn’t huge and ungainly to hold (like hardcovers tend to be).

I sat on the couch reading, completely glued to the story, waiting, waiting to see what would happen next...the page turning was quick and letting my eyes flick to the top of the next page with ease. And when I knew I had to put the “book” down to go run an errand, I started patting the cushion beside me, then my lap, then the arm of the chair... and when I reached the end of the paragraph I grinned because I did not need the bookmark I was searching for.

It looks like reading is reading, words through the eyes into the brain. Books are nice, but all you need is text. My disclaimer is that the text needs to be a legible easy-to-read font with proper formatting.

The Arc of Story

I used to be a panster. But I'm not anymore. I needed more structure to be productive enough to get all the work done that I want to get done. Yes, I’m an organizing freak, a slave to my left brain. But, I tried outlining and that didn't work. I wrote exactly what I should, and my work SUCKED.... So I do not outline.

In my struggles with trying to trick myself into getting organized without outlining, I found something that did work. An old enemy had come back to offer help: the story arc.

When I took my first creative writing class, for the first time in my life I started talking to a lot of the other people about writing. I didn’t know the jargon, outside of grammar and maybe plot. So when someone started talking about having trouble with a story because they couldn’t figure out the arc, I had no idea what he was talking about and thought he was being a writing snob and using a fancy word for the plot. Workshop after workshop I heard this word, “I really like the arc of your story,” etc…. And I was feeling left out. What was this ubiquitous arc?

Jump ahead a few years. “Cynthia, you need to have the synopsis for your novel done next month. Cynthia you need to finish your novel and … yes, it needs to have an ending or it won’t pass…”

This was my situation: I refused to work off an outline, so I never wrote one. I had my synopsis but the ending I put down had nothing to do with my story anymore. But I needed something to point me in the right direction. I looked at the beginning, I looked at the middle...yes, there was a “shape there” I could feel it. But I needed to extend the shape. Then it clicked. It all fell into place. So simple. Why hadn’t I seen this before?

The arc is, in a word, progress. It keeps the story from getting boring, from going in a straight line. You can think of it like a learning curve. At first you know nothing, but the more you learn the easier and faster you pick up this new thing until you know so much you can’t learn as much because there is less to know. You might say, “This resembles the shape of a story, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement.” Bingo. That’s exactly what it is.

The thing is, I had seen this before. The arc I’d just come to terms with was easily recognizable in poetry. When I’d studied poetry with Wes McNair, he said a poem always has a turn. In class, we read some poems and found all the turns in them. I was hooked. My favorite poems are short lined with lots of enjambment. The turns in poems were always easy to find, for me (but not in a story, shrug). It always had something to do with the feel of shifting.

Here’s an example from Sandra Kasturi’s The Animal Bridegroom. Try to find the turn.*

The Burning Woman

Listen!
You can hear her pale voice
from within the conflagration.
It always speaks truth.
It always lies.
She crackles like marrow-bone
when she walks.
Her eyes and mouth open
and burn like magnesium.
She is a contrary Gorgon;
everything she looks at
is forced into frenzied life.
If you are very lucky
and can run after her
until she catches you,
you can put her in a canning jar
to hold in the air:
a blaze of fireflies
to light the darkness.

I vastly expanded the shape of poetry that I loved so much to fit my novel. I finished it and moved onto revisions. By the time I got to the end, cutting passages, moving them around, heightening the action to give it meaning, I had a properly structured story, more importantly, I felt like I had control of it.

Now, when I go to write a story, I need to have the arc in mind or I meander around and go nowhere, or I go everywhere except where I should. To keep organized, I use arcs to keep not only my plot on track, but also my characters.

Writing is a craft. Like any craft its practitioners will improve and get better results with practice and the use of tools. This one magical tool has helped me resolve one of my biggest weaknesses.

So, do you outline, write by the seat of your pants or, like me, something in the middle?




*The turn occurs on line 13. See how it’s just after the middle of the poem? And then it moves on to the real kicker at the end—just like a story.



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Yes, I Write

I had a quick trip to Massachusets this weekend, which means a lot of driving for one day. So I didn’t want to do much when I got home. And it’s been a while since I’ve cleared my to-read list on my Google Reader, so I went back in to see how bad my “unreads” had gotten. Let me tell you, it was pretty bad.

But one of Nathan Bransford’s headlines caught me, and I actually read the whole thing. It was a guest blog asking the question “Do you tell people you write?”

This is actually something I’ve heard many other writers and authors talk about, with mixed answers. Everyone has their own reasons about the response they give.

