#BEA16 BookExpo 2016 in Chicago: The Good, the Bad, and the Game Changers

Home from BookExpo, ready to put my feet up and start reading. But first, the debrief.

THE GOOD

Jerusha started working as my assistant on ghost projects
back in high school, then started a freelance editing firm
to fund her global adventures

Plot Whispering with the Rabid Badger
Combining my 20+ years of publishing and ghostwriting experience with Jerusha's uncanny style of developmental editing, we've come up with a method of 3-D outlining that elevates story, solidifies structure, and focuses strategy. As a team, we’ve worked this pragmatic magic on novels, nonfiction, and screenplays (including an Oscar nominee) for Big 5 publishers, agents, and indies. We had a blast doing a crash course and Plot Whispering demo Thursday on the UPubU stage. Here's the podcast.

Indie Author Fringe Fest
Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors continues to move mountains on behalf of the indie author community. When I attended my first BEA in 1999, self-publishing was called “vanity” and their was an unquestioning subservience to the omnipotent gatekeepers. When I attended BEA in New York two years ago, the indie symposium was relegated to the far reaches of a basement ghetto. This year in Chicago, the UPubU stage was smack on the exhibit floor with everybody else. There’s a lot BEA could do to improve indie author inclusion, but this was a start, and Orna took it a giant leap forward with Indie Author Fringe Fest, which ran concurrent with BookCon today and will live on in podcasts. The Indie Author Fringe Fest adjacent to this year’s London Book Fair had 100K unique visitors. Do the math.

On the way to the airport, the driver gave us a crash course in Chicago history, which made me love it even more.

BEA is like the Giant Reflective Bean
It’s healthy for industry neighbors—strangers and friends—to come together every once in a while and take a good look at ourselves, even if it is a slightly distorted reflection.

I see London, I see France.

I attended my very first BEA in Los Angeles in 1999 with Claire Kirch and the team from Spinster's Ink, the feminist press publishing my second novel. It was such a trip to hang out with Claire, who's now the Midwest correspondent for PW, and talk books and kids and life in general over too much wine and curry fries at Kitty O'Shea's. I also connected with fabulous Jessica Bell—author, musician, cover designer, and editor of Vine Leaves  Literary Journal—who here from Greece, who introduced me to her super cool cohorts, author Dawn Ius and six-month-manuscript guru Amie McCracken.

Swag and Silliness
The freebies were fewer, but still fun. Good for laughs: a Trump impersonator and the occasional registration snafu.

My top three freebies. Thanks, y'all!

THE BAD

They offer what's best for them, not what works for you.
It's best to bring your own.

Old School Author Contracts = Hotel Shampoo/Conditioner
It was hard to stay in my chair during "Rethinking the Standard Publishing Agreement: A Symposium" moderated by Mary Rasenberger, executive director of Authors Guild. Grove CEO and Publisher Morgan Entrekin was a calm presence, his chin in his hand, saying he’ll revert rights “nine times out of ten” if the author comes to him. Literary lawyer Jonathan Lyons extropaciously insofar as herewith mamberson clavitz habius pilsner, as lawyers are wont to do. And Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch was programmed like Teddy Ruxpin to repeat the party line I’ve been hearing for two decades since my first novel was published.

Condensed version: authors should be grateful for any crumbs of love they get from a publisher, and if you’re not a 1% blockbuster, well, don’t quit your day job. The old-think and magical math was interspersed with utter BS like “we don’t just sit on books” as rationale for refusing rights reversion. I mean, after all, it's not like the entire industry is based on authors' ability to spin straw into gold. Here's PW's take on it, summing up with understatement of the year: "This will be a long process."

In a world where skeevy bastards prey on aspiring authors...

Here There Be Monsters
Even with tremendous strides forward in services for indie authors (scroll down for the game changers), there are still malevolent forces ((coughauthorhousecough)) who exist to syphon money from wannabe writers. After the Plot Whispering sesh, I spoke with several authors who were led like lambs to the mint sauce by editors with zero editing skills, cover designers who plugged stock photos into hackneyed templates, and giant companies who promised the Twilit, Da Vinci Coded universe and delivered scat. It’s particularly distressing to see venerable publishing institutions participating in that. Here's a great post from self-publishing watchdog, David Gaughran.

Where was everyone?
I don’t attend BEA every year, but I take it for granted that certain people will always, always be there, and a lot of them weren’t at BEA16. A lot of folks were saying it was because it was the location, and maybe some of the New York editors and agents would have popped by if it had been in New York, but I attended BEA in Chicago earlier in my career and the energy was totally different. Instead of talking about the great jazz band at last nights party and getting shwasted with one's agent, I heard people on the shuttles and in a dark corners at Kitty O’Shea’s debating a bigger issue: Is BEA becoming irrelevant?

