A few days ago, I wrote a piece on my blog exploding the myth of the rich writer, and laying out (in terms the Royal Literary Fund Old-established British organisation which is using substantial new funds from writers' estates for excellent new scheme offering grants to published writers, who act as 'fellows' helping to improve students' writing in higher education institutions. The fellows each have a page and contact details on the website. www.rlf.org.uk
Links of the week March 21 2016 (12)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
28 March 2016
Now, I understand that "indie publishing" is all the rage, but you might as well be telling Luke Skywalker to go to the dark side. Despite royalty rates of 70%, I think self-publishing is a terrible idea for serious novelists (by which I mean, novelists who take writing seriously, and love to write). Here's why.
A concerted campaign against writers being asked to work without payment is gathering pace on a number of fronts. We take the temperature of the current debate.
Two years ago in ALCS News, we ran a feature entitled The Price Ain't Right by freelance journalist and publishing analyst Danuta Kean, in which she cited numerous examples of professional writers being asked to work without payment. She concluded: "There is a danger that movements against the devaluation of our labour become little more than moaning clubs in which we berate the situation without challenging it at its roots."
In January, Philip Pullman, President of the Society of Authors, issued such a challenge. He resigned as a Patron of the Oxford Literary Festival because they do not pay authors, explaining his actions thus: The principle is very simple: a festival pays the people who supply the marquees, it pays the printers who print the brochure, it pays the rent for the lecture halls and other places, it pays the people who run the administration and the publicity, it pays for the electricity it uses, it pays for the drinks and dinners it lays on: why is it that the authors, the very people at the centre of the whole thing, the only reason customers come along and buy their tickets in the first place, are the only ones who are expected to work for nothing?
There isn't a company that more directly affects book publishing than Amazon. The e-commerce giant's tentacles are firmly wrapped around all publishers, just waiting to tighten when its terms are deemed a speck below satisfactory. And in recent years it has taken a further jab at publishers by being largely responsible for the self-publishing boom that allows many authors to circumvent the traditional publishing system.
Not a week goes by on this website or similar ones in which we don't discuss one of Amazon's latest moves. But rarely, if ever, do we ask a very basic question: Why is Amazon so weird?
It's an unusual question, I know. But I think it's appropriate to ask.
Educational exceptions to copyright introduced in Canada four years ago have had a devastating effect on writers' incomes, with similar consequences reported in Ireland and Australia. Writers in the UK must remain on high alert to this threat, argues John Degen.
Canada is now in the humiliating position of being the world%u2019s best example of how not to reform copyright. Having experienced the relentless pressure for new exceptions and exemptions, and the frustration of seeing government consider proposed exceptions as though they are somehow progressive and reforming, I want to encourage my overseas colleagues to stand strong for your creators%u2019 rights. There is, in my opinion, nothing progressive about broad exceptions to copyright, even those proposed for motherhood concerns like education and library collection. Instead, they represent a regressive deregulation designed to do little more than transform earned income for writers into cost-savings for financial administrators and extra profit for free-culture digital businesses.
Twelve years ago, Ned Rust was the lone employee on James Patterson's team at Hachette Book Group (then Time Warner Book Group), working as what was then "radically" (as he put it) called a brand manager. At the time, Patterson was publishing two adult titles a year. "People were worried it was just too fast a clip," Rust said, and that "readers wouldn't be able to keep up."
As Patterson became much more prolific-he is expected to publish eight adult titles in 2016-his team at HBG's Little, Brown division has grown as well. Rust, who was recently promoted to v-p and James Patterson publishing director, heads a group of 16 employees dedicated to Patterson's publishing efforts, which includes the staff working on Patterson's new children's imprint, Jimmy Patterson Books.
Among Patterson's donations that have gone to book-related causes are more than $1.5 million to fund reading, education, and professional development programs; $1.75 million to school libraries in 2015; more than $1.5 million to independent bookstores and indie booksellers; and $250,000 for young children and teens to spend at indie bookstores.
People already read James Patterson's books - and in staggering numbers. Last year, he and his team of writers had 36 books land on the New York Times best-seller list. To date, he has published 156 books that have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide.
But Mr. Patterson is after an even bigger audience. He wants to sell books to people who have abandoned reading for television, video games, movies and social media.
So how do you sell books to somebody who doesn't normally read?
Mr. Patterson's plan: make them shorter, cheaper, more plot-driven and more widely available.
Your chance to become a novelist! The winner gets a book deal with £20k advance! | Daily Mail Online
Most literary agents receive around 5,000 manuscripts a year from aspiring authors, and each year probably end up taking on only around five or six.
So how do we decide what to take on and what to reject? It all hangs on that first page.
If the first page is well written, captivating, intriguing, with promise of a great plot to come, then the agent will continue reading. After just a few pages, they will get a sense of whether this is a story for them.
Luigi Bonomi
There are fewer fairy tales in publishing these days, but there's still some magic left and dreams can come true. Don't write for the publishers and don't try to second guess the market; it's elusive and impossible to pin down. Just write what's in your head and what's in your heart and give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages, whether it's love for your characters or a need to find out what happened ten years ago or what happens next.
Lisa Jewell
21 March 2016
Last week I finished the first draft of The Children Of Falore (title subject to change). Which means that, in the next few days, I'll be starting the editing phase.
But there's one thing I always do before editing a manuscript, and that is indexing. What's that, you ask? Basically, I go through my outline*and fill an index card for each scene in my manuscript.
Having all your scenes compiled in a physical, manageable stack of cards makes getting the big picture so much easier in the most tangible way. Take the photo above, for instance. I can immediately spot my story's layout and the location of major events. Are they too close together? Does my pacing need work? Do I need more exciting chapters? Should I slow down? This is a great way to spot those potential issues.