I’ve heard a lot of romance and fantasy/sci-fi/horror writers give the excuse that they don’t want their fellow church goers to know about it because they’ll think it’s a weird hobby (there are quite a few who don’t keep mum too, mind you). I’ve heard others say it makes them look like underachievers or something like that, because it’s not a “useful” profession, and that’s why they keep it quiet.

Me, I certainly tell people I’m a writer—when it’s appropriate. That means when I meet new people in social situations; not, let’s say, at work in idle conversation before a meeting at my office job. But I will say that most of the people I work with, who know me, know I am a writer and cannot wait to buy my books.

I think the biggest reason I don’t hide my writing is that I like to see the surprise in people’s faces (yes it’s usually there). No, I don’t subscribe to the normal desk or retail job scene. And, I even like to see the slight censure in other people’s faces before they ask, “and how’s that working for you?” I’m kind of an ass that way, I guess. I love a challenge and ;) I love to be contrary. In this way I think I’m opposite many of the folks who keep mum.

I can get away with this because I am a very hardworking and driven person. No one could accuse me of being lazy or too unmotivated to make my way in the real world. I also have a unique reason for being this way (yes I’m making an excuse for myself). I have two degrees in writing (a BFA in creative writing and an MA in Popular Fiction from respected schools). I consider that back-up enough for any scoffing I might get from the unsuspecting non-writer. I can make writing a novel sound as technical as dissecting a fugu. I can talk about the origins of my genre, and others; and the importance of various literary figures throughout the ages. And as the other Scribists can attest, I can take anyone to task on grammar and style applications.

Aside from my personal preferences, spilling the beans that I’m a writer should, by all logic, help my sales. If people know my name, I think that would motivate them to buy my book. I mean, if I know an author personally I sure as hell go buy their books. But seeing as I don’t yet have a book on sale, most of the time I get new email addresses to add to my “newsletter list.” It shows that people really are interested.

Because I don’t mind some funny looks, there are so few instances when telling people I’m a writer could have negative consequences. And it’s pretty easy to figure them out. So I say, why not open my mouth when I want to?


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How much should you sell your ebook for?

As we scribists get closer to production time on our ebook anthology experiment, questions like this are plaguing us.

Unlike the big publishing houses, and physical-copy self publishers, we don't have to pay for the substantial existence of something: paper and warehousing/distribution. So we know we don't have to charge the $9.99 or so that you are still seeing out there. This item has been left out off most of the pro epub articles I've read lately.

We were thinking a little more like these guys. Another blog using J. A. Konrath as an ebook reference-his name is popping up everywhere-even here.

The message from the technium is clear. With the tipping point upon us, more and more people are going to sell ebooks at dirt cheap prices. I've seen some people cite the strategy to "sell" their ebooks free for about a month on the kindle store to make it on the top 100 list and then start charging for it once it has the visibility.

Many have pointed out that selling ebooks for dirt cheap isn't much better than contracting with a major publisher (keep in mind there wasn't nearly as much overhead) as far as royalties are concerned. But that's where sales and marketing strategies come in. The more we can sell a book for, the less this will matter. So lets say we charge a bit more for a book, but have a sale every once in a while. It still gives people a chance to get excited about a dirt cheap book, but lets us sell at a higher price the rest of the time. You all know you love it when you see a sale! I know I do.

But there are other reasons than padding sales strategies not to sell at dirt cheap. Even Amanda Hocking, who's sales have been outstanding, charges more than 99 cents.

First of all, it won't pay rent...

The other reasons are innumerable, but one technicality is that certain ebook outlets have limited price formats. The apple store, for instance requires ebook prices to end in .99. so you can either sell for $1.99, .99 or free. Not too many options there.

While there has been a lot of evidence supporting the "the cheaper the better" platform, I don't think it will be the wisest move for us. But we'll keep you posted about our pricing when we make that decision.

Celtx for Writing Novels

A few years ago I found an open source script writing program called Celtx. My brother and I wrote a screenplay using it, and I've used it to write the audio/visual scripts that later became the promo and tutorial movies for my games. There are several very cool features in Celtx like a built-in database for keeping track of character details, an index card view that makes reordering scenes easy, and an easy PDF export. I've always thought this program was almost perfect for novels. It just needed a little more attention.

Well, it just got that attention in the new version 2.9 that was released on February 8, 2011.

Up to now, I've been using almost ancient tools to write my stories (ancient in computer terms, not ancient as in 'abacus'). First I have the actual novel, written in OpenOffice.Org's Writer. Next I have a sort of ad hoc database, stored in a multi-page spreadsheet in OpenOffice.Org's Calc -- one sheet for a chapter list and summary, one for character details, and a third for keeping track of revision history. Finally, I had a simple text file for storing notes on future ideas that hadn't found their way into the novel yet.

