On the Go

As you may or may not have heard, the Futuristic, Fantasy, and Paranormal chapter of the Romance Writers of America is hosting a brand-new conference this year in New Orleans. As you may also have heard, I'll be attending.

This, of course, means that this Friday and Monday I won't be around to blog. And in the rush to get things ready for the trip, I haven't pre-scheduled any posts yet to make up the difference. This means you won't be seeing much of me until I get back.
In the meantime, are you considering a writers' conference? Here's a couple of links:

Preparing for your first writers' conference
Writing conferences from an agent's POV

I wouldn't necessarily suggest following these like the Ten Commandments (I do recommend going to pitch sessions, myself), but the advice is something to think about.

Have a great weekend! I'll be back either next Wednesday or Friday (depending on how tired I am returning) with a review and details.

Winner of a free book!

Ten days ago, I interviewed author James Hutchings on self-publishing. Hutchings graciously offered a free copy for giveaway, and by an extremely technical random probability generator (aka, snippets of paper and a hat), we've got a winner. Congratulations to Andris Bear for winning a free copy of A New Death and Others!

Here's a snippet of what she's won:

THE GOD OF THE POOR

In the beginning of the world the gods considered all those things which did not have their own gods, to decide who would have responsibility and rulership.

"I will rule all flowers that are sky-blue in colour," said the Sky-Father.

"I will listen to the prayers of migratory birds, and you all other birds," the goddess Travel said to him. And so it went.

At last all had been divided, save for one thing.

"Who," asked the Sky-Father, "shall have dominion over the poor?"

There was an awkward silence, until the Sky-Father said, "Come - someone must. Those with no gods will grow restless and cunning, and in time will cast us down, and we shall be gods no more."

"Not I," said blind Justice, and her stony face flashed a momentary smirk at the thought. "Why not Fame or Fortune?"

"Darling, I don't think so," said the sister goddesses together.

There was a long pause. The gods shuffled their feet and avoided one another's gaze. At last a voice broke the silence.

"I will," said Death.

--From The New Death and Others

Want to read more? You can find The New Death and Others, as well as Hutchings' other book Two-Fisted Tweets, on Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Publishing News

This week's Publishing News, divided between "News" and "Industry Blogs."


News

Penguin ends its relationship with Overdrive, effectively ending its eLending program with libraries. This leaves Random House as the only one of the Big Six to offer unrestricted lending of its titles for libraries. There will, however, be a price increase.

Barnes & Noble is continuing its boycott against Amazon Publishing, and other publishers join the boycott.

International publishers shut down a site that hosted over 400K pirated eBooks.

The Authors' Guild throws in their official statement on Amazon, noting that Amazon's success isn't a result of positive capitalism and the natural success of a well-thought business strategy, but rather a predatory pricing strategem designed to eliminate fair competition.

QueryTracker posts its Publishing Pulse for 2/17 and 2/24.

Google drops some of its bookstore affiliates who sold Google eBooks. In pre-order sales, hardcover books still trump eBooks. In Canada, Random House takes over McClelland & Stewart, much to the dismay of small publishers. RH has promised to maintain the M&S traditions that have made the historical publishing company a Canadian icon. And Barnes & Noble sales rose in the third fiscal quarter, but the earnings fell due to heavy reinvestment into the digitial world. Seems like a sound investment to me - especially as the Nook is becoming its own source of immense profit and helping B&N stay in the game against Amazon's Kindle. Also contributing to the decline was the switch from only selling new & used textbooks to also providing cheaper rental ones - thank you, B&N!

A recent survy shows that teens are not embracing eBooks. Yet YA eBook sales are booming: "over the recent holiday season Barnes & Noble sold five times as many YA e-titles as print ones online." It's not hurting print sales: sales as a whole are growing, both digital and physical. It probably helps that publishers are aggressively marketing to teens, from offering the first book in a series for free to releasing exclusive short stories in e-format.

Industry Blogs

And one of QueryTracker's bloggers, now a published author, offers her perspective on the myths of the editorial process versus the reality she has now experienced. Also, querying an unlikeable character is difficult, but it can be done. Figure out what makes you like the character enough to write about him, and then include that. Carolyn Kaufman offers advice to Pantsers dealing with writers' block.

Agent Kristen at PubRants warns writers to look for publishers selling books in places they don't have the rights to. If you catch your book being sold internationally and you don't think international rights were part of the deal, tell your agent immediately, because you'll end up not getting money you should have. Why are books showing up in the UK in such a way? Because the UK market is one of the toughest to get into, and publishers are only signing best-sellers. So authors are being brought in through exports (which can get misreported or unreported in the royalty statements), or finding ways around the system.