If you ever wanted to put your face in Santa's underwear.

THE GAME CHANGERS
Bookgrabbr

Another fun freebie: iPhone egg amp from Random House

This is one of the most exciting book marketing tools I’ve seen in a long time, because it takes the wheel-spinning out of social media and sets up a low cost, super easy way to do previews and giveaways. Bookgrabbr enables authors, publishers, or PR folk to offer a sample of a book on social media, and to read the sample, the reader has to share the post. The agility and analytics appear to be everything I would hope for in my sticky little dreams, including the ability to share 100% of the book.

It's a time-honored truth: The best way to sell books is giving books away. Right now, my options are: sell my soul to Amazon for 90 days (eff that), Smashwords coupon (ain't nobody got time), BookBub (if you've got an extra bucket of money under your desk), and a few other not-so-silver-bullets. Most of my backlist books have earned what I call "ambassador status"; I've been well paid for the time I spent writing the book, so it's most important job now is leading readers to my new work. And Bookgrabbr looks like a fantastic way to introduce a new book.

I can't wait to try Bookgrabbr. I'll post an update here once I've given it a shakedown cruise or two. If it works as well as I think it will, I'll utilize the H-E-double-hockey-sticks outta this thing in the coming year.

Ingram’s acquisition of Aer.io
Indie authors—and hybrid authors like me—will be able to host sales of our books on our own websites with all the functionality of Amazon widgets (or so they say) when Aer.io becomes fully functional, which will be within six months, the Ingram rep assured me. I came away from a meet up with Ingram’s Lindsay Jenkins completely jazzed about taking my indie endeavors to the next level.

Social networking for the antisocial

People keep pushing this whole agenda of auto-tweeting as a way to game the Amazon ranks, and I know it works. You do sell books, but... do you still have time to write books? (Do you still have a soul?) I get that twitter is about "building relationships," I'm just not clear on the quality of a relationship based on spam.

My thought all along has been to use twitter with a less aggressive stance, using hashtags to insert my two cents into a conversation that actually interests me.

Like this:

For women in the 60s, life began at #contraception. BT Sissel on the bad old #aspirin days. http://bit.ly/xctmgF

I've been assured that this is pointless. But I remain hopeful that "teachable moment" marketing that links the right message with the right moment has an effect that is perhaps less obviously and instantly measurable but ultimately more powerful, because it's about building a culture instead of a terribly impressive house of cards.

Twitter is an insanely great idea, and it's a powerful marketing tool, but it requires a certain personality type, and I'm not sure that's me. Does that mean I won't sell books? Maybe. I'm sure it means I won't sell as many. And at the end of the day, authors want to put their books in readers' hands.

So I'm determined to give it a shot.

I'll start by implementing this list of 5 Twitter Secrets to Become Highly Visible in Your Niche, one each day this week. Next, I'll take a crash course in Book Marketing 101 from World Lit Cafe founder, Melissa Foster.

Just in case, I bought the T-shirt.

Does this book cover suck? #TellMeTheTruth and get a free book!

Does this book cover suck?

Seriously. I need to know. So far I've gotten conflicting opinions from a variety of people whose opinions I respect.

What do you think? Email me at jonireaders{at}gmail.com, and I'll flip you the ebook free as a thank you! (Ignore the funky framey thing. The blog does that.) Yes, you get a free book even if you say it sucks. And no, the book does not suck. (I'm pretty sure.)


Here's what it's about:

During the record-smashing hurricane season of 2005, a deadly game of cat and mouse unfolds amidst polarized politics, high-strung Southern families and the worst disaster management goat screw in US history. 

As Hurricane Katrina howls toward the ill-prepared city of New Orleans, Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, a Gulf Coast climatologist and storm risk specialist, struggles to preach the gospel of evacuation, weighed down by the fresh public memory of a spectacularly false alarm a year earlier. Meanwhile, Shay Hoovestahl, a puff piece reporter for the local news, stumbles on the story of con artist who uses chaos following major storms as cover for identity theft and murder. Laying a trap to expose the killer, Shay discovers that Corbin, her former lover, is unwittingly involved, and her plan goes horribly awry as the city's infrastructure crumbles...

You can read the first chapter here on Amazon.