In a time when authors have multiple avenues to publish their books, many publishers are finding themselves broadening their offerings to authors. And this trend has resulted in more "hybrid" authors who both self-publish and work with traditional publishers at the same time.
During a discussion at Digital Book World 2016, Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, Julie Trelstad of Writers House, Johanna Castillo of Atria Books, and Jaime Levine of Diversion Books discussed how publishers and hybrid authors can collaborate in today's market.
While many self-published authors have found success on their own, some seek help from traditional publishers to distribute their books to a wider audience. With publishers taking care of an author's marketing strategy, distribution, and cover art, authors can spend more time focusing on the actual writing.
"The publisher can provide strategies, digital assets, art and graphic design that help the author maintain a brand even if they continue marketing on their own," said Trelstad.
"When we plan campaigns [at Atria Books]," added Castillo, "we have conversations with the author to see what has worked for them and try to make that even bigger. It's always a collaboration with the author."
"The writer doesn't have to spend time marketing themselves anymore," Dystel said. "That takes a huge amount of time."
Being original can be somewhat of a risk in the post-recession publishing environment, but when the leap is taken, it can really pay off. Poetry publisher Candlestick Press, run by founder Jenny Swann and her business partner Di Slaney, is a shining example of this. I met with Swann to discuss the idea behind the press, sales success, and her innate passion for the genre.
Swann set Candlestick up in 2008, specifically aiming to encourage people to send each other really good poems instead of greetings cards. Each of their pamphlets is package together with an envelope and a bookmark, left blank for your own message, with themes range from love to bicycles. The idea is original and has met with great success, the pamphlets straddling the line between the gift and book trade. "I had fallen in love with the poetry pamphlet as a form," enthuses Swann, as she explains where the idea came from, "but I also used to have a lot of discussions with the editor of another small poetry press about pamphlets. He said that he wasn't going to print them anymore because you can't get bookshops to buy them as they haven't got a spine and therefore no one can see them on the shelf! So I thought to myself, that's the challenge, to make sure that bookshops display poetry pamphlets in a way that they're visible, and attract the attention of their customers."
Andrew Rhomberg wants to be the Billy Beane of the book world.
Mr. Beane used analytics to transform baseball, famously recounted in "Moneyball," a book by Michael Lewis. Now Mr. Rhomberg wants to use data about people's reading habits to radically reshape how publishers acquire, edit and market books.
"We still know almost nothing about readers, especially in trade publishing," said Mr. Rhomberg, the founder of Jellybooks, a reader analytics company based in London.
Authors are understandably nervous about how new insights into reading behavior might shape publishers' editorial decisions. Suppose you are writing a crime series, and readers gave up halfway through the latest installment. Publishers might not want to buy the next one. Or what if readers skip around in your nonfiction book, a common way to read nonfiction? An editor might want to cut the chapters people are skipping, potentially erasing useful context.
Two years ago, I was practically begging a student to read a novel in my high-school English class. This isn't an unusual problem. The girl, who's a relatively bright, college-bound athlete, told me that she "just gets too distracted after five minutes" of reading. When she promised that she would listen to the audiobook of the novel on the team bus that afternoon, I was less than enthused. "Reading is like getting in physical shape," I told her. "This time, try to read for seven minutes and then take a break." But a few minutes later, I could see she had spaced out again. I considered the implausibility of students such as her reading the novel for homework, outside my quiet classroom.
In contrast, I recently discovered my students voluntarily reading a story together, all at the same time. And they were inspired by an unlikely medium-podcasts-which is obviously ironic, as many people like podcasts precisely because they don't have the time or inclination to sit down and read. In fact, Serial has an explicit warning at the beginning of their transcripts: "Serial is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read." Of course, teenagers are infamous for enjoying exactly what they're told not to do, but I was nevertheless surprised that while listening to an episode of Serial in class, their collective eyes fixed on the transcripts displayed on a screen at the front of the room. And I was startled-happily so-by their shouts when I was tardy in scrolling down.
What I know now is that high-schoolers - at least my students - like reading and simultaneously listening to podcasts even more. Although many observers attribute the growth of podcasts to recent technological advancements in production and access, relatively little is said about the latest in voice transcription. Unlike the first season, Serial's second season features almost perfectly accurate transcripts of each episode. I knew it would be a bonus to my lessons this year; I didn't know it would be a game-changer. I turned off the lights, projected the words, and told them, "Here's the script in case that helps anyone." It apparently helped everyone. They all turned their heads, and some of them shifted their desks.
A biography of a musical hall act has beaten an academic treatise on the human posterior in the closest race ever for The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.
Alan Stafford's Too Naked for the Nazis (Fantom Films)-a title looking into the career of vaudevillian troupe Wilson, Keppel & Betty-garnered 24.8% of the public vote, while Dr Jonathan Allan's Reading from Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus (Zed Books) took home 24.3%. Too Naked for the Nazis' margin of victory is by far the narrowest since the annual Diagram Prize judging switched to public voting via The Bookseller's website in 2000.
Coming in a strong third place was Mark Kirwan-Hayhoe's Transvestite Vampire Biker Nuns from Outer Space: A Consideration of Cult Film (MKH) with 20.7% of the vote. Christopher Herwig's Soviet Bus Stops (Fuel) came in fourth at 14.9%.
The Bookseller diarist Horace Bent, administrator of the Diagram since 1982, said: "When future historians write about 2016, they will inevitably look at two seismic events: the closest Diagram Prize race of all time, and the election of President Trump which led to the downfall of Western civilisation. Until that dire time, we can celebrate a worthy winner from one of the strongest Diagram shortlists in recent memory."