I'm feeling reflective this morning (or as reflective as I ever get, anyway), so I'm going to don my Nostradamus-like robes and prognosticate on the future of publishing. There is something in the air—is it just autumn previewing winter? or is it something more portentous?There is an interesting (some might say alarming) story in this morning's New York Times about libraries building downloadable digital collections, with several publishers coughing into their fists and muttering, "Unsustainable!" Simon and Schuster has introduced the wet fizzle they call the "vook." Former Harper CEO Jane Friedman has launched an ambitious plan to digitize the backlist of many successful authors. And soon there will be a bevy of e-reader options—from Barnes & Noble a two-screen doozy, and a cut-rate Kindle-esque reader called the iRiver Story, and many more ways to read books that make the Kindle look like slate and chalk. Soon you'll have your choice—electronic ink? backlit screen? giant screen? tiny screen?What does this mean for books? What does it mean for publishing? Publishers—and most authors—are clearly agitated by the idea that books may become the next medium to be pirated and passed around, like movies and MP3s. We all saw what happened to the record industry: artists survived, but big labels have not—or not in the same fashion. Nowadays recordings are seen almost as advertisements for the musician's tours and merchandise. The money has migrated. Will the same thing happen to traditional publishing? And if it does, as seems likely, where will the money come from? How will publishers or authors (in newspeak) "monetize" their craft and content?Michael Grant, who periodically pops up in the comments section of this blog to toss an F-bomb or two, believes that books will definitely all be digital soon. He points to his frighteningly smart son, who read the whole of a 750-page manuscript on an iPhone. Kids these days, he suggests, aren't allied to traditional media. His terrifyingly brilliant son, in fact, has created something he calls Frebook (the link is to a Quicktime animation sequence; it takes a bit of time to load), which embeds backstory and advertising within a text, and creates hypertext-like windows that pop-up when the cursor is rolled over highlighted words.Well, that's one way money might be generated. But I think it ignores how book sales are generated in the first place: By word of mouth.Another way to monetize digital books is to embrace free media and give the downloads away. That's what Cory Doctorow did with his bestseller (in print) Little Brother. He made it available in so many downloadable forms that it made the issue of pirating moot. Instead, it did something else: It spread the word. Doctorow quoted publisher Tim O'Reilly that "My problem isn't piracy; it's obscurity," and then went on to make a cogent point: "Of all the people who have failed to buy my books today, the majority do so because they've never heard of me, not because someone gave them a free, electronic copy." Giving away Little Brother didn't hurt book sales at all. If anything, it may have buoyed them.Certainly that's how it works these days in music. Anecdotal example: A friend gave me a copy of the Frank Turner album "Love, Ire & Song." I loved it so much that I've since bought three physical copies—for other people. And I downloaded his collection "The First Three Years" from iTunes. And I bought a physical copy of his new album. I love the guy's music, and so I support his work. I believe readerships might function the same way.Readers—like fans of music—are incredibly loyal beasts. Loyal to formats (else there wouldn't be such passionate defenders of print media), loyal to authors, loyal to the books they love. Readers aren't created wallet-first, but hooked by their love of a story. The other day, I bought a massive trade paperback of James Clavell's Shogun, a book I adored and read and reread as a teen. (I was so passionate about it and feudal Japan that my friends, in the way of savage un-PC teens everywhere, called me "Mr. Nip.") This is the third copy I've owned over the years. I didn't want it digitally. If I love something, I want it around in concrete form.I know that I will always buy books by the authors I love. Even if, say, I didn't buy the book that first exposed me to their work. Maybe I got that book from a library (Ray Bradbury), or maybe a friend loaned it to me (Robert Heinlein), or maybe I read it on an e-reader first.What do you all think? Where is publishing going? Where are books going? Is it really that worrisome for authors? Or only for publishers?