I've always wanted a program just for writing - one program to rule them all, if you will. Celtx gave me that for writing screenplays, but fell short for writing novels. Now they have specific novel support, and things are much better. I spent some time over the past few days copying my unedited second novel into Celtx to see how it works.

The "Master Catalog" is still there, allowing me to easily keep track of information about my characters, locations, and anything else I can dream up. This works as well as it ever did, although some of the fields they provide just don't apply to me yet (I don't spend much time thinking about parking on Mars but I imagine it's better than at my current apartment). Having access to a place that lets me store more information than a spreadsheet and in a much more readable format is a boon. It even lets you import pictures, so if you have a favorite actor you envision as your character or some concept art you can add those to your character card for future reference.

Next is the "Novel" component. This is a simple text editor with some custom header areas. This is not as robust as Writer or Word, but it is more useful than notepad because of the way it's tied in. Fill in a chapter header and you instantly have an entry added to the Chapter List on the left side of the screen. This does two things very well: lets you easily add chapter entries and allows for easy reordering. The index card view works even better in that regard, since it gives you a nicer view of your chapters and lets you drag and drop them to change the order.

This is not to say the software is perfect, but it has come a long way toward being my one-stop shop for novel writing. What I feel is missing from Celtx is this:

1. Word Count -- I keep track just to see where I'm at and what sort of progress I'm making. You can select text and right-click on it to see the word count. Effective, but hidden. I'd prefer to see the word count in the chapter list and have an overall total displayed somewhere as well.

2. Scenes -- Having each chapter be an item in a list and an index card is great, but each chapter is not one scene. I usually have several scenes in a chapter and would love to have an interface to let me move those around and insert new scenes more easily.

3. Export -- I want two methods of exporting. First, a fully formatted novel ready to send off to CreateSpace for printing (using my own custom template, if possible). Second, a fully formatted novel in DOC format ready for me to send to Smashwords.

Celtx has worked well for the few projects I've created with it. This novel writing component is a huge step toward making me want to use the program full time. It's missing a few things, but considering that this is the first official version to support novel writing at all, it's an exceptional effort. It's even motivated me enough to look into writing add-ons to get the additional functionality I want.

A Very Good Example of Why eBooks Can be Your Friend

So I have this novel I wrote a while back. It still needs to be revised some (ok, a lot), before it is ready for the greater book-buying public.

I wrote the book, ok a high fantasy novel, as my Master's thesis, and then sat on it for two years. My writing has grown a lot and it's been tugging at the back of my mind a lot, so I guess I should ya know, get it taken care of so I can publish it. A book unsubmitted is a book that is not making me money.

That is one reason.

I could pitch it to an agent, wait for a publisher to buy it, wait two years to get it on the shelves.... Or I could just epub it.

That is my second reason for being so motivated lately.

eBooks are taking off in the current publishing market. And people like Amanda Hocking are proof that this is the way to do it. Go ahead and click on the link. Her story is amazing, and I envy her for it. "As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books since April 15, 2010". This is just an example, if all goes well, of what I can do once I get my novel, and its sequels, finished and up on the net.

As much as I have wanted to "get published," it just doesn't make sense anymore.

A Reading Experience

This is going to be more of a description of my reading experience with Greer Gilman’s Moonwise. The basic story is simple, but experiencing the text is utterly magical. This is why fantasy is my chosen genre. Reading it transports you, the prose effects a wonder that strikes at my heart. And this book did that so well that I am going to talk more about that than anything else. If you want a book review go find one at Amazon. If you want to find out what it’s like to read Greer Gilman, read on.

Moonwise is Greer Gilman’s first book, originally published in 1991. It won the Crawford award in 1992, and was nominated for the Tiptree and Mythopoeic awards. It was released in hardcover by Prime books in 2005 and reissued by Wildside books in 2006.

I know she wrote this book over the course of 10 years on a typewriter with no outline, and no plan for it. For this, the work was well edited (though I did find a few line errors). I know going back through this much text and making sure everything is in the right place is difficult to say the least, and the business-savvy side of me screams of inefficiency, but I only have the most respect for a mind that can successfully wrangle with that.

I’d heard so many great things about Gilman, and I’d seen her participate in various panels at Readercon and Boskone. She is a brilliant folklorist and wildly creative woman. But after hearing her read, or more accurately perform (from another of her stories), I just had to read her books. But it was hard to find through my normal channels (used). So I was thrilled when I found it at Readercon last July and was able to have it signed.