The art of book cover design has fascinated me since I was a kid marveling through the stacks at the library. Check out this incredibly cool collection I spotted on the web site of branding designer David Airey. God pulled my name out of a hat when HarperCollins assigned Chip Kidd to design the cover for my memoir, Bald in the Land of Big Hair.

Really, I've been lucky with in-house designers throughout my traditional publishing career. Only one seriously fugly cover. I loved the gal who designed it so much, but... wow. Fugly. I was a wimpy liar and said I loved it, and then I had to live with that fugly cover for several years until the book went out of print. Meanwhile, the German cover was kinda cool. (Sheesh. Germans, right?)

They always bring in top talent for the celebs, so my ghostwriting projects always have great covers. The paperback design for Rue McClanahan's memoir, My First Five Husbands, knocked my socks off. (As did the late great Rue.) I always made a point of asking questions, listening in on conversations, learning how choices get made and why. That was my opportunity to get schooled by the best in the biz. 

As an indie publisher, I'm now responsible for my own covers. As with all other aspects of self-publishing, you have to either know enough to do it yourself or know enough to determine if the person you're paying is doing a good job. Good art/bad art is an entirely subjective matter, but there are certain fundamentals you can't get wrong.


The title must be clear and legible. That used to mean how it would reproduce in the newspaper; nowadays it means how it looks on a iPhone, Amazon widget or Facebook ad. Physical books come in all shapes and sizes; Kindles don't. A 4x6 ratio looks best on most ereaders, but you can cheat it a little wider if you want to show up larger on your Amazon page.

The imagery should evoke tone and content without being painfully obvious or literal. Or be obvious and literal in a way that reflects the obvious and literal tone of the book.

Think in thirds. A designer at a Big 6 publisher pinged a lightbulb over my head when he told me, "If a book is face out on a store shelf, the most likely place to be visible is the middle. If it's below eye level, the top third will be shadowed or obstructed. If it's displayed with a plate rail or shelf-talker, the bottom third is partially obscured."

We don't have to worry about that online, but the book-buying eye has been trained to look at books in thirds: middle first, top second, then the bottom.

Brand thyself. Because I moved from one publisher to another, my books were all designed by different people, so now that I'm gathering my backlist under my own wing, I'm thinking about how to make them look like a cohesive body of work. That's going to take some time and money, but it's important.

Which brings me to the big question: Does this book cover suck?

Seriously. I need to know.

Two terrific workshops happening at Beauty & the Book Girlfriend Weekend

Perfect post-holiday excursion (and you know you'll earn it): Beauty and the Book literacy diva Kathy Patrick, founder/ goddess elect of the internationally known Pulpwood Queens book club, will host the 12th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend January 12-15.

In addition to the Author Extravaganza and Greatest Show on Earth activities, two terrific workshops are being offered:

You're invited to Kathy's house Wednesday, January 11 for a first time memoir workshop with Robert Leleux, columnist for The Texas Observer and editor of LONNY Magazine in New York. Fee includes lunch and a signed copy of Leleux's latest book, The Living End: A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting.

Stay an extra day for a voice workshop with film, television and radio voiceover artist Elaine Clark, author of There's Money Where Your Mouth Is: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Voice-Overs.

For all the information, visit the Beauty and the Book website. Hope to see you there!

Erica Jong: "Do you want me to tell you something really subversive?"

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

This includes the love of writing.

Note from Font de Gaume (a 16,000 year old lesson in publishing technology)

Cleaning out my office this week, I came upon a travel journal from a trip Gary and I made in 2004 to see cave paintings in southern France. I made a lot of notes the day we visited Font de Gaume, a remarkable cave filled with Magdalenian engravings and paintings from around 14 000 BC. Chisels, flints, scrapers, blades, and other items found in the cave indicate occupation since the age of the Neanderthals.

The young woman who guided the cave tour capably  chatted with the small group in French, English and German. She was incredibly knowledgeable about every inch of the cave, pointing out the transition over the centuries from crudely etched line figures and symbols to fully fleshed scenes which had been essentially airbrushed with blowpipes. Eventually there was perspective, shading, character and movement.

The tour guide said something amazingly profound, which I wrote down word for word and have never forgotten: "When Picasso comes to Font de Gaume, he is to say, 'I never did invented Cubism!' In art, there is no change in ability. Only in technology. In art, there is no evolution. Only choices."

I scrawled this down in an Oxford graph-lined notebook. Now I have a notebook computer that's roughly the same size. The tools of our trade have radically changed in the last ten years, but my reasons for writing are the same. I'm trying to make the best use of all the gadgetry without letting it distract me from the cave artist within.