Rachelle Gardner offers a 3-part series on what we in the publishing industry can learn from Kodak (part 1, part 2, part 3). First off? Don't get stuck in the past. If the market changes, change with it - clinging to the old sales tactics (like trying to make a profit off film in a digital camera economy) will kill us. Secondly, figure out who our customers are. They're not beholden to us - they can get their material elsewhere. So if we want them to come to us, then we have to provide them what they really want. And lastly, be prepared to change. The industry is changing. Start gathering information, research how it's changing, and change with it. Be innovative!

She also offers words of encouragement - don't give up; publishers are still buying new authors! And a list of 13 ways to impress an agent. Most of the basics you already know: research the agent, be professional, know what other books are in your market. But there was one surprise for me: Show videos of yourself talking. Since being able to market your book is important, showing you can speak in/to public is also important. Guest blogger Julie Cantrell follows up with a how-to-make-your-own-book-trailer guide.

Nathan Bransford suggests that we remember not to get too attached to our characters. If we like them too much, we end up losing a chance to make the story better, because we can't kill them off or make them do things we hate. Make your characters ugly; give them real flaws. It makes them better characters. And he reminds us that it's not enough to paint a vivid picture with your words - a book needs a plot, and it needs to move. Good mental pictures alone do not keep readers reading. He also posts This Week in Books for 2/17.

It seems like every book with a young adult protagonist is automatically categorized as YA. But sometimes, it isn't written to be a YA book. A reader asks Jessica Faust how she should choose the genre. Faust answers that if it isn't YA, then it's not YA - in this case, if it's a mystery written for adults, that's the genre, even if the protagonist is young. She answers another reader's questions on whether to include the prologue in a partial request, whether she should double space her selection, and whether or not she should include her age in her query. Simply: Yes, yes, and no. And if the story makes sense without the prologue, consider taking the prologue out entirely.

 Faust also talks about her ideal client: one who communicates! A monthly e-mail giving updates makes her very happy. She also updates her dictionary of publishing terms, and points out the difference between alerting and spamming on Twitter. It's okay to Tweet that your book has just been released; it's not okay to direct Tweet someone with "This book is awesome!" You might recommend a book to your friends this way, but not your own book - that's when it becomes spam.

Rachel Stark on TracChanges reminds us that those of us in the publishing industry are what media giants call "early adopters" - you know that eReader you've had for years and won't put down? Most people just got one. Even if everyone else you know already has one, trust me, the majority of readers are only starting to get them. Remember that the first-comers aren't your only audience.


What news in the publishing industry have you encountered in the past couple of weeks?

Wednesday Writing Prompt: Dream Vacation

Imagine, for a minute, that you just won your dream vacation. Where would you go?

Okay, now imagine your character just won his or her dream vacation, appropriate to the world and time period. Where does he/she go? Do? With whom?

Inside My Mind (Plots vs Pants)

Today, I'm going to give you a terrifying glimpse of my logic, as related to writing. How do I write? How do I decide what will happen next?


I am, on any given writing day, halfway between a plotter and pantser. Let's start by dissecting these terms:

Plotter: A writer who outlines the entire story before writing, who knows what will happen before she writes it and follows a carefully constructed plan, often down to knowing what each scene is and what will happen within it. (vb: to plot)

Panster: Short for "by the seat of my pants," an idiomatic expression meaning "making it up as I go." This writer has no plan. She may have carefully constructed characters, and a basic idea of where they're going, but what happens depends on the characters and will develop as she writes. She is, in essence, as surprised by the outcome of the story as the characters are. (vb: to pants [it])

Most of the things I've written so far have been carefully constructed through the first half of the book, but then I'll run out of plan and pants it from there. I'll usually have some idea of where I'm going, but not how I'm going to get there. In cases where I do have an idea of what I want my plot to be, it often changes because of who the characters are. Simply put, "he wouldn't actually do that, come to think of it," can completely rewrite the entirety of a story.

In recent times, I've begun filling the intercession not by the most logical move, but by the most dramatic one that can be backed by some form of logic. I won't make my characters do something suicidally stupid, but if I can come up with a conceivable reason for them to think that the most dramatic action is the most reasonable one, then I'll have them do it. If the most dramatic is just plain silly, I go with the second most dramatic instead, or on down the line until dramatic borders on reasonable. This is working better than my first plan: that I should go with the most sensible choice. Because, at the end of the day, I want to be excited by my own story. And when I choose sensible, I find myself getting bored.

Sometimes this means breaking my characters away from reality. But that usually turns out better, anyway, because after what I put them through, they should be falling apart around the edges. I would be. So I sketch out a basic outline of what I think will happen based on most recent circumstances, follow these to the logical conclusion to get the next proposed scene, and make a more-or-less outline.

(This outline usually has to be rewritten every fifty pages or so. I try to keep the outlines short.)

So far, this system is working out well. But I have to admit, I'd like try plotting. There's a notecard method I think I'll pick up at some point, just to give it a spin and see if it works better.