Anticipation is
high among publishing folks for Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Jonze and have enjoyed his work dating back to his music video days. What's getting me even more excited for the film are the early reports of it being incredibly dark and strange.There will be contrasting opinions about the film adaptation of WTWTA, and I simply can't wait. Some will say, "It's too scary for kids!" Others, "Where's all the good stuff I remember?" Folks like me, "Holy crap that was crazy awesome!"The film got me thinking about adaptations in general. With the recent success of the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Coraline films, we're seeing more film studios that want to capitalize on children's books as films because they see them as events the whole family will attend together. In one way, that's good: Percy Jackson, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Alice in Wonderland will all be gracing on the big screen before too long. In another, it's bad: I'd hate to see the film version of I Love You Forever or The Giving Tree.So it's time to play movie critic! What are the best and worst film adaptations of children's books? Please leave your picks (one of each, please!) in the comments like so: "Best: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Worst: Harry Potter and the Secrets of the Chamber."On Friday, we'll switch things over to adult titles who got the film treatment and then on Monday I'll post the results both from the blog replies and replies on Twitter.
Anticipation is
high among publishing folks for Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Jonze and have enjoyed his work dating back to his music video days. What's getting me even more excited for the film are the early reports of it being incredibly dark and strange.There will be contrasting opinions about the film adaptation of WTWTA, and I simply can't wait. Some will say, "It's too scary for kids!" Others, "Where's all the good stuff I remember?" Folks like me, "Holy crap that was crazy awesome!"The film got me thinking about adaptations in general. With the recent success of the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Coraline films, we're seeing more film studios that want to capitalize on children's books as films because they see them as events the whole family will attend together. In one way, that's good: Percy Jackson, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Alice in Wonderland will all be gracing on the big screen before too long. In another, it's bad: I'd hate to see the film version of I Love You Forever or The Giving Tree.So it's time to play movie critic! What are the best and worst film adaptations of children's books? Please leave your picks (one of each, please!) in the comments like so: "Best: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Worst: Harry Potter and the Secrets of the Chamber."On Friday, we'll switch things over to adult titles who got the film treatment and then on Monday I'll post the results both from the blog replies and replies on Twitter.
I am working on a new handout for talks, one about mistaken ideas that come out of workshops. And I thought I'd ask you all for help creating it. But first, a disclaimer: I have spent a lot of time in writing workshops—as a student and, later, as a teacher—and I have learned a ton from them. Good, useful things that improved my craft and gave a professional sheen to my work that would have taken years and criminal acts to achieve otherwise. I love workshops and think most every writer should have one, so don't get me wrong when I warn you that sometimes ...Workshop members have no idea what they are talking about. You know the person I am talking about: Full of advice, self-important, hellbent on hearing herself speak, convinced she has the solution to every problem, has sussed every issue, has gamed every system, knows the ins-and-outs of everything about anything. Which means, of course, that she's talking out of her hat. Often the misinformation comes from good intentions, or is simply outdated, but it is misinformation nonetheless, and it should be taken down with extreme prejudice. Hence the need for a handout.To start us off, I thought I'd gather a couple I labored under years ago, when I was a teen and just pecking out stories on my family's old Selectric II.
"Courier 10" here does not mean a ten-point font, but rather, a type size that corresponded to a certain size and kind of type on typewriters (for
me, it was a certain IBM Selectric II typeball—God, how I loved those things!). The reasoning for this was sound: In the days before we could reformat type easily, editors and copy editors wanted the type to be large and generously spaced on the page, so that the text was easy to edit and mark up and rewrite while still be clear for the typographer. But that was before designers simply reformatted text files and output pages. So, while you definitely want your manuscript to have big, easy-to-read type, it doesn't have to be Courier. A nice, large Garamond or Times will do just fine. (Bruce Coville will argue otherwise, but he's set in his old-fashioned ways.)
A close partner to this one is the person who advises having the copyright line appear on every page, as though an editor will seize a page and say, "Ah ha! This page doesn't have a copyright symbol, so we can steal EVERYTHING with impunity!" (Being editors, and pretentious, they will, of course, use words like "impunity" to add dignity to their low-down thieving.)