So, with great anticipation I finally picked it up, appropriately, in September (the story takes place in fall and winter). But it’s December now. Yes, it took me a long time to read. The prose was just as dense and challenging as the literature I studied in college. I took my time with it, savoring the lines, references and double meanings like I savored those of Dickens. Even though I read it cover to cover and followed the arc of the story, I can’t help but think I’ve missed a lot of...something in the writing.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t instantly in love with the book. It had a slow, kind of boring start with a few dead ends and little hope of clews. And I didn’t expect the story to be what Farah Mendlesohn describes in her book, Rhetorics of Fantasy, as a “portal quest” story, in which the characters go through a portal from the normal world to another. Moonwise started in contemporary times with two girls, Sylvie and Ariane, who see the same world I see.

I prefer my fantasy untouched by the modern world. I usually don’t like contemporary fantasy stories as much because the main characters are my filter to the world, and I’d rather see it through the eyes of a native than someone like me.

Yet, I can hardly say Sylvie and Ariane are like me. Although they are denizens of the 20th century, if I met one of them in person, I might describe them as otherworldly. They were a promise of what was to come: enchantment, folkloric references and skillful world creation. These things charmed me and kept me examining page after page.

After the story got going, Gilman always keeps the suspense and tension up. One way she did this was by making the world never comfortable. I’d pity the characters and wonder at their survival. They were always freezing and wet and sleeping on rocks, or even when they found a welcoming home, it was bad news and holding out the suspense and dread of what is to come.

I’ve finished this story once, but I know I’ll come back to it and go find her other books. With its wonder, it has wakened sleepy and tired spots in my brain that I had forgotten, it has opened up new parts of my brain, and it has filled them with possibilities--nature abhors a vacuum.


This blog entry is cross posted at Wandering Around the Words.

Writing Fears

Former literary agent Nathan Bransford recently posted a question to writers on his blog: “What is your greatest fear as a writer?”

I’m going to be blunt here. My greatest fear as a writer is never getting published, or more specifically never selling a story or a book.

These can be very different things these days. I could sell the rights of a short story to a magazine or anthology for a decent, professional rate. A book, I’d sell the rights to a publisher for an advance I could live off of for a couple of months. Or I could post the story on my blog and put a tip jar through paypal on it. The book I could sell as an ebook, copy by copy, on Amazon.

I recognize the difference between selling the thing itself and the rights for someone else to publish it. They certainly aren’t the same thing to me.

A few years ago I created a business plan for my writing career and it’s always involved something like: write something, revise it and sell the rights to it. I’ve invested a lot of time and money into writing. That’s how I want my career to go on a regular basis.

It’s not totally about the income. To me, not selling my work means I’ve failed as a writer. Simply having friends and family read a story isn’t enough for me. They are practically in the same sphere of influences I’m in myself. If someone pays to read a story, that means they wanted to and it means something to them. If an agent or editor buys rights to a story it means they know it will mean something to a lot of other people and they are willing to sell it to them for me.

Selling and buying are actions…and actions speak louder than the honey coated words of those close to you. I need to see these actions to know if I've succeeded.

Ebooks and Me

Advancing technology is spurring on the electronic everything revolution. My office is going paper-lite, we are developing electronic methods for just about all our needs. We have common network folders, desktop sharing software, LCD projectors in every conference room, dual monitor setups at most workstations. I can see anything I need to on my computer. So, I really notice when I go to click on the print button. And every time, I stop to think, do I need this in my hands? There are times when I say yes, like when I need to write on it or proofread it. But how will I make that distinction with novels in the coming future?

A few things come instantly to mind:
• How much do I like the author--is it signed?
• How much shelf space do I have?
• Was there a really good sale?

My first reaction to ebooks, a few years ago, was distaste. I didn’t like them because they aren’t my beloved paper pieces of art. These newfangled things were kinda hard to find. Amazon was just about the only place to get them and barely anyone had their novels produced electronically. And those readers were way too much for me to even think about buying. I was in grad school, by the way. Ebooks were for gadget geeks and technophiles. But, oh, how times change. There are so many more shades of gray in this image now.

My opinion of books has changed though, as I’m sure it has for many people. When I think of books, I think of two separate things. A stack of bound paper that either smells like printer ink or “used book store.” I can put a paperback in my coat pocket, or slip a hardcover in my bag or display the spine on my shelf. And they are also a new industry for text in various file formats with all kinds of metadata. To me e-books aren’t so much “books” as a concept. Yet in the end you get the same thing out of either style of published material. You read the words and react emotionally and intellectually to them. That’s pretty much what we’re reading for to begin with.