Every day I write, every story I start, I learn something new about writing, about myself, about what makes me better. So if I find something that works, I'll keep using it - but I'll still try something new, too. I don't ever want to stop getting better. Not even if - especially not if - I ever become a bestseller.

(Although, if I switch entirely over to plotting, I don't think I'll be able to resist making the joke, "Has anyone seen my pants?")

How do you write? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Have you ever tried switching?

Interview with James Hutchings, Self-Published Author

While I personally chose to attempt the traditional publishing route, many authors are going for the self-publishing route. I've interviewed James Hutchings, self-published author of two eBooks: The New Death and Others, a collection of short pieces, mostly dark fantasy, and Two-Fisted Tweets, a collection of 30 stories, each in 140 characters or less. Hutchings offers his perspectives on why he chose the path he did, his thoughts on self-publishing, from which kinds of promotion he's gotten the most success, and a free book giveaway.

 I saw that you have two books on Smashwords; have you published anything else?

Apart from The New Death and Others and Two-Fisted Tweets, I haven't put anything on Amazon or similar sites. I wrote a novel years ago, which I just put on my site for free (unwittingly making it 'previously published'), but I never did anything else with it.

Why did you choose self-publishing?

I've never tried to be traditionally published, whereas most authors who self-publish seem to do so after they give up on trying to get a book contract.

Firstly, I didn't want to waste paper by being traditionally printed. There are publishers who only publish electronically, but I was skeptical about what they'd do for me that I couldn't do for myself.

Secondly, it seems like traditional publishers expect most of their authors to do their own promotion anyway, so what are they giving in return? Also, of course, it's very difficult to get a contract, and bloggers like JA Konrath argue that it's going to get more and more difficult, because publishers will respond to loss of income by cuting their 'mid-list', or paying them less, to concentrate on a few authors who can make them a lot of money.

What have you gotten out of it that you wouldn't have gotten through traditional  publishing?

I doubt that I would have gotten traditionally published. First, hardly anyone does. Secondly, I write very short stories and poems that are mostly fantasy. The dominant form of fantasy is currently long sets of equally long novels. So I don't think I would have gotten anything through traditional publishing. The amount of money I've gotten so far is tiny, but the feedback and publicity have been very useful. I've 'built a platform' as some people say, meaning that I've found people who are likely to review or be interested in whatever I put out next.

What do you feel like you gave up in exchange?

I gave up on getting a traditional contract, which would, of course, have gotten me more of everything than I could get through self-publishing. But then I gave up on winning the lottery by not buying a lottery ticket.

How much promotion do you do, and what kinds of promotion have gotten you the best results?

I promote my work almost every day. The main method I use is contacting bloggers and asking them if they'd review my work (or do an interview, guest post, or giveaway) in return for a free copy. I have a giveaway going constantly on librarything.com, and I post about every giveaway on goodreads, but contacting bloggers is my main method.

Is there anything in particular you've done, joined, or attended (like a conference or a writers' group) that has been especially helpful?

A couple of people have asked me how I've gotten so many reviews (I link to every review from my blog). But my 'secret' is just to contact an enormous number of people and ask.


What's that about a book giveaway? Yep, there's one here too! Hutchings has offered a free copy of The New Death and Others. Interested? Leave a comment and be entered to win! Either include a contact e-mail or check back Feb. 27 (that's right, in 10 days; that's a Monday!) to see if you've won. Contest ends Feb. 26th at 5pm.

Below is a clip of The New Death and Others, available on Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Also check out Hutchings' blog.

THE GOD OF THE POOR

In the beginning of the world the gods considered all those things which did not have their own gods, to decide who would have responsibility and rulership.

"I will rule all flowers that are sky-blue in colour," said the Sky-Father.

"I will listen to the prayers of migratory birds, and you all other birds," the goddess Travel said to him. And so it went.

At last all had been divided, save for one thing.

"Who," asked the Sky-Father, "shall have dominion over the poor?"

There was an awkward silence, until the Sky-Father said, "Come - someone must. Those with no gods will grow restless and cunning, and in time will cast us down, and we shall be gods no more."

"Not I," said blind Justice, and her stony face flashed a momentary smirk at the thought. "Why not Fame or Fortune?"

"Darling, I don't think so," said the sister goddesses together.

There was a long pause. The gods shuffled their feet and avoided one another's gaze. At last a voice broke the silence.

"I will," said Death.

--From The New Death and Others

Wednesday Writing Prompt: Reader Feedback

Think about the way the last book you read was written. Not the plot, but something the author did, such as spend too much time on the introduction or start off with a joke. What was thing that you didn't like about the way the book was written? What was one thing that you really did like? Don't name the title of the book or the author; just focus on the aspects of the writing!