Did you hear about the jurisprudence fetishist? He got off on a technicality.

[Last week, book endorsements came up in a discussion thread on Goodreads, the best social media site for readers and writers.  That little exchange motivated this blog post.  Comments are always accepted.]

Product endorsements are as common as eyes on a potato.  If you ever did any “live experiments” in grade school general science “labs,” you know those eyes can sprout.  Mark Watney knows that a good dose of fertilizer helps, but the sprouts will come even in sugar water (maybe even tap water if it’s not from Flint, Michigan).  For product endorsements, it’s a mixed bag whether those sprouts mean something positive or negative, although they meant survival for Watney (and a place to put bodily waste).

I tend to ignore books with endorsements written by famous authors.  NYC’s publishing industry is a lot like Hollywood’s movie industry—it’s incestuous.  I don’t know whether it’s old authors (old movie wonks for Hollywood) wanting some kind of young and adoring disciples, or whether it’s some mistaken perception that only they can discern new talent (what about the readers or moviegoers?), but I’m always suspicious about this.  I once reviewed a thriller that was just OK—it was set in Boston, and I wasn’t too happy that the author got some of the “local color” wrong, for example.  The author’s next book was endorsed by someone (Patterson or Preston probably—whoever it was, I remember I wasn’t a fan)—I never read any more of that author’s books!

In Latin America, it’s called “la palanca,” which can be translated as leverage or influence.  There and here it usually goes far beyond simple references for a job application, getting an appointment to see someone for a business deal, or completing an application to attend college.   From the receiver’s point of view, it’s a way of eliminating competition; from the giver’s point of view, it’s often a way of currying favor—scratch my butt and I’ll scratch yours.  In the worst cases, it’s a way to get around equal opportunity laws, what few there are.

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[Many readers of this blog are familiar with my unconventional and acerbic opinions about the writing business—see the posts archived in the “Writing” category of this blog.  I recently saw something about SkillShare, so I thought maybe it was time to distill some of those ideas into a short course on fiction writing for would-be authors.  You’re in luck.  A perusal of that site’s offerings about writing didn’t impress me at all.  So, here’s my short and unconventional course—and it’s free!

Actually, like any Irish whiskey, this little course is thrice distilled—a development over the years of my own ideas about writing, the afore-mentioned blog posts, and now this mini-course.  You might not like some of the things I say because I don’t sugarcoat my opinions.  That’s too bad.  They’re my honest opinions at this stage in my writing career.  BTW, while readers might enjoy my points of view, this is mostly for indie writers, but traditionally published authors who aren’t Patterson’s workers on his book-writing assembly line, or other Big Five old stallions, i.e. midlist authors, can benefit too. Without further comment, here’s lesson five.

Added note for this lesson: yeah, I know it’s long, but it’s time someone said something honest about PR and marketing, so I can summarize all that’s below by saying that nothing works!  Of course, I’ve done a few things in 10+ years in the business, so read on about things to try.]

An Iconoclast Examines Fiction Writing

Lesson Five: How to Market Your Book

Whether you’re an indie or midlist author, this is an absolute must.  There’s a lot of DIY that can be done, so watch how you spend your money—there are “gurus” just itching to take it (and they’ll sell you their books too—truth of the matter is, those are the only books most gurus write, so their “knowledge” is always suspect, and Sturgeon’s Law always applies).  Here’s a to-do list where every item is optional—at least, how much you do with each item is.  There are no guarantees here—don’t believe anyone who says they have a sure-fire method.  None exist.

You have two basic problems: letting the world know who you are (also called name recognition) and letting the world know what you write (recognition of your books).  Some things below work for one or the other; others work for both.  Much of this involves internet presence—it’s a connected world now.  That means you can reach out to many people all over the world.  It also means most other writers are doing the same thing, so the signal-to-noise level is bad (you’re the signal, they’re the noise, as far as you’re concerned).

Again, King ignores all this in On Writing (he has a website, though, so someone must maintain it for him—maybe multiple someones?).  Today most authors can’t do that.  It’s an important part of being a writer in today’s publishing environment.  To survive, you have to know enough about it to recognize your limitations and seek help if necessary.  And all authors can do a lot with DIY, but it takes time.  It can (but doesn’t guarantee) reaching your final goal: a successful book (whatever that means—develop your own definition, but be realistic).