So you get the same thing out of both formats…

The prices of ereaders are dropping and Amazon and other companies are making it ever so much easier to get your hands on and read ebooks. You don’t even need an ebook reader anymore; you can read any ebook file between your computer, smart phone or PDA.

And technology isn’t an issue when it comes to jumping on the ebook bandwagon…

I confess, I have not yet read an ebook, but I know it will happen soon. I’ve been tipped off on some good open source software called Calibre. I’ve been playing with it and checking out its features a little in my spare time (I’ll post about it when I feel I’ve put it through its paces). Thanks to Baen’s Free Library and Project Gutenberg, I have a few e-books sitting on my hard drive. So when I’m done with my next few reading commitments I’m going to give the ereader a try.

Will I ever buy another bound book after that?

Books may soon be like antiques--those nice bits of furniture in your parent’s houses. Because in your house, all you have is your stack of electronic devices and self-assembled, particle board furniture from Walmart or Target. Well, I lust after those antique furniture pieces, but I don’t buy them. They are a luxury item. Same goes for books. I’ve always been more of a library-goer than book-buyer. So I don’t do my share to support the production of paper books. But I think that a nice spine on my shelf will always have a special place in my heart--even if I store most of my new $2 or $3 dollar books on my terabyte hard drive.

Agents: An Oblique Angle into Ebook Reality

J. A. Konrath and David Farland have both said you don’t really need an agent--both are wise and experienced authors with many, many books sold and many hard-won connections in the industry. I bet they’d say something like “if I knew then what I know now, I would have done it differently.” Or maybe not, times are very different now than they were when each author sold his first book. Times are much different now than they were a year ago.

In my bio I state that I am currently looking for an agent. This is true. I want an agent for the high fantasy novel I wrote. When I was working toward my MA in writing, I was taught that after you finish your novel, you go and get yourself an agent. It is the agent who sells your book to the publisher. The agent will get you the best deal; negotiate the best advance and royalty rates. Their role doesn’t end there. For a mere 15%, they are with you for the long haul. They will advise you on your career, guide your steady advance from new author to midlist and hopefully to bestseller. They have their finger on the pulse of the publishing industry. They know who’s who and have regular meetings with editors who trust their judgment on which new books to buy.

Yes, agents are a career guide for their clients, but if an author publishes ebooks there is no reason to have an agent. Therefore, the author doesn’t have that advisor. Authors who publish ebooks will have to be business savvy as well as tech savvy, or turn to their fellow authors for guidance.

With traditional publishing agents are necessary. Most publishers won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts--they don’t want the slush. So you send it to an agent who has tons of contacts with publishers. The agent gets the slush. That unmoving pile of manuscripts that may or may not contain the next best seller that will make them rich.

A few years ago I worked at a very small poetry publishing house, Alice James Books. Back then, they ran two poetry competitions a year and had about a thousand manuscripts come in for them. I had the pleasure of opening the submissions and filing them for judging. And I even took a glance at some of it. Some of it was horrid. A very small amount was amazing. There was a lot in the middle. But a thousand manuscripts are not much compared to what some agents and smaller publishers get.

I know that a lot of decent stuff gets passed because the one person who is reading it doesn’t like it, or they are so tired of scanning all the crap that came under their nose that by the end of the day nothing looks good to them. That is how I envision a full-time slush-reader’s day, and from the perspective of someone searching for an agent, it scares me.

However, if publishing goes the way of ebooks, and books are self published by the author, there will be no slush-filtering agents and editors. The Internet will be full of slush-piles-come-ebooks. And readers everywhere will get the pleasure of reading it, or only reading the first page and passing on it, like the agency and publisher slush readers. Word of mouth, via the many social networking options available, will be critical for weeding the good from the bad.

However, people won’t be too upset if they paid $2 for something moderately entertaining, and they might tell their friends about it too. Two bucks is cheap for entertainment (think movie ticket costs here), and you didn’t even have to burn any gas to get there. But even with the low cost, an author won’t make any money if their book is bad.

With e-books, a publisher’s reputation (and bank account) isn’t hanging on the book’s sales, only the author’s. In my opinion, having an ebook out there that doesn’t sell would be worse than getting a rejection letter. I like the way agent Nathan Bransford says it, "the rejection letter of the future will be silence." At least when you get a rejection letter, it’s cut and dried, black or white. You’re in! Or this sucks! Once the ebook is “published” it’s done, that’s it. There’s no opportunity to make it better before the book-buying public sees it.

