Aug

8

Electric Literature’s Model May Save Short Fiction

Filed Under E-books, Fiction, Publishing | Leave a Comment

As a publishing choice, short stories vie with poetry as the quickest way to drain a publisher’s bank account.

Yet, a year-old publisher of short stories, Electric Literature, may have found the magic formula.

The company’s mission “is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.”

Stitched together by two writers, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, Electric Literature is essentially a quarterly literary magazine. Each issue has five short stories by known and unknown authors.

Authors benefit too.

According to Electric Literature’s website each Electric Literature author is decently paid. This is unlike most literary magazines—some pay in copies only. Better pay should guarantee a healthier slush pile, and, theoretically, a better magazine with a larger readership.

Not unnoticed.

The pair has garnered attention from heavy hitters in the print world including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post which called Electric Literature, “A refreshingly bold act of optimism.”

Timing is everything.

The quickening of our daily lives and the proliferation of mobile devices have seemingly combined to produce a ready crop of readers for Electric Literature. As Hunter and Lindenbaum point out, the short story is especially well suited to our increasingly hectic lifestyles: “A quick, satisfying read can be welcome anywhere, and while you might forget a book, you’ll always have your phone.”

 Here’s their blueprint:

 To publish the paperback version of Electric Literature, we use print-on-demand; the eBook, Kindle, iPhone, and audio versions are digital. This eliminates our up-front printing bill. Rather than paying $5,000 to one printer, we pay $1,000 to five writers, ensuring that our writers are paid fairly. Our anthology is available anywhere in the world, overruns aren’t pulped, and our back issues are perpetually in print.

 Electric Literature may be leading the pack among literary magazines, but it isn’t the only, or even the first, publisher to use the POD/digital formula exclusively—today publishers of every ilk do, and it’s a model I’m sure we’ll see more of.

Just a write thought.

Aug

5

NPR Poll Helps Fiction Authors and Publishers

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Thank goodness market research for writers and publishers includes keeping up on one’s reading. When family members see us sprawled on the couch, book in hand, we can claim, oops, I mean explain, we are working.

And, in this endeavor, NPR is here to help.

NPR conducted a poll titled “Killer Thrillers” to help you decide what next to read.

Six-hundred nominations were collected. Seventeen-thousand ballots cast.

In the end, there were few surprises. Most of the authors’ names in the list of the top 100 are familiar: Stephen King, Truman Capote, James Patterson, Dan Brown, John Grisham, as are the titles of the books, even when the author’s name may be difficult to recall: Rosemary’s Baby and Fail-Safe for instance.

Below are the top 20. To see the whole list click here.

  •  1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
  • 2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • 3. Kiss the Girls, by James Patterson
  • 4. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
  • 5. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  • 6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
  • 7. The Shining, by Stephen King
  • 8. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
  • 9. The Hunt tor Red October, by Tom Clancy
  • 10. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • 11. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
  • 12. The Stand, by Stephen King
  • 13. The Bone Collector, by Jeffery Deaver
  • 14. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
  • 15. Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown
  • 16. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
  • 17. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
  • 18. Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
  • 19. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
  • 20. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

 I find polls like this one often reflect what those polled are currently reading—Stieg Larsson has three in the top 100, Lee Child, four—so I was pleased to see books by Agatha Christie, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, and Ian Fleming in the ranks.

So, your duty is clear, go out and buy a half dozen of these and hit that couch.

 As an aside, Barnes & Noble yesterday said the bookstore chain is on the market. B&N’s stock price has been suffering lately even though, as I understand it, profits haven’t been. One has to wonder, does the management at B & N see a bright future in brick and mortar bookstores in light of the budding popularity of e-readers?

Just a write thought.

Mar

16

Churchill on Writing Books

Filed Under Books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing | 1 Comment

The quote below—which I’d never heard until Bill Secrest, Jr., a QDB author and friend, sent it to me—is worth its own blog:

 “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

       —Winston Churchill

 Hot tip: Want to make your writing tighter? Take a look at each time you have used the word “that.” Most can be deleted to your reader’s benefit.

 Just a write thought.

Dec

7

Mystery Writers Removes Harlequin Books from Approved Status

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The Mystery Writers of America has removed Harlequin and its imprints from its approved publisher’s list. This means authors may not use Harlequin-published titles as a basis for active membership in MWA nor will any of Harlequin’s titles be considered for the coveted Edgar Award.

The MWA website states “We did not take this action lightly. We did it because Harlequin remains in violation of our rules regarding the relationship between a traditional publisher and its various for-pay services.”