What are you trying to prove?

So somebody sold a thousand books for 99 cents. (Reality check: they made $350 less their expenses, not a solid grand.) Somebody else has 5K followers on twitter. (Reality check: here's some sobering stats that might cause you to rethink the actual value you're getting in return for the time you're investing there.)

We're all trying to get a handle on the brave new world of publishing, and the numbers can be daunting. The squawkers who claim to have all the answers are loud and plentiful. We have a natural tendency to look at author acquaintances and feel like we're getting left in the dust as everyone else revs up the engine and blasts off down the highway. I think it's imperative that we mentally separate PR that has actual value (in that it sells books and enhances author brand) from PR that sucks money and time away from writing and funnels it into the activity of trying to prove you're a writer.

This week, I think I'll focus on doing what I want to do. What everyone else is doing/ getting/ tweeting is irrelevant to me, my career, my direction, and my artistic spirit. If I quietly write the books I want to write and bravely present them to the world in a way that feels organic to the project, authentic to me as an artist, and appealing to the audience who's open to it, my integrity stays intact and the rewards will be real and satisfying - artistically, emotionally and financially. It won't matter to me if another author zooms off down the highway without noticing that I'm happy.

Is C-wording the N-word F-worded up? (Huck Finn now sanitized for your protection)

Don't miss Nina Shen Rastogi's excellent article in Slate exploring the controversy over Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The Texts of His Companion Boy Books. This new version of the classic novels has been purged of the words that keep Huck high on the banned books lists from year to year: "nigger" and "injun". Some are chaffing at the idea of censoring Mark Twain, but Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben pragmatically told the NY Times, "I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word, and just let the stories stand alone."

Rastogi quotes Toni Morrison's response to the banning of the book...

"It struck me as a purist yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children. Amputate the problem, band-aid the solution. A serious comprehensive discussion of the term by an intelligent teacher certainly would have benefited my eighth-grade class and would have spared all of us (a few blacks, many whites—mostly second-generation immigrant children) some grief. Name calling is a plague of childhood and a learned activity ripe for discussion as soon as it surfaces."

...then goes on to make the inarguable point that

"...classrooms — and the school systems they're embedded in — aren't always idealized teaching spaces: One too-graphic sex scene in an otherwise age-appropriate book, and an administrator may decide to nix it. Or a teacher may swap it for a book that's less likely to get them angry phone calls from parents."

I would love to see Twain's books freely taught in schools, but do the "stories stand alone" without the unmistakable context of those racial epithets? Is it healthy for us as a society to look away from the evolution of both language and ideology? Retouching history prevents us from learning from it. Blithely Febreezing "nigger" from our past makes it easier to say "fag" now.

Three years ago, I devoted some rant space here on the blog to the cosmetic surgery performed on Margaret Mitchell's characters in sequels to Gone With the Wind. From Rhett is no gentleman and frankly, my dear, I DO give a damn!:

Margaret Mitchell was a product of the time and place in which she lived, and Gone With the Wind is her work. The hijacking of her characters decades after her death whether it's for the benign purpose of masking her racism with lemony freshness or with the more pragmatic goal of cranking out an instant bestseller - is almost as offensive to me as Mitchell's flattering portrayal of the KKK as gallant gentlemen defending their Heaven-blessed way of life. I think there's great historical and literary value in a book that demonstrates how deeply ingrained that thinking was (and still is for some) in Southern culture. The mamby-pambification of Rhett Butler in these sappy sequels, no matter how well written, is the rape of a great book.

I've been laboring through the hefty Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, laughing out loud at times, occasionally shaking my head, and constantly being amazed. I think Mark Twain was an extraordinarily forward-thinking guy who knew exactly what those words meant then and strongly suspected what they would mean in the future.

In life, literature and publishing, it's all about the spiral staircase

When Gary and I were in Paris a couple weeks ago, we decided to rent a little apartment instead of staying in a hotel. We got a great place in Montmartre, just a hop skip from the des Abbesses subway station. A great little place, bigger than a hotel room, but cheaper. Slight drawback: it was a fourth floor walk-up. Traversing up and down each day, I kept thinking about what Karen Armstrong said about the spiral staircase: you keep coming around to the same place, but you're a level higher.

This is such an apt description of the novel writing process, an eloquent description, in fact, of any endeavor that requires that sort of constant effort and upward striving.

Karen Armstrong on the subject of fiction:

“...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book asie. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with others lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever.”