What worries me the most is that agents and publishers will likely soon establish a standard digital royalty rate. If they have, I haven’t heard about it. Then, even if I publish a book traditionally, I won’t be able to keep my erights for that story. Guess I better get going…

Publishing Houses on the Cusp of the Digital Age

Billions of dollars go in and out of the publishing industry each year. Money earned on titles, fees paid to printers, artists and hundreds of employee salaries. John Scalzi recognizes that with every book he publishes, he, and every other author with a current manuscript, gives at least ten people a job that year (or would it be two years as that is how long it can take to get a book to the shelf?).

But we can’t all be John Scalzi. Let’s say Del Rey buys my book. I may not get a marketing agent or a copy editor. But I will have an editor (who may not edit me at all), a cover artist, an interior designer and printer at the least. This all adds up to a large overhead per company, per year--best sellers and all the rest.

Everyone can see that ebooks are quickly becoming more popular, while fewer physical books are selling. Publishers are being forced to make decisions on a new product they are less familiar with. But I can see why the folks running the business may be uncomfortable with change. Publishers have to make decisions now for a book that will hit the shelves in two years. It is impossible to know exactly what is going to happen to the publishing atmosphere ahead of time. So any decision they make now, while uninformed, is risky--that is riskier than usual as they never know if a book will sell well to begin with. With shrinking profits, they have less room to take those risks.

But the question is, do ebooks cost a publisher less to make? And therefore will they make more of a profit off them? I think the answer is yes. Current reading trends are showing that ebooks are certainly worth their time. For a buck or two, people are grabbing them just for the hell of it, like candy in the dollar store.

Dorchester seems to be catching on to this. But perhaps, their decision is a little extreme. They recently announced that they are going electronic. Epublishing advocates everywhere rejoiced, I’m sure. The digital format is finally being recognized! However there is more to it. According to an agent from Nelson, Dorchester has recently had financial troubles. And according to the Publishers Lunch Blog, their staff has been shrinking too. This doesn’t bode well for them, and really makes me wonder about their decision to abandon physical books.

Publishers are losing control over the market. They are hesitating to give authors a reasonable percentage of ebook sales royalties. Apple and Amazon are banking on selling both reading devices and self-published books. Tech savvy authors know that ebooks are worthwhile. They aren’t even selling the e-rights of their books and are making 70% or 80% profits off their work, never including a publisher or an agent. However, their books won’t see print, or grace the shelves of your living room bookcase.

Standing between self-publishing authors of ebooks and physical books is a huge mountain of tradition, but there is a method behind that madness. Physical books require more money and space and shipping to produce. Publishers take on all responsibility for that. I think that the huge overhead makes publishers drive up e-book prices to keep their business as a whole in the black. The aren’t selling the pile of pages with a pretty cover, they are selling the hard work of all involved in addition to the entertainment value of the words.

But the self publishing authors of ebooks who charge a buck or two for their book are seeing plenty of profits. What scares me the most is the worst case scenario: Pysical books disappearing forever, driving all the publishing houses out of business, leaving the world at the mercy of self-published books only. It would be hard to find the stuff you like amid the uncontrolled flooding of stories. I’d rather have over control than none in publishing. Author Catherynne Valente saw a similar dark vision of the future.

So far, I’ve made my observations as a writer looking at the business. However, there are many readers, consumers, who are driving the decisions of publishing houses. In the end, it really is all about the readers. Many put their TRUST in publishers to find the good books, the good names of authors who will give them the satisfaction they are looking for. Some won’t even look at a book that didn’t come from a publisher, as reflected in this blog post. The bookstore customers wouldn’t buy a paperback with a glossy cover because they thought that meant it was a self published book. They didn’t read the cover blurbs or even check out the spine for a publisher’s logo. This stigma is the biggest danger for someone considering self-publication, but fortunately, this stigma is showing signs of fading.

The book has been one of the least-changed products since it emerged in the 15th century. The Gutenberg Bible doesn’t look too much different from any hardcover book on the shelf today. Perhaps that is why some are so eager to change while others are so hesitant. But it comes down to the fact that if you want your book to be on a shelf, and make a living with it, you need a publisher. If you can put your own book into digital format, then go for the profits.

The e-pub Industry-Part 1

If I had to describe how I see the publishing industry right now, I would call it a “seesaw.”

We can see very plainly the fear that people have of change also applies in business. The actions of publishing houses and agents since the e-book are clearly reactions to what they see as a threat to paper publishing. Practically every week I hear about another independent bookstore closing, one less venue to sell paper books. Many people are reacting to things like this simultaneously in different ways--some good, some scary.

In December, Random House decided they would take action by insisting it had the e-pub rights to the books it published. Many agents jumped on this and fought for their clients to maintain their e-pub rights.