This follows action taken by Romance Writers of America against Harlequin in November. See my post “Is It Self-Publishing or Vapor-Publishing” for the story there.

 Just a Write Thought.

Nov

6

IBPA Board Book Recommendations

Filed Under Books, Fiction, Publishing, Writing | 4 Comments

Just returned from a stimulating and productive Independent Book Publishers Association board meeting in foggy Redondo Beach.

 During dinner at the Fritto Misto in Hermosa Beach Tuesday, I passed around my iPhone and asked that each of the board members and staff add a note listing a book they thought I should read. This may have translated to their favorite book, the one that, in the words of an old friend “did them most” or it may be they listed the book they thought I would most enjoy or benefit from. Here’s the list:

It is interesting to note that all but one are fiction.

 * I’ve read it but probably should again.

** I’d never heard of it, but probably should have.

I just ordered the ones I don’t have.

Oct

5

Fair Use Abuse?

Filed Under Fiction, Free Speech, Nonfiction, Writing | Leave a Comment

Here’s a twist. A copyright holder ends up as the one paying in a Fair Use dispute.

With the Fair Use doctrine—a part of the U.S. copyright law—an author is allowed to quote another’s copyrighted material for criticism, commenting, teaching, and other narrow uses. The actual limit on how much can be quoted isn’t defined by the law.

Disagreements are usually settled out of court, but, when a dispute goes to trial, the court generally looks at four things: the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted material, the portion of the work used, and the effect of the use upon the market for the copyrighted material.

In this case, the Estate of James Joyce objected to Stanford University professor Carol Schloss’ use of copyrighted material in a book she was writing. Schloss claimed the material she wished to use fell under the doctrine of Fair Use but took the material out of her book when, she claimed, she was threatened with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Subsequently she wished to use some of the material in a website and she enlisted the Stanford Fair Use Project to go on the offensive to establish her right to use the Joyce material.

In the end the Estate agreed to pay her $240,000 to settle the case.

This is a reversal of what normally happens when copyright holders attempt to protect their copyrights, and is being hailed by some as better establishing the rights of authors to use copyrighted material in critical works without fear of being sued. In many cases simply the threat of a lawsuit is enough to stop an author from using copyrighted material in any manner, including what may actually constitute fair use.

How does this apply to us?

All of this is interesting, but may lack practical application to the average writer. If you wish to use a large portion of another’s copyrighted material it is still best to ask permission.

To read more on this check out the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society blog or this Publishers Weekly article.

For a good, simple explanation of United States copyright laws see the chapter on copyright by John Zelezny in The Portable Writer’s Conference. (Full disclosure: QDB is the publisher and I’m the editor of the Portable Writer’s Conference.)

Aug

4

Abusing the First Amendment? Senator Boxer’s Blind Trust

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 I don’t like it when someone denigrates a book they haven’t read, or a movie they haven’t seen, but at the peril of doing so, I’m moved to say a few things about a book I haven’t read, Senator Barbara Boxer’s second attempt at writing a novel, Blind Trust.

Off the bat, I wonder if Boxer weren’t a Senator from California, would California-based Chronicle Books, not especially known for their fiction, have agreed to publish it? (Zen-like, one can also ask, What better novel—likely written by an unknown—failed to see the light of day because this one took up its bookstore shelf space?)

Another question that occurs to me is, Do senators have the time to write novels? Writing a novel takes a huge commitment of time and energy. (Full disclosure: Boxer had a coauthor, novelist Mary-Rose Hayes, who may have done most of the heavy lifting.) And, while I’m sure even Senators should be allowed their hobbies, how much time should a member of the world’s most exclusive and powerful club—as the Senate has been called—devote to fiction while our country struggles with the deepest recession since World War II and is galloping, willy-nilly, toward the biggest spending programs ever conceived?

But, maybe Boxer didn’t write the book as an avocational pursuit. According to Kimberly A. Strassel who reviewed the novel in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the ultraliberal Boxer’s book is more an “attempt to score real-life political points in fictional form” than the thriller it purports to be.

Deep, Well-Rounded Characters

The heroine is a liberal Democratic Senator from California who is “honest, tough and energetic.” The chief antagonist is a Dick Cheney look-alike, Republican vice president who “trampled on individual liberties and jeopardized the Bill of Rights.”

But wait, it gets worse: There is also a Rush Limbaugh look-alike named Sam Slaughter (a.k.a. “Slaughterman”) who is “abusing the First Amendment.”

Well-rounded, compelling characters, wouldn’t you say?