NYT on Kindle Singles (and my own reKindled love affair with books)

It's interesting that people who never thought they'd like Kindle come from both sides of the technochasm. There are those (like me) who had to be dragged away from the physical artifact - hardcover, endpapers, deckled edges - that are undoubtedly part of the book experience. Then there are those who have come of age in a computerized world, who think "chatting" happens when you hit ENTER and are entertained instead of mind-numbed by Angry Birds. They get their news, their friends and their written words on screens that get progressively smaller. In the middle of those two mindsets is Kindle. It's arguably the lowest tech ereader, which is why (IMHO) it continues to be the most successful.

As I've said in this space, I found myself reading less and less as my eyesight aged, stressed by long hours in front of the computer. Audio books and large print offered far less selections at a far higher price. When I got a Kindle, I was immediately taken back to the reading habits of my youth, consuming fiction like a woodchipper devours underbrush. The thing I most wanted was to read more. The thing I least wanted was more hours in front of a computer, and surprisingly, that's what a lot of web-saturated youthies want too.

Virginia Heffernan of the NYT says in her excellent article on Kindle Singles:

The Kindle in particular brought me the first moment of peace from Web noise that I’d had in a long time. True, I thought I loved the Web noise when the only alternative was to recede into analog culture — but I have adored the silence I’ve found on the Kindle. I never thought I’d back off the Web, but I have.

Korean edition of "Promise Me"

I can't help it. I always get a thrill when I see the foreign editions roll out. Here's the Korean edition of Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer by Nancy G. Brinker (with a little help from yours truly.)

Perhaps this is a good time to announce my forthcoming novel: The Hurricane Lover

Hunker down, East Coast! We on the Gulf Coast feel your pain. A hurricane is an incredible experience. Scary, fascinating, beautiful, terrible and (pardon the pun) mind-blowing.

When Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, my husband and I were among the volunteers who helped care for evacuees arriving at mass shelters in Houston. As I carried water to the long lines, a weary New Orleans police officer said to me, "This is a great day for news people and con artists." I was instantly smacked by the story hammer, and that initial inspiration evolved as I wrote, revised and did serious deep-dive research between ghost projects over the next five years.

Set on the Gulf Coast during the epic hurricane season of 2005, The Hurricane Lover is a tale of two cities, two families, and two people who find each other in a storm. A firebrand environmentalist from New Orleans and the whip-smart, self-determined daughter of a Houston oil baron come together to track a con artist who's using hurricanes as a cover for identity theft and murder. Hurricane Katrina is the perfect storm for the perfect crime. In her wake are twisted sisters Ophelia and Rita. The summer goes down in history for its mega-storms, oppressive heat, disaster management goat screw and polarized politics. The stormy relationship and complicated Southern families at the heart of The Hurricane Lover make it personal.

I set out to write a fast-paced, character-driven story with a strong atmosphere (think Lisa Unger/ Michael Crichton love child raised on the Gulf Coast by James Sallis) woven with the fascinating science of these real life mega-storms, along with actual email (made public through the US Freedom of Information Act) to and from FEMA director Michael "Heck of a job, Brownie!" Brown, President George Bush and others involved in the abysmal government response to Hurricane Katrina. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Hurricane Ike decimated Galveston and Houston in 2008. At the height of the storm, I couldn't resist; I had to go outside. It's nothing I could have imagined - or written about - without experiencing it.

The Hurricane Lover is a grand experiment for me. After three novels and several nonfiction bestsellers with Big 6 publishers, I'm doing this novel as an indie ebook that will transition to a traditional print deal. I'm convinced that hybrid publishing is the way forward for career authors, with upsides for us, our agents, publishers and - most important - readers.

Now, if I could just decide on which of these two covers to use! (Let me know what you think.)

Look for The Hurricane Lover on Nook and Kindle November 1, 2011.

The Secret Sisters (aka "The Dirty Dirty Dildo Sex Book")

The Secret Sisters was my fifth book, originally pubbed in hardcover by HarperCollins in 2005 and now available on Kindle with added bonus content, including reading recommendations from my own fabulous sisters. It's a bit of a departure from my previous work. I've always been a happy and optimistic person by nature - and I still am - but this novel definitely leans more toward tragedy than comedy. It's darker, more erotic, and more message-driven than anything else I've ever written.

An agoraphobic (Pia) is taken by a con artist. A party girl (Lily) goes to jail for vehicular homicide. A bereaved mother (Beth) is forced to confront the fact that her cherubic child was actually a little pain in the patootie. Each of the sisters has constructed a private prison for herself. They each serve hard time searching for redemption.