In 2001 a federal court ruled that authors did not grant e-book rights to the publisher according to their original contracts. This seems to be holding up to this day. If you want your e-pub rights, and don’t explicitly grant them, you can have them. But this could get harder and harder. On the other side of that argument, I’ve heard that there are authors who don’t want their e-rights because they wouldn’t know what to do with them.

The Wylie Agency has recently started a new publishing line, Odyssey Editions, to e-publish its clients’ backlists--taking the publisher out of e-publishing and maximizing their clients’ profits. The publishers are trying to claim their e-pub rights to these backlist titles. We’ll have to wait and see what happens…

All this activity speaks loudly of big money in e-books. Those directly affected by it, the publishers of paper books, are trying to protect their future interests of staying in business. But we really have to ask if our electronic rights are any of their business. If we can help it, shouldn’t we writers hold onto our very profitable e-rights, as it seems to be in our best interest for making a living?

Traditional publishing houses are not paying the same royalties that an author could get from e-publishing independently. J. A. Konrath and the Authors Guild both break down the numbers.

As an unpublished writer working hard toward a career as a full time writer, the current publishing situation is daunting. I have an unpublished fantasy novel (still in revision) that I’m not quite sure what I will do with. It is impossible for me to make the best career move according to what I see going on, as I don’t know when I will publish it. And my decision will depend on the state of the industry when I do sell it (selling it could mean to a publisher or by myself). I have three different scenarios in my mind.

1
If I sold it in the next month or so, I would hold onto my e-pub rights and put in the time to launch it in electronic format myself, while, theoretically reaping the benefits of an advance and having copies on shelves in bookstores. I would get the most profit from my work. But, who knows for how much longer that will be possible. The scales could tip tomorrow for all we know.

2
If I market my book around but don’t sell it for another two years, none of this might actually matter. I could sell it and enter into a currently nonexistent standardized paper and e-book agreement where I won’t get a choice in the matter. However, this might not be the best scenario. What if paper books go completely “out of fashion” and no one buys the hard copies and the publisher still gets to keep most of the profit from the e-book sales? This type of agreement would lead to a growing independent book sales industry.

3
I could e-pub my book, no advance, and do the hard work of self promotion and make full proceeds off sales. But, working full time, would I have enough time and resources to do that much self promotion? I once heard about a new author, I cannot remember his name, who got an advance in the six-figure range. He immediately quit his day job and planned a massive self-promotion campaign. His explanation was that if he ever wanted to earn back his advance and see royalties he needed to sell a ton of books. I’m thinking I don’t have that kind of time or money. So this is not for me right now.

I’ll have to keep a close eye on the industry to make sure I get the best agreements I can for my work. I can see actively publishing authors having vastly different contracts from title to title depending on the current conditions. Maybe this is prime time for multiple book deals? Either way, the change won’t be over until the legal departments of publishers and agencies, and maybe even federal courts establish new standards. But who knows how long their deliberation will take and how it will affect e-publishing rights, traditional publishing houses, the role of the agent and most importantly the author. In the meantime, books are being sold every day under different circumstances.

World Building, Part 1: Top-Down Construction

Any author working in a science fiction or fantasy world has to confront the topic of world building at some point. I'm sure many authors don't even think about the process and just dive into it. But there are authors, like Tolkien, who will spend years crafting elaborate, breathing worlds with expansive histories and peoples. Some of these visionaries go on to create incredibly fine details. You could actually study the Elvish language from Middle Earth, for instance. Or the Klingon language from Star Trek.

But where do you even start developing a world that rich?

Building worlds is a daunting task for anyone to undertake. I am a writer and I have a passion for creating video games. Creating worlds is a subject I've spent more than two decades exploring. The process started for mostly financial reasons. I played Dungeons and Dragons a lot and couldn't afford to purchase the manuals for every TSR world that interested me. So I created my own world.

I will begin this discussion with a look at a Top-Down design.

I started my fantasy world, Palamar, with a friend when I was about ten years old. I drew a map for the solar system to explain how the planets and moons were set up. Then I created the world map, drawing each continent in turn, marking cities and forests as I got to them. What I was doing was creating an entire fantasy universe from a million-mile view down to the people living in it. Once I had a good idea of the layout of the land and the people who lived in it, then I was able to create my characters and the stories and adventures they would live through.

This method has some benefits. You never have to wonder what's over the next horizon. You've already created the map and defined the boundaries of the civilizations that live there. Once you have boundaries and cultures, it's pretty easy to see where tensions between them could erupt. Place a big open field between two civilizations and you've just created a place for a battlefield (ancient, future, or modern, take your pick). The history often ends up being obvious once you've created the landscape.