And, while I’m not particularly a Rush Limbaugh fan, I support his right to say whatever he wants—whether Barbara Boxer or anyone else approves.

And I support her right to write whatever books she wants. But the question begs to be asked: Isn’t Senator Boxer herself jeopardizing individual liberties by accusing a radio host of abusing the First Amendment by exercising his First Amendment rights?

Or is freedom of speech just for those whom we agree with?

Feb

13

Purple Prose

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I started Michael Dibdin’s Dead Lagoon last night. I’ve read one other in this “Aurelio Zen Mystery” series. Aurelio Zen is an Italian police officer and the books are set in Italy. Although the author, according to his bio, lives in Seattle the location details appear authentic and adds to the enjoyment of the story.

While I do enjoy his books, I find his writing a bit turgid. He often uses uncommon words when, I feel, a common word would be less likely to stop the reader. “Plashing” is an example. As is “caul.”

Using the exact word is important, but making the reader pull out of the story to think about a word or phrase is dangerous.

He also often seems to overwrite a bit. You be the judge:

When he awoke again the room was filled with an astringent brilliance which made him blink, an abrasive slapping of wavelets and the edgy scent which had surprised him the moment he stepped out of the train. He had forgotten even the most obvious thing about the place, like the pervasive risky odour of the sea.

“Abrasive slapping of wavelets”?  “Pervasive risky odour”? Colorful for sure, but too much?

Another mystery author who dips his toe into this kind of purple prose is James Lee Burke.  

Both of these authors get away with it—both are popular and heavily read—yet each walks a fine line that a beginning writer might be well advised to avoid.

By the way, Dibdin’s books are first published in the U.K. and as such use British punctuations—for instance, single quotes for dialogue—and spellings. I suppose in Britain words such as “plashing” and “caul” may be everyday words and wouldn’t slow down the reader as they likely would most Americans.

Feb

4

The End of Book Publishing Is Near!

Filed Under Books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment

I wouldn’t be surprised to find book-publishing pundits walking the streets of Manhattan carrying signs proclaiming “The End Is Near!”

Sales in bookstores are down, heads at publishing houses are rolling, Borders is on the rocks and may not survive, Amazon.com continues to capture market share—its Kindle appears to be the first e-reader to get more than passing traction with consumers.

And, contrary to Chris Anderson’s theory espoused in his book, The Long Tail, the large publishers are still searching for the next blockbuster, the one book that will make a season profitable for the whole house—a tactic that hasn’t exactly served them well, not to say what it does to most of their non-blockbuster authors who don’t get the advance or the attention they deserve. This can’t be the way to develop a robust, heterogeneous industry.

Is this the end of book publishing as we know it?

Yes and no.

Watch for the following in the years to come:

• A proliferation of small, independent houses publishing fiction. As many independent nonfiction houses found their stride in the last 15 years, independents who publish fiction will make gains.

 • Kindle will become the iPod of the book industry. Every book published will concurrently be published in the Kindle format.

 • Many books will never see the inside of a warehouse. We already have online print-on-demand services (Amazon’s BookSurge is one), but you’ll soon be able to go to your bookstore (or other venue) and have a book downloaded, printed, and bound while you wait.

 What does that mean for publishers? Greater distribution—every book available at every bookstore—less warehousing, shipping, and remainder costs, the economic freedom to publish more titles—blockbusters or not.

 Authors will benefit from all of the above, especially mid-list authors.

Jan

18

Fiction Cheaper than Nonfiction?

Filed Under Books, Fiction, Nonfiction | 1 Comment

I stayed in a motel in San Simeon—home of the opulent Hearst Castle—over Christmas. In the motel lobby are two full bookcases. My kind of place. (By the way, the room was $36 a night for a large, ocean-view room. I went to sleep listening to the relaxing sounds of the surf. E-mail me and I’ll tell you the secret of getting the same.)

One book in the lobby, the 1947 novel Mountain Time by Bernard DeVoto, had been rubber stamped on the inside cover. It read:

This Book is the Property of

THE MAY COMPANY

No Membership Fee

Time Limit on All Books

THIRTY DAYS

Non-fiction [sic] 3¢ a day 8¢ Minimum

Fiction 2¢ a day 5¢ Minimum

Books will be reserved on the payment of

five cents for Fiction and eight cents for

Non-Fiction. This payment covers a

notice to you that the book is being held

for four days from the sending date of notice.

I wonder why fiction was cheaper than nonfiction. Is it today? Are you willing to pay a higher price for a how-to or self-help title than a novel? How about a memoir? Or a political expose?

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