My prime directive is always to tell a great story, but deeply saddened by what I saw happening in the world after 9-11, I wanted to tell a deeper, more thought-provoking tale. Pia's story is a parable about what we sacrifice when we embrace fear as a lifestyle. It's about the art of manipulation, the craft of seduction, and the blissful but dangerous state of denial, but this book is also about empowerment and accountability.

Every character in every novel I write is on a quest for peace, and I'm humbly grateful to all the readers who've opened their hearts and minds, engaged the page, and journeyed with me. This book taught me not to take that good will for granted. A lot of people found The Secret Sisters offensive, partly because of the lefty politics, but more because of the graphic sexual content. (Note to self: When using sex as a metaphor, prepare to be horsewhipped, and refer to this post on sex as a literary device. And when feeling low, refer to this lovely review from Armchair Interviews.)

My original title for this book was The Prodigal Wife. I wish I'd been stronger when pressured to change it. Or maybe I should have gone with Gary's title suggestion: The Dirty Dirty Dildo Sex Book. A lot of people couldn't see any further than that. And knowing what I now know as a writer, I understand why. The book says exactly what I wanted to say, but it made a lot of people uncomfortable. (Personally, I'm uncomfortable with unnecessary wars and the torture of illegally held prisoners. Guess we all have our little hangups, huh.)

Do I regret it? No. Would I do it again? Given the chance, absolutely. But in the publishing industry, you don't always get another chance. That was a tough lesson to learn.

Revisiting the decisions that successfully transformed my writing strategy for 2010

My dad always said, "Plan your work, work your plan." We in the business of reeling and writhing - I mean reading and writing - especially need the structure of a yearly business plan and five-year vision plan. My policy is to get that sucker on paper by the last day of December so I can get up January 1st, load the Christmas tree out the door and hit the ground running. I mean writing.

Last year, I saw an item in Scott Jeffrey's Enlightened Business blog that blew my mind a little. "5 Powerful Decisions to Transform Your Business" radically changed my 2010 business plan. Scott's original post makes great sense for any company, but I tweaked it for writing, applying the same principles to the soul proprietorship that is the corporate body for most working authors.

When I posted it on the blog here, I optimistically said, "These transformative rules have seriously adjusted my thought process and just might make 2010 my best year ever." As it turns out, 2010 was the most successful year of my career thus far. So maybe the advice bears repeating...

#1 Decide to focus on your best customers.
This is that "laser like focus" Colleen talks about, and it goes beyond cultivating a readership. It also speaks to the relationships we build with our publishers, agents and fellow writers. I think we have to broaden the meaning here to focus on how our time and energy is most productively spent.

#2 Decide to focus on building a highly functional team.
Three essential teammates for writers: A smart, aggressive, like-minded agent. A smart, supportive, collegial critique group. Domestic allies who understand what you do. Team-building begins with letting those key people know how deeply and sincerely grateful we are for their support.

#3 Decide to grow from within.
Scott's post talks about a "corporate culture" that aligns core values. For a company of one, that means being the industry you want to work in. Organized. Optimistic. Perseverant. That's not what you do; that's who you are. Seriously consider your artistic philosophy, then embrace and embody it without apology or compromise. To thine own self be true. All other ground is quicksand.

#4 Decide to be the best at something.
"This decision requires sacrifice and focus," says Jeffreys. Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes that you're the master of a craft after 10,000 hours. You've really got to LOVE what you do to rack up that kind of mileage. What is it about this work that gives you that chill on the back of your neck? Dialogue? Sense of place? Untying a Gordian knot of a plot? I think that frisson of yes becomes an affinity at about 3,000 hours. After 6,000 hours, the affinity becomes a knack. Somewhere around 9,000 hours, the knack becomes a strength. And once you've mastered your craft, that strength becomes your brand.

#5 Decide on a more compelling future for your organization to rally around.
The publishing industry has undergone a seismic shift. We're in the wild, wild west, my darlings. Anything is possible, so why not envision something wonderful? What is the essence - the high concept, if you will - of what you want out of this industry? (For me, it's "fair pay for good art".) Envision that future and earn it.

We live by decision. It's that simple. Large and small choices shape an office environment, a day, a career, and ultimately a life. That's the terrifying, thrilling possibility for transformation in every moment.

The art of defining what you want to be

Recently stumbled upon this list I made 12 years ago in response to my first literary agent telling me: "You need to clearly define on paper what you want to be." I hope it will someday multi-task as my epitaph.