Somehow you must put your books above that average sea level of other authors’ books so people notice you and your books.  No one says it’s easy, including me (in fact, as noted above, I’d say it’s well nigh impossible).  It’s often the last task you want to spend time on as a writer too, but grin and bear it.  You’ve had all your fun writing and publishing the book.  Now’s the time to get down to the nitty-gritty and sell it.  “Sell it” is loosely speaking, of course, and your first job is to write a great story.  Beware, though—there are many good stories and good authors and possibly great ones out there no one knows about.  Or, being modest, not so good or great but prolific, as in my case.  We’re all trying to find readers in a very competitive environment.

Review wars.  Here’s the skinny: Amazon treats books like every other product, even though they had their start selling books.  Therefore, they treat book reviews like product reviews.  They ask the reviewer to assign a star-ranking so their computers can calculate an average ranking—that’s all they really care about anymore.  A book can have over 1000 reviews—the more there are, the more Sturgeon’s Law applies to the overall set—but Amazon loves this.  1000+ reviews means they sold 1000+ books (with those numbers you can bet that each reviewer didn’t get a freebie in exchange for an honest review).  Your best bet are reviews where the reviewer takes more than two lines or so to say what s/he liked or disliked about the book and why.  Most of those 1000+ reviews fail miserably to meet this simple criterion.

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Conservatives read the Wall Street Journal, progressives the NY Times—that’s an old cliché that doesn’t have much basis in fact.  Progressives also read the Journal—one had to be stupid not to do so in the events leading up to and during the 2008-2009 financial implosion, even if it was just to see how much money your IRA or 401(k) was losing (or the money wonks were stealing, depending on your interpretation).  Today’s markets bring similar woes, thanks to China’s imploding economy and its decreased demand for oil killing the oil prices and tumbling markets everywhere, not to mention Greece, Spain, and other spending economies dragging the markets down.

This article is about journalistic integrity or the lack thereof, but I only will have bad things to say about the NY Times because we know where the Journal stands—it’s conservative, of course, reflecting its name.  The Times, on the other hand, is far from being the progressive bastion conservatives love to attack.  Consider it a sophisticated and arrogant example of yellow journalism, sort of like bile in color and use, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but never impartial.  Let me consider some examples.

First, a general comment: the Times’ reporters and editors decide what news is fit to print (probably mostly editors, of course—the worker bees generally don’t have much say in any big corporation).  This isn’t new journalistic practice, of course.  What’s egregious here is that the Times pretends to cover all sides of an issue but slants the news following an agenda that’s neither conservative nor progressive—their number one goal is the same as the Daily News and other rags, that is, to sell more papers (the Daily News covers are often classics).  The Times criticizes those other NYC rags, for example, if it even bothers to acknowledge them, but their brand of journalism is still yellow.  Sgt. Friday’s dictum, “Just the facts, ma’am,” is unheard of in many Times’ articles.  I can stomach that when the article is op-ed, opinions don’t have to be based in facts and op-eds are often slanted because they’re opinions.  I’m talking about what the Times calls news.

They censor or embellish the facts too often, often hiding sources under the cloak of freedom of the press, that old constitutional favorite the Founding Fathers never imagined would lead to so many lies and deceit.  Those “unnamed sources” or “sources close to X” are frustrating for concerned citizens who want to check facts.  (Maybe the Times doesn’t worry because there are so few left?)  If you believe for a moment that a reporter or editor is always truthful, you don’t understand journalistic legerdemain (this is one reason why I say a journalism degree is better than an MFA as prep for a fiction writer).  What reporters write and editors approve are always designed first and foremost to sell newspapers, no matter the official orientation of the paper or whether it’s op-ed or news.  My motto is always trust but verify, or maybe distrust and verify, but how can you verify when the facts can’t be checked?

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In his op-ed article on creativity in the NY Times, Prof. Adam Grant, management and psych professor at the Wharton School of UPenn, says step one to creativity is to procrastinate.  “Creativity takes time.  So I’m trying not to make progress toward my goal.”  I think that’s BS, and I’m hoping I’m not alone.  The first part depends on your definition of creativity, of course.  Presumably, this prof, who’s trying to sell his book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, is using a business definition.  I don’t see much creativity in the business world.  I see it in the author/composer of Hamilton; I’ve seen it in the works of Alejandro Obregon and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and I’ve seen it in scientists and engineers, from researchers to smart phone and car designers.  Grant confuses creativity with business acumen.  Trump has the latter, but he isn’t creative (come to think of it, Trump and his progeny went to Wharton).