While the theft of intellectual property does happen, no examples come to mind of it happening on a corporate level. Yes, authors steal from other authors—plenty of examples of dishonor among writers comes to mind. But editors? Publishers? It is much easier for them to just buy the book rather than steal an idea. And, really, ideas are cheap; execution is what it's all about. (Stephenie Meyer did not invent the vampire romance. J.K. Rowling did not invent the wizardry school story. George Lucas did not invent space opera—though that did not stop the makers of Flash Gordon from filing a spurious lawsuit against Star Wars in the seventies, but they hadn't invented space opera, either, which is why that lawsuit went nowhere.)Truth is, your work is copyrighted once you've fixed it in some medium. To file a lawsuit, you must file copyright, but your copyright exists from the moment you put the work down on paper, and every editor knows that. So that "Copyright (c) 2009 by Enid Blythe" reveals only that you're a bit of a naif.
Um, no. Not at all. Just yesterday I had coffee with an author who asked me if her word count was too short for a teen novel, and I shrugged and asked, "Does the book feel thin? Underdeveloped? Below the reading level of the target audience? Then it may be too short. Otherwise, who knows? A book is as long as it needs to be." Angela Johnson's The First Part Last is a short, short, short book. No one would mistake it as being a book for middle graders. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is longer than life itself (and nearly as good). And obviously a high middle-grade read. Your story will determine its length. Whether you've satisfied your target audience in terms of tone and complexity and so on—well, those are questions of craft, not of word count.Those are just a few misconceptions that I carried around with me in my early days as a writer, but there are tons more out there, I'm sure. What other bits of misinformation come to mind for you? Which lies did you labor under until you were gently told otherwise?
I've been discussing covers lately. You see, the first crop of books I sold will be hitting shelves next summer, which means the authors and I are dealing with the fun stuff that happens nine months before publication, like reading potential flap copy, talking about follow-ups, and, of course, looking over cover concepts.Covers are obviously important. A great cover can stand out and draw in a book buyer; a lousy cover can do just the opposite. However, when it comes to my own book purchasing (or at least what I used to do before landing in the industry), I found that a good cover was never, ever the deciding factor for me. Sure, sometimes a particularly striking cover could catch my eye, but, being a poor graduate student, I had to be incredibly picky with what to buy, and the cover typically didn't hold much weight for me if I didn't know more about the book.If anything on the cover was going to sway me to buy a book I'd never heard of, it was likely going to be awards. Pulitzer? Cool! Newbery? Awesome! Flint, Michigan Top 15 Novel about Ponies Award...super!My stupid habits aside, I'm curious as to what really matters to you and to your children (if you have them) when it comes time to buy books. To make it a little easier, let's only consider books by writers you've never heard of, so we're not saying, "Well, it's the new so-and-so and I just had to have it."What does it for you? The cover? Reviews? Blurbs on the jacket? Awards? Other factors I'm not thinking of? If you say all of the above, what rank do you put them in?
I have been remiss in adding to this blog over the past few weeks, because I've been working, and working hard, from sunrise to long into the night. (Spare a moment and a tear for your resident Crow, hunched over his desk, making sales and editing manuscripts and only rising when vision and good posture have gone for good. O, the crippling effects of labor! &c.) And while I have been tinkering with a few posts about the Industry and where it may or may not be going, neither is done.One day soon, Chris and I will institute "Plagiarism Fridays" here, but in the meanwhile, some local sights that prove that, like it or not, we live in a post-literate culture. (Where are the SPOGGians when you need 'em?)#1. "Yo, keep your effing metrics off our ball field, Eurotrash!"
#2. "Trust me: You don't want to know what we call a dog round here."
#3. "Oh, I am so sory that I wuz trubled by yur trak werk!"
#4. Actually no errors in this sign, but I at first misread it as "Overcome obstacles with Oversize Pants" and did a double-take. The day was all downhill from there.
Have a good weekend, everyone! And may your oversized pants help you overcome every obstacle!
I'm often asked by writers if I like to hear in a pitch that a book is part of a planned trilogy, or if an author is hard at work on a sequel.For some projects a sequel, or multiple sequels, make sense. Imagine if Harry Potter's adventures had ended after the first book! We would never have had all that snogging that made the later books so enjoyable. Or what if Bella and Edward had ended up together at the end of Twilight and never had the complications of love thrown their way? BOR-ING!While some stories demand multiple books, others should remain as one-offs. When reading a pitch, I tend to prefer knowing a book has series potential rather than hearing you've written the next nine already. Chances are, I'm going to revise the first book with you, and those revisions may have serious ramifications to the characters in books 7-15. Beyond that, it'll be up to the editor and the publisher to decide how many installments make sense. Sometimes a five book series gets shortened to four. Other times, an open-ended series (*cough* of Unfortunate Events *cough*) gets dragged out into 13 installments. It's different for every installment, but the main thing is to make the first book great.And, because I know you love participation, I'd planned on inviting you, the gentle readers, to come up with children's book sequels that never were, but it seems like this blog beat me to the punch. If you have any good ones that weren't included on the other list, feel free to list them below.