What I Want To Be

thoroughly loved
deliciously laid
consistently working
handsomely paid
smart in my business
true in my art
wise at the finish
brave at the start
occasionally humbled
appropriately proud
prone to be quiet
allowed to be loud
wholly welcome
sorely missed
predominantly peaceful
righteously pissed
rich without bitching
famous with reason
restful on Sabbath
productive in season
aware of my weakness
in awe of my power
profoundly grateful
alive every hour

An interesting meditative exercise. Give it a whirl. (It doesn't have to rhyme.)

Don't confuse the rise of ebooks with the death of books

In a great overview of the new Kindle app, The Book is Dead, Long Live the Kindle App, Vince Font says:

I'll admit, I'm a latecomer to eReaders, and I came to their appreciation grudgingly. I'm a reader of books, and I always have been. I'm a fan of good binding... of colorful dust jackets… of awesome cover art… and I think that the smell of a freshly cracked book comes second only to the "new car smell" in the great olfactory list of aromas. So I only begrudgingly endorsed something as blasphemous as an eReader – or, in this case, an application that only serves to further strengthen the already booming eBook market...I really tried to find fault in the Kindle app, because I just figured "It's free. How good could it possibly be?" The answer, as it turns out, is: pretty darn good.

He goes on to discuss the sweet price tag (free!), syncability, and general handy-dandiness of the app.

Last week over coffee, Colleen showed me how to sync my Kindle to my snazzy new Motorola Droid. I started out saying, "I'll never read on my phone." But that ended up going the way of "I'd never read on a Kindle." In the 14 months since I got the Kindle, I've read more books than I read in the previous three years combined. The adjustable print size makes it possible for my eyesight-of-a-certain-age to read without getting sleepy. (The optometrist told me that's actually the brain signalling "close your eyes" in response to eye strain.) The classics are available cheap or free, so my Kindle is loaded with them. I take advantage of freebies (like the recent Blue Boy offer) and impulse buy when I get a recommendation from a friend or see an intriguing review. I travel a lot, and while I used to pack the books I felt I should read instead of the books I wanted to read, now I have my whole library tucked in my purse, and I end up reading more of both.

This is where I take issue with, if nothing else, the title of Font's article. My Kindle has given books a whole new life for me. I read more, read faster, and I read better. The only thing missing is the paper. All the stories, characters, dialogue, sense of place, soaring emotion - everything that's drawn me into a life of books - is alive and well.

Should indie authors pay for book reviews?

In the words of Spiderman: "With great power comes great responsibility." Indie authors are getting a taste of freedom, a taste of what it's like to call the shots, and (not quite as tasty) a taste of what it feels like to pay our own way. We're shelling out for editing, copy editing, cover design, trailer production and PR.

Now BlueInk Review invites self-pubbed authors to submit their books for review for a mere (brace yourself) $395 for a 7-9 week response or $495 if you want the review in 4-5 weeks (wryly observing that PW and Kirkus pay less than fifty bucks). You are promised an extremely well-qualified reviewer from a pool of folks who've written reviews for mainstream media outlets. What you are not promised is that the review will be favorable, and a glance at the first ten reviews listed today on the BlueInk site breaks down thusly:

Positive: 3
Negative: 5
Mixed (reviewer managed to hold nose): 2

A lot of word count was devoted to 6th grade book report synopsis type stuff. One included a lengthy quote from the book being unhappily parsed. Virtually every review complained of poor copy editing, and I do wish indie authors would take note and not scrimp on that. It's important. That said, I recently read a book from a Big 6 publisher that featured very shoddy copy editing, and I didn't see a complaint about it in any of the mainstream reviews.

Here's what the BlueInk site says about their philosophy:

When it comes to judging book quality and understanding the intricacies of the traditional book publishing and book review industries--well, we’ve walked those walks for an awfully long time.

...Our reviewers are fine writers and well-qualified because we know how to judge these skills. Our reviews are taken seriously by publishers, agents, booksellers and librarians because we understand their professional needs and constraints. We respect their time and they respect our opinions.

Respect for authors has never been a prerequisite for reviewers in the mainstream, and it doesn't appear BlueInk will be breaking with that tradition. I saw no mention of an attempt to match books with reviewers knowledgeable about or interested in a particular genre, nothing about reviewers respectful of or in touch with a specific (or mass audience) readership.

It's always struck me as impractical that book reviewers are predisposed to dislike books that the majority of readers love. Open-mindedness, a positive attitude toward books outside an extremely narrow mindset -- toward books and authors in general -- has never been valued in that arena, and I think that's why book reviews of this ilk have become less and less relevant.