So, let’s get past that first statement in the quote and move on to the second.  Procrastination is the opposite of creativity!  If one procrastinates, s/he’s doing absolutely nothing.  Now Alan Watts might say doing nothing is accomplishing something—that’s part of Buddhist teaching (make your mind blank to achieve enlightenment)—but it sure as hell isn’t being creative.  I’d generally call it wasting time!  At a conference once some Austrian physicists told me that they were in the process of thinking about getting some dinner.  Maybe that’s typically Austrian—I seem to remember Vienna as pretty laid back (but probably not during WWII)—but dinner just isn’t that complicated, and time spent in the process of thinking about it would be better spent doing physics in this case, where a physicist can and should be creative.  Leave the dinner creativity to chefs—culinary art is creative, but only when you do it, not in the process of thinking about it.

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[Many readers of this blog are familiar with my unconventional and acerbic opinions about the writing business—see the posts archived in the “Writing” category of this blog.  I recently saw something about SkillShare, so I thought maybe it was time to distill some of those ideas into a short course on fiction writing for would-be authors.  You’re in luck.  A perusal of that site’s offerings about writing didn’t impress me at all.  So, here’s my short and unconventional course—and it’s free!

Actually, like any Irish whiskey, this little course is thrice distilled—a development over the years of my own ideas about writing, the afore-mentioned blog posts, and now this mini-course.  You might not like some of the things I say because I don’t sugarcoat my opinions.  That’s too bad.  They’re my honest opinions at this stage in my writing career.  BTW, while readers might enjoy my points of view, this is mostly for indie writers, but traditionally published authors who aren’t Patterson’s workers on his book-writing assembly line, or other Big Five old stallions, i.e. midlist authors, can benefit too. Without further comment, here’s lesson four.]

An Iconoclast Examines Fiction Writing

Lesson Four: You’ll Need Help

There are three hurdles to jump through along the track to publishing and marketing your book: producing a polished MS, turning it into a book, and letting people know about you and your book.  Every author has to jump through these hurdles.  A traditional publisher will do most of the second step but usually very little of the third (more on this later).  This lesson is for the indie writer.  S/he’ll usually need help with some of that second hurdle.

Again, King ignores all this in On Writing.  He can afford not to give a shit, of course, and probably hasn’t worried about these issues since he wrote and sold newspapers and stories in high school.  He probably doesn’t know Arial font from Times New Roman either.  You should be aware of these issues and seek help when you need it.  You’re not King.  He lives in a different universe now.  You can perhaps ascend to that plane of existence someday, but you won’t if you don’t pay attention to details King doesn’t worry about.

Formatting.  You’re faced with a plethora of ebook formats.  You want a paper version of your book.  These are multiple formatting chores.  While it’s possible to go DIY here, it’s time consuming and there are multiple learning curves in order to negotiate all the different bureaucracies at Kindle Direct Publishing (mobi formats), Smashwords (all formats, but based on epub), and Create Space (POD)—these are the main ways to produce your indie book.  Given these complications, you might want help with the formatting.  This runs the gamut from informal to formal (the latter often takes a cut of future royalties if the organization accepts your book).

Deciding on formats is important.  Most are investments of your time and money.  Beyond ebooks and pbooks (paper versions), there are audiobooks.  Given current trends, I wouldn’t be surprised if multimedia books aren’t in our future.  I’m a bit old to jump on that bandwagon, but the idea of replacing non-words describing sounds is still attractive!  (A silencer on a gun produces a pfft!, but that non-word doesn’t begin to carry all the emotional content when the detective hears that sound.)

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[Many readers of this blog are familiar with my unconventional and acerbic opinions about the writing business—see the posts archived in the “Writing” category of this blog.  I recently saw something about SkillShare, so I thought maybe it was time to distill some of those ideas into a short course on fiction writing for would-be authors.  You’re in luck.  A perusal of that site’s offerings about writing didn’t impress me at all.  So, here’s my short and unconventional course—and it’s free!

Actually, like any Irish whiskey, this little course is thrice distilled—a development over the years of my own ideas about writing, the afore-mentioned blog posts, and now this mini-course.  You might not like some of the things I say because I don’t sugarcoat my opinions.  That’s too bad.  They’re my honest opinions at this stage in my writing career.  BTW, while readers might enjoy my points of view, this is mostly for indie writers, but traditionally published authors who aren’t Patterson’s workers on his book-writing assembly line, or other Big Five old stallions, i.e. midlist authors, can benefit too. Without further comment, here’s lesson three.]

An Iconoclast Examines Fiction Writing

Lesson Three: Indie or Traditional?

