#193:  Review of Malena.  Some readers might have noticed that I added Edgardo David Holzman to my list of up-and-coming authors for his Malena (see last Monday’s review).  If Edgardo never writes another book, this one still puts him high on the list of historical novelists.  I happen to love Argentina and its people but hate its juntas.  This is my common perception of most of Latin America.  Nevertheless, first and foremost, Edgardo wrote a good story—that’s what it’s all about.

I’ve also added Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow to the recommended list of non-fiction titles.  Frequent readers of this blog know that I have mentioned this book on several occasions—I kept forgetting to add it to the list.  Error corrected.  This book offers thirteen case studies where the U.S. has overthrown legitimate governments, beginning with the annexation of Hawaii.  Our problems with Iran, Cuba, and much of Latin America can be traced to these heavy-handed policies.  Yes, indeed, we, as a nation, have blood on our hands.  Like Pontius Pilate, it doesn’t wash off easily.  Between Overthrow and Malena, you might develop a different perspective on American foreign policy.

#194:  Speaking of good stories….  Infrequently, would-be writers can find in Writer’s Digest (that damn apostrophe always seems to be in the wrong place) a few golden nuggets beyond the magazine’s money-making contests and obsequious attitude toward Big Six publishers, agents, and authors.  Ms. Elizabeth Sims often is the author of these nuggets.  I would like to recommend her article “How to Develop Any Idea into a Great Story” in the November/December issue.  While I can think of many ideas that don’t make a great story (we don’t need more paranormal romance novels about vampires, werewolves, or more YA tomes about boy magicians), this article, plus Elizabeth’s previous ones, with maybe my “The Eightfold Way” thrown in, are not bad ones for fiction writers to consider when writing and editing their books.

I’m also a fan of acronyms (one reviewer justifiably complained about that)—real acronyms, not the junk on Twitter (here’s a new one: PTH = prime tanning hours).  I like them especially when the acronym is useful as a mnemonic.  Elizabeth comes up with one of these, once you’ve read her article:  BADS, for Bend, Amp, Drive, and Strip.  These summarize commands you should apply to your writing.  I particularly like the last one.  There’s no Fifty Shades implication here.  Edith is promoting a minimalist attitude to your writing.

In my forthcoming sci-fi thriller, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, I cut 90k words down to 70k.  Sci-fi novels are often long and “epic”—that wasn’t my motivation, since it’s also a thriller.  I had too much description and back-fill in the first drafts—the story didn’t flow.  Now it moves along at a nice pace, but we’ll see what the readers and reviewers think.  Bottom line:  Elizabeth’s last command is very important.  Applying BAD might give you too much material.  Learn to add the S: Strip.

#195:  Big Six eBooks.  As a reader and reviewer, I’ve seen some poorly edited and composed eBooks.  (Not being able to page back through chapters is especially irksome.)  “Ah, that’s the problem with all this self-published crap,” you say.  Well, no, not necessarily.  It’s true that some self-pubbers are giving the rest of us a bad name.  But I’ve seen some eBooks from the Big Six that are also poorly edited and composed, almost as if the eBooks were a second thought (they are—it’s hard to display an eBook in B&N superstores).  But there’s another problem:  Big Six eBooks are expensive.  They’re trying to drive consumers back to the hard bounds and trade paperbacks.

A recent datum:  1/3 of bestselling eBooks cost more than the same title in hardback.  Huh?  Of course, the bestselling author can’t rebel against this—his percentage of the royalties is small because his publishing house’s is large.  The price of his eBook has to be scaled up proportionately.  For authors other than bestselling ones, though, this practice is counterproductive and unfair:  Higher prices mean fewer sales, thus increasing the payback time for that juicy advance.  No wonder the Big Six are only betting on safe horses, those bestselling authors who will sell thousands of their books, both here and abroad, and therefore not object to these policies.  The bottom line:  the reading public suffers.

#196:  Amazon bashing anyone?  Seems like everyone these days is going after Amazon.  Generally speaking, I have no complaints.  They give me a good deal on royalties for listing my eBooks with them.  However, there are reasons to complain.  Amazon’s bubble of indie-author utopia is bursting.

First, there’s the KDP Select give-away program.  Previously, an indie author might use that to increase the ranking of his books as well as generate some name recognition.  I had two campaigns like that, figuring that if I can’t invest the thousands of dollars on marketing and PR, I could find some new readers who had no idea who Steve Moore was before downloading that eBook.  I also thought they might like the download enough to buy some of my other books.  My campaigns were a flop with respect to the name recognition goal (my take anyway).  Also, just before launch, Amazon changed their algorithms—their prerogative, of course, but detrimental to me.

Second, their reviews have always been a bit iffy.  Now it turns out that people are using reviews to promote their causes.  Here’s the idea:  Pick your cause, find a book that supports it, and write good reviews for it; for negative books, pan them.  Maybe this has always been done.  But I just read about one recent campaign of this type.  Of course, all reviews are subjective—one person’s delicious dessert is another person’s poison.  But Amazon’s review algorithm counts positive, and especially helpful, reviews less than negative ones.  So, these campaigns can be effective—and detrimental to both authors and readers.

Continuing the subject of reviews, Amazon discourages serious reviews by limiting the length.  This seems to be a new wrinkle.  They’ve always had an enforced minimum (which limits grade school reviews like “I loved (hated) this book” with no reasons given), but they’ve traditionally been more forgiving on the length.  My reviews are like my blog posts—from 700 to 1500 words.  I’m a minimalist writer, but, when I have something to say, I say it.  I object to Amazon’s enforcing the arbitrary maximum of 500 words.  It’s unfair to me, the reviewer, and it’s unfair to you, the reader.  I guess that cloud in “cloud computing” is just not big enough.  If you ever start wondering why the reviews of a book all start sounding alike, now you’ll know why.

Third, now Amazon has decided to rank authors.  That’s suspicious, especially because they have been trying to push their own publishing house.  Again, this eventually hurts readers who will have less of a chance to read books by new authors.  It’s natural to ask, “Why is this author’s rank so low?”  The knee-jerk reaction is, “He must be terrible!”  I would ask readers to give these books a chance.  Look at the book’s blurb first.  An author, especially an indie author, might not have a high rank and might not have many reviews, but if the book looks interesting and is a reasonable price, buy it.  And, indie authors, make sure your books are the best they can be—given your budget, of course.  (I’m well aware that budget limitations are a factor.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t do things to improve your book that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.  See #194.)

#197:  And a twist of humor.  If you’re an author, indie or otherwise, and don’t read Dan Poynter’s newsletter, you should.  The “ParaHumor” section is worth the subscription, which is free!  I’ll offer a twist on one item I recently read:  Stephen King’s lament before he became famous?  “I went to San Francisco.  I found someone’s heart.  Now what?”  Of course, Stephen King and Dean Koontz are still churning out the horror stories (Stephen’s opus is straight horror and suspense, while Dean’s sometimes has sci-fi elements).  I wrote one horror story, the short story “The Bridge,” although one story in the collection Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java might qualify.  Just not my genre, folks, at least not for my own writing.

In libris libertas….

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under News and Notices from the Writing Trenches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.