Patti Thorn has more to say in "Making a Case for Fee-based Reviews of Self-published Books" on Publishing Perspectives, and indie authors should definitely check it out. She makes some good points. There's a lot to think about here.

I'm really loathe to talk smack about anyone in this space, and indie authors will have to decide for themselves if the risk of a negative review is worth $495. That's the great thing about going indie. You call the shots.

For me, this feels like I finally broke up with my abusive boyfriend, who's now inviting me to take him out on an expensive date. I'm supposed to hope for a kiss but be grateful for a punch in the face if he decides I deserve one.

Thanks, but no thanks.

An Author’s Declaration of Independence (Me and Jefferson on One Author's Decision to Indie Pub)

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for craftspeople to dissolve the business models which have connected them with the marketplace and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Nature of Art and Nature’s Creator entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all writers are not created equal. Talent is innate and a matter of opinion. Craft skill is hard-earned and subject to interpretation. Artistic integrity is a personal choice.

That writers are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. And that among these are a Publishing Life, Creative Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Publishers are instituted, deriving their powers from the supply of writers and the demand of readers.

That whenever any Publishing Model becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Writers to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Publishing Model, founded on principles and distributing powers in a form most conducive to the Income of Writers and the Happiness of Readers.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Publishers long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. History hath shewn that Writers are willing to suffer, while evils are sufferable, rather than grow a pair, take responsibility for their own creative choices and champion their work in the marketplace. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to humiliate, disempower and pauperize them, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Publishing Model, and to take Responsibility for their future security.

The history of the present Publishing Model is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. In every stage of these Oppressions — the inefficacy of the broken Query system, the specious calculation and inequity of Advances, the vagary and abuse of anonymous Reviews, the steady drift of commitment from Art to Celebrity — We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

I, therefore, the Representative of Myself as an Artist, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of my intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, that I am, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent.

That I am Absolved from all Allegiance to the Old School Publishing Model. That all the fear, prejudice and inertia that held me back is and ought to be totally dissolved.

That as a Free and Independent Artist, I have full Power to create my own Books, contract Alliances with other Artists, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent Publishers may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, I pledge to the practice of this craft my Life, my Fortune and my sacred Honor.

Joni Rodgers (with Thomas Jefferson)
July 2011

WSJ op ed on the ebook self pubbing gold rush

Eric Felton has a lot to say about the brave new world in his excellent op ed "Cherish the Book Publishers - You'll Miss Them When They're Gone":

"It isn't just the elusive prospect of riches that excites the untold thousands of hopefuls crowding into the new self-publishing space. They are buoyed by escaping the grim frustrations of trying to get published the old-fashioned way...It's only natural for those locked out to despise the gatekeepers, but what about those of us in the reading public? Shouldn't we be grateful that it's someone else's job to weed out the inane, the insipid, the incompetent? Not that they always do such a great job of it...

Look in the forums Amazon hosts for its Kindle "direct publishers" and you won't find many posts asking how to do the basics of traditional book production—copy editing, anyone? But there are plenty of threads with titles like "Promote your book" and "review swapping?"—orgies of desperate back-scratching that make old-school literary logrolling seem downright genteel."

Read the rest. Then let's talk. I think he makes some excellent points, but misses the bottom line: the complete devaluation of the craft of writing. I'm not terribly concerned about publishers going the way of the Mohican. They'll survive by paying less and less as more writers clamber for fewer opportunities. The endangered species here is the author.

My first novel was pubbed in 1996, and I've done about a dozen books since then, several of them NYT bestsellers, either under my own name or as a ghostwriter. The industry has undergone a tectonic shift in that time and, in my humble opinion, not kept up with changes. Dedication to craft isn't rewarded in the brick publishers a whole lot more than it is in the mosh pit of self-publishing. There's an agonizingly thin tier of people who make it big, under that a moderate strata of folks like myself who make a good living, for which we are grateful. Then there's the other 96%: a roiling, frustrated, passionate and increasingly empowered population of people who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

I'm in the process of self-pubbing my backlist titles (though I'd like to think I've had enough experience in the industry to call myself a small publisher, as opposed to an author who self-pubs) and my hope is to gather a coalition of other midlist authors who made it past the gatekeepers of old school publishing and can offer books that will elevate the quality of accessibly priced ebooks. Authors do need to band together to support each other, not as incestuous back-scratchers, but as a craft alliance.

Traditional publishing isn't about ink and paper. It's about artistic integrity, zeal for writing, respect for careful editing, thoughtful presentation. All those are possible in the brave new world of ebooks.