Indie writers need to make a lot of decisions and do a lot of DIY before they reach out to their readers with a new release.  So do most traditionally published writers.  So, what’s the difference?  The first group manages their entire business; the second supposedly pays others to manage the first part of producing the book from a manuscript (MS).  The traditionally published author pays for that too, though.  Don’t think so?  Are you in for a surprise!  The bloodletting will continue for the life of your contract and beyond.  (Here’s where I differ from King’s On Writing in a major way, of course.  Not mentioning this choice dates King’s book at the very least, or shows he disparages the indie option at the worst.  We can excuse him, I suppose—he’s so famous he doesn’t have to worry about much, except maybe where his desk is placed.)

Don’t kid yourself.  Whether indie or traditional writer, you’ll be working your butt off.  The first step is always the same, creating that polished MS.  The last steps are always the same (see the next two lessons).  And you’ll pay dearly for the in-between by going the traditional route. First, traditional contracts are egregious (they always have been, even according to King).  Not only is your royalty percentage low (the publisher’s cut is high because s/he has a lot of inflated bureaucracy to pay for, although, as years have passed, s/he does less and less for you, the author, so s/he gets more), and you often have to repay advances if your book doesn’t sell.  Moreover, that starry-eyed yearning to see your book on the shelves of a big book barn doesn’t last long, max a few months, before all books are returned to the publisher.  Finally, you’ve signed all your rights away to that book for years to come unless you pay a hefty penalty.  Of course, there are a wide variety of contracts and lots of fine print—the publishers have lawyers on staff, and you don’t.  Those lawyers are protecting the publisher’s interests, not yours.  Be sure you understand what you’re signing!

Negatives and positives for the traditional route.  Maybe you’re expecting your book to be a huge success, so you’re willing to tolerate the meager royalties from traditional publishing.  You don’t like the idea of DIY and having to be your own boss.  Or, you’re saying you just want to write your stories and forget about the rest.  OK.  If you were indie, you’d still need things that a traditional publisher provides, but the latter might not listen to you if you don’t like her/his cover, and s/he might not listen to you if you push back on final editorial comments of your MS  (agents do that too—see below).

King, Koontz, Baldacci, and Deaver, to name a few best-selling authors (the definition of that is often arbitrary because sales don’t necessarily imply the book earns any literary respect) might be able to get by with meager royalties—they sell a lot of books!—but you don’t own their brands.  Let’s face it: readers pay attention to authors if they spin a good yarn (that’s why any author should mention previous books somewhere in the new one).  I can’t even say the four I’ve mentioned are household names, but they’re known brands in the publishing industry.

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[Many readers of this blog are familiar with my unconventional and acerbic opinions about the writing business—see the posts archived in the “Writing” category of this blog.  I recently saw something about SkillShare, so I thought maybe it was time to distill some of those ideas into a short course on fiction writing for would-be authors.  You’re in luck.  A perusal of that site’s offerings about writing didn’t impress me at all.  So, here’s my short and unconventional course—and it’s free!

Actually, like any Irish whiskey, this little course is thrice distilled—a development over the years of my own ideas about writing, the afore-mentioned blog posts, and now this mini-course.  You might not like some of the things I say because I don’t sugarcoat my opinions.  That’s too bad.  They’re my honest opinions at this stage in my writing career.  BTW, while readers might enjoy my points of view, this is mostly for indie writers, but traditionally published authors who aren’t Patterson’s workers on his book-writing assembly line, or other Big Five old stallions, i.e. midlist authors, can benefit too. Without further comment, here’s lesson two.]

An Iconoclast Examines Fiction Writing

Lesson Two:  The Path to a Polished Manuscript

OK, so you have a first draft.  If you’ve been content editing all along, your story is complete.  (You have to know when to stop.  Stopping is essential!  You need to write the next story.)  Now you have to polish that manuscript (MS) so other people can deal with it (while you write the next story), because it’s probably a bit ragged for wear already.  You might have used too many dialogue tags, for example.  Or made multiple grammar and spelling errors.  You’ve already done your content editing, so the next step is copy editing.  You can do much of that yourself—maybe all of it, because you’ve been writing long enough to know your own quirks, probably better than any copy editor you can hire.  In any case, you need to make a few passes before you send the MS off to anyone else.

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[Many readers of this blog are familiar with my unconventional and acerbic opinions about the writing business—see the posts archived in the “Writing” category of this blog.  I recently saw something about SkillShare, so I thought maybe it was time to distill some of those ideas into a short course on fiction writing for would-be authors.  You’re in luck.  A perusal of that site’s offerings about writing didn’t impress me at all.  So, here’s my short and unconventional course—and it’s free!