There are drawbacks to this method. Every time I have an interesting idea for something I want to add to my world, I have to make changes to the world map to accommodate those ideas. Before I started using computers on a daily basis, that meant re-drawing the world map by hand. This method is also finite - it's really not practical for designing more than a single world. But for a fantasy realm, this method works nicely.

But this is only one method for creating a world...
I will discuss a Bottom-Up method in part 2.

What a Workshop is all About

Now that we’ve launched the site and have our legs under us we will be running full steam ahead working on the content of the e-book we will be publishing next summer. This means a lot of writing for us…writing and more importantly workshopping--because we know there’s room for improvement in our story-telling craft.

I’ve been workshopping stories, poetry and non-fiction in and outside of school for almost ten years. All I have to say about my experiences with them is that they are great, in so many ways--even the bad ones. Now let me explain why…

On the simplest level, a workshop occurs when a group of people get together to read your work and give you feedback on it or you read another writer’s work and give them feedback--sometimes both at the same time. A serious writer’s workshop is not a social hour, a word-play date, or bitch session. It is time to work on craft, on words--something that you love.

There are different kinds of workshops: professionally run retreat workshops such as Viable Paradise, Taos, Clarion and Odyssey, one-shot Con workshops, online workshops, class workshops offered through schools, and many others. Each have their own strengths. But I’m going to focus on the regularly meeting group style as that is what we scribists will be doing.

Let’s say you’ve written a story and you just want to send it out. You want it to get into some editor’s hands so they will instantly send you an email asking to buy the story’s first publication rights. You think it’s that good.

Then why, a few days later, did you get a form rejection?

Because you are blind to what your work really looks like word for word--yes even if you put it aside for a week, or a month to forget about it. No matter what, you won’t be able to find all your grammar and spelling mistakes, or all your confusing sentences that you with all your idiosyncrasies will not notice as abnormal expression of English, or whatever language you write in.

You might have a great story, but the first time it comes out, it might not take the same shape that you see in your head. A good workshop can point out your foibles to you much quicker than you can find them.

So, confident you wrote the best story you could, and unable to find anything else in there to fix (you’re not letting your workshop fellows do work for you that you know you need to do first), you bring your awesome story to a workshop.

Now you are in the box, the silent state of the writer being workshopped, ready to write down everything you can because you are open to their constructive criticism.

Each group member quickly runs through their points about your story, maybe elaborating on one or two so as not to take all the time for themselves. You hear lauds on the parts of the story that showcase your strengths, but then… Wait…What are they talking about? That’s not what I wrote. They didn’t read it right. But you keep silent. You might find this difficult but it is important for the writer of the work in question to not pollute the critiquing atmosphere. They read it as they saw it. As a wise professor of mine once said, “You are in the box in workshop because you can’t sit behind every reader and say, ‘No, this is what that means.’” And so you listen carefully and write down what they said; ideally it was constructive criticism about the various parts of a story: plot, characters, style, pace etc. They are critiquing your work, not you. They probably know very little about you and can only know about the story. So don’t take anything personally.

Everyone’s said their bit, and now it’s your turn to talk. First, say thank you, because someone took the time out of their busy week to read your story. Then ask for any clarification on comments you didn’t understand. If no one commented on something you were wondering about, ask what they think--someone will be happy to tell you.

The reason for all this? They want the same help from you. They are in the same position you are, they want to improve their work to professional standards and beyond--this will take more than workshopping, but it’s a great place to start.

The best part about receiving criticism is that you get to make the final call on which pieces of advice you take. Of course, even if you disagree with a comment, you must give it due consideration. In the end, you are the only one with the vision of the story in your head and you can decide what’s best for it.

Perhaps the most important part of going to a workshop, at least in my opinion, is the motivation that comes from it. Language comes to life in workshop sessions. People are discussing words and phrases and paragraphs and their right to be on the page. Then someone brings home feedback and thinks about edits and plot snags and character depth. Beyond that though, they have someone else’s story in hand to critique for next time. The cycle never stops, it keeps you going and it keeps you improving your own work.

Now we aren’t always so lucky to find a great workshop where the other writers are generous or constructive in criticism. There are always those workshops where you won’t mesh well with the other participants. That’s fine, you’ll always have readers who will react that way, and it can be good to hear things you don’t like. But if the group really isn’t working for you (no one is trying to publish, anyone can show up whenever etc…), get packing and find a new one, or put a new one together yourself.

Reading other people’s work will help you realize what your own strengths and weaknesses are. Listening to other people critique the same work you critiqued will help you sharpen your own reading skills. As Donne said in the early days of the Renaissance, “No man is an island.” Writers need readers and writers need other writers--so get workshopping!