Believe it or not, I
meant to post about priorities on Friday. But, as is often the case, other things came up-- notes for a manuscript, calls with someone from a contracts department--and I found myself putting this post off. Almost poetic, ain't it?And it wasn't too hard to do. You see, as much as I like writing these blog posts, they fall pretty low on my list of priorities, somewhere near going through the slush pile and reading deals on Publisher's Marketplace.Agents are busy people. We must write and respond to emails, make phone calls, talk shop with other agents, prepare for conferences, read manuscripts, and manage a thousand other tasks that fall under the umbrella of trying to find new clients and helping our current ones. Then, of course, many of us have families, personal lives, or an undying love for professional sports.Of course, as busy as I find myself, I'm still working only one job. Which means I can't imagine what you must be going through if writing isn't what's currently putting bread on the table.So tell me ... how do you prioritize when it comes to your writing? Where does your craft and your work fall among all the other occupational, familial, and personal responsibilities you have? And how do you stay committed to carving time out each day to follow your dream?
At last we have photographs (just clever photoshop renderings, but exciting nonetheless) of what Apple's forthcoming tablet browser/reading device may look like.And what it looks like is the death knell for the Kindle and its low-contrast screen and back-to-1985 design aesthetic. As well, this should break for good Amazon's attempted stranglehold on digital books. There will be more vendors and more formats available, and there will be little reason to abide by Amazon's draconian only-on-our-devices form of the ebook.The Apple tablet should do for books and print what the iPod did for music—break the media free of the medium and really change the landscape of publishing. Seriously, if this thing is half as beautiful as it looks in these images, posthaste it will consign the Kindle and Sony eReader to that peculiar graveyard of ebook Also-Rans. (Remember the RocketBook? No? S'okay, neither does anyone else.) What Apple "gets" that escapes Bezos and Sony is that any device must be more than just an ereader; it should be a browser, a picture display, and so on—a multi-media device for these multi-media times.Of course, this begs the question: What does this mean for books? What does this mean for authors? What does this mean for publishers? How will authors make money when content is just a data file beamed between reading tablets? Anyone out there have any ideas? Want to sketch them out here? We'll kick your thoughts around and expound further in a post next week entitled "W(h)ither publishing?"[Update: And there is this in the New York Times, which certainly merits discussion. Trust we will fling our puny minds at this, too, at some length in the next few days.]
At last we have photographs (just clever photoshop renderings, but exciting nonetheless) of what Apple's forthcoming tablet browser/reading device may look like.And what it looks like is the death knell for the Kindle and its low-contrast screen and back-to-1985 design aesthetic. As well, this should break for good Amazon's attempted stranglehold on digital books. There will be more vendors and more formats available, and there will be little reason to abide by Amazon's draconian only-on-our-devices form of the ebook.The Apple tablet should do for books and print what the iPod did for music—break the media free of the medium and really change the landscape of publishing. Seriously, if this thing is half as beautiful as it looks in these images, posthaste it will consign the Kindle and Sony eReader to that peculiar graveyard of ebook Also-Rans. (Remember the RocketBook? No? S'okay, neither does anyone else.) What Apple "gets" that escapes Bezos and Sony is that any device must be more than just an ereader; it should be a browser, a picture display, and so on—a multi-media device for these multi-media times.Of course, this begs the question: What does this mean for books? What does this mean for authors? What does this mean for publishers? How will authors make money when content is just a data file beamed between reading tablets? Anyone out there have any ideas? Want to sketch them out here? We'll kick your thoughts around and expound further in a post next week entitled "W(h)ither publishing?"[Update: And there is this in the New York Times, which certainly merits discussion. Trust we will fling our puny minds at this, too, at some length in the next few days.]