Actually, like any Irish whiskey, this little course is thrice distilled—a development over the years of my own ideas about writing, the afore-mentioned blog posts, and now this mini-course.  You might not like some of the things I say because I don’t sugarcoat my opinions.  That’s too bad.  They’re my honest opinions at this stage in my writing career.  BTW, while readers might enjoy my points of view, this is mostly for indie writers, but traditionally published authors who aren’t Patterson’s slaves on his book-writing assembly line, or other Big Five old stallions, i.e. midlist authors, can benefit too. Without further comment, here’s lesson one.]

An Iconoclast Examines Fiction Writing

Lesson One: Writing Your Story

Introduction.  The competition for readers is ferocious.  The number of authors is increasing; the number of readers is decreasing.  That’s a fact of life.  It’s probably only going to get worse.  Many good books by good authors are appearing every week, and, if you’re a reader ignoring the indies, you’re really missing out on some good stories.  Something that’s occurring that helps a wee bit to diminish numbers in that class of “good authors” is that the age-old art of storytelling is getting mauled by young creators of bad screenplays oriented to bad TV shows and streaming video, crappy movies, and video games, all emphasizing the visual and passive in comparison to fiction that involves the reader at a more cerebral and active level.

Emphasis is on “young.”  Even the younger baby boomers have grown up with TV and are addicted to passive visual stimulation.  Stephen King makes this point in his best book, On Writing, although he doesn’t come out and say it directly, so I will: passive visual stimulation destroys the imagination.  Many young authors nowadays often don’t have enough experience to have original story ideas either.  King: “Life isn’t a support system for art.  It’s the other way around.”  I disagree.  (To be fair, this King quote has more to do with the placement of his writing desk!)  Instead of waiting to become formulaic like Grafton, King, and Patterson have become, they now start off being formulaic, writing bad screenplays and uninteresting novels (current MFA programs too often teach formulaic—a journalism degree is probably the better prep for a wannabe writer if s/he thinks some sort of formal degree is required).

Life experiences are essential for story ideas.  That doesn’t mean you slavishly follow the adage, “Write what you know.”  That’s malarkey.  (Consider sci-fi.)  Experience leads to story ideas; imagination polishes them into great stories.  The visual but passively viewed pyrotechnics described above kill imagination.  Period.  Most MFA profs kill imagination too.  That’s fine if you’re writing non-fiction.  If you want to write good fiction, you better have a lively imagination.  Fortunately, many creative people do, no matter what they do for their day-job.  Writing courses, while perhaps useful for polishing prose, aren’t really necessary.  If you don’t have any imagination, though, don’t write fiction.  If you insist on writing, write something else (maybe greeting cards?).

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Girl with the Dragon Tatoo leads to many Girl Somethings, Gone Girl leads to a plethora of Gone Somethings, Harry leads to Percy, Twilight leads to more sparkling vampires, King and Koontz try to outdo each other in Horrorsville, Lord of the Rings leads to more fantasies, Jack Reacher leads to John Puller, Lincoln Rhyme leads to many CSI stories, Grisham creates a new subgenre filled with copycat legal thrillers, and so forth.  These are all examples of jumping on the bandwagon.  It’s not just in the titles.  Take John Puller.  Change his name to Jack Reacher everywhere in the David Baldacci book Zero Hour and you have a Lee Child novel.  It’s not just a phenomenon of indie writers trying to copy the novels produced by the old horses in the Big Five’s large formulaic stables either.  It’s more general than that.  It’s jumping on a bandwagon by an author hoping for publishing success.

I smile at this phenomenon and try to be tolerant.  I often tell people that I write the kind of novel I like to read.  But that doesn’t mean I jump on somebody else’s bandwagon—I tell original stories.  I have four series, but each novel in a series is a stand-alone story.  Maybe that’s why I had 1000+ rejections when I started out in this business!  In my query letters, I don’t remember ever saying that a novel was like someone else’s.  How could I?  It wasn’t.  I do remember telling some agents that my YA sci-fi mystery The Secret Lab was NOT Harry Potter in space.  That’s legit.  An author can tell an agent s/he’s not jumping on a bandwagon!  But all those rejections I had could mean that most agents, generally the gatekeepers for the traditional publishers, are afraid of betting on the new horse—they want authors to say their books are like something else so they can make the connection and pitch it to the editors that way.

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