Category Archives: Author

The Changing Publishing Scene

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Writers—and some readers, too—are worried about the massive shifts in the publishing industry, including whether it will be possible to make a living as a serious writer for very much longer, not that it was ever very easy, and what making authorhood impossible means for the diversity of ideas in the cultural marketplace.

My professional organization, Sisters in Crime (it’s worth joining just to be able to say that!), recently released a new report on the state of publishing, based on expert interviews with 15 individuals involved, in various ways, in the industry. They asked about books in general and mysteries/suspense/thrillers in particular. The experts they talked to echoed the rather gloomy predictions heard for the last couple of years regarding the challenges the industry faces.

Given the difficulty new writers have being published, many are advised to go-it-alone. But “understand the risks,” one prominent agent said. Yes, it’s easy to self-publish with today’s technology, but publishing does not necessarily lead to sales and income for the writer. Because about 300,000 print titles and an almost uncountable number of ebooks are published each year—think of it as a thousand new books a day—the necessity for and burden of promotion and marketing are enormous. Accomplishing this shifts the emphasis entirely onto the self in self-publishing.

The few self-published books that have achieved financial success have encouraged many more writers to try to follow in those footsteps, creating such a rising level of background noise level, even excellent books go unnoticed.

The implications of the rise of e-books has yet to sort itself out. And, because of a number of economic pressures on publishers, the bar for new authors is constantly being raised. Worse, publishers aren’t interested in mid-list authors—“they want bestsellers.” Authors want to write bestsellers, too, but most won’t. The Great Gatsby sold poorly when it was first published in 1925, but now it is one of the most highly-ranked English-language novels of the 20th century (second-highest in the Modern Library’s list after Ulysses.) As of today it ranks #10 in Amazon’s bestsellers’ list, 4th among novels. For authors whose publishers aren’t banking on returns 88 years into the future, the emphasis on bestsellers is a problem.

The one bright spot for writers of mysteries is that the genre retains its popularity in this fast-changing environment. Mysteries account for 24 percent of ebook sales, though only 15 percent of the dollars, which means their prices are discounted compared to other books. Mysteries are 21 percent of library ebook collections and 24 percent of their print collections. And “cozy mysteries,” that less-sex-and-gore subgenre perfected by Agatha Christie and still practiced by many authors today are actually increasing in popularity.

Exploring Further:

“The Slow Death of the American Author” – Scott Turow’s recent, widely circulated lamentation in the New York Times

Sisters in Crime – membership organization promoting the professional development and advancement of women crime writers

The Modern Library’s lists of 100 best novels; one list selected by its board and one by readers

Cozy Mysteries Unlimited – website for cozy fans

Giving Voice

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Yesterday’s writing workshop was on the narrative voice—who emerges from the page when you write something longer than a tweet? (On Twitter everyone sounds almost identically manic.) Or longer than a Facebook post? When your writing—a letter, a story, a blog entry, a news release—demands more than a “Nuff said,” when enough isn’t said until you’ve delivered your readers something that will grab their attention, steal their hearts, pique their curiosity about the world and the mysteries of human behavior.

You write conversation—dialog—in the disparate voices of individual characters; narration creates your voice. Narration tells readers when and where events takes place, it provides the carefully chosen details that bring characters to life. Narration turns the world into words.

Each of us, if we stood on a mountaintop gazing out at the countryside spread below, would choose different words to describe it—once past “Awesome!”, that is—we would put the words together in our own unique way, with reference to our own particular past experiences and our own expectations for the future. Think how you might describe the scene above if you were standing on that peak preparing to descend into the valley to wed your sweetheart, then think how differently you’d describe it if you’d climbed up there to scatter your lover’s ashes.

This difference is the basis for maybe my favorite of John Gardner’s challenging writing exercises: “Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war.” The diabolical aspect of this is that you’re not to mention the son, war, death, or the man. No cop-outs of referring to him as a father. But Gardner goes on: “Then describe the same building, in the same weather and at the same time of day, as seen by a happy lover.” Again, you’re instructed not to mention love or the loved one. By applying those strictures, he guarantees you do not default to easy or hackneyed prose and the descriptions that result are inevitably in the writer’s own voice, not a second-hand one.

In my own writing, whenever a passage comes too easily, I realize it’s not wholly mine. It originated in one or a dozen movies or television shows—bad ones, probably—and I have to go back and hack my own path through the situation, in my own way. Dialog is especially prone to unconscious borrowing.

Voice is why, in my writing group, we really don’t need to put our names on our work any more. Each of us has a voice so distinctive, we’d recognize who wrote the page in front of us, even if it arrived in an envelope posted from Mars. It seems each of us is truly learning to turn worlds into words, to create “his world and no other,” as Raymond Carver said.

Exploring Further

“Sharpening the Quill,” a series of writing workshops by Lauren B. Davis

The Art of Fiction – John Gardner, the classic “Notes on Craft for Young Writers.”

“On Writing” – Raymond Carver

New York Times essay, “Once Upon a Time, There Was a Person Who Said, ‘Once Upon a Time,’ – Steve Almond. The significance of narration in literature and life and its fragmentation in the media age. Well worth reading.

Zombies and Enneatypes

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An interesting cast of characters assembled yesterday for the Liberty State Fiction Writers’ fourth annual conference. Two hundred writers, editors, and agents in a Woodbridge, N.J., hotel talked about stuff I know zero about (zombies) and never heard of (enneatypes).

Quite a learning experience. Many of the attendees write in genres and sub-genres I’ve also never heard of. Romance publisher Harlequin alone has some 30 lines, including Harlequin Medical, Harlequin Historical, and Harlequin Historical Undone, as in bodice laces, I suppose. Since Harry Potter, there’s an upsurge in writing for the Young Adult and Middle Grade markets. None of this is what I do, but what was nevertheless inspiring about the meeting is that these women—and most of the attendees were women—are getting it done. They have kids, they have jobs, but they are writing books. Not only that, their books are published, sometimes self-published and self-promoted, but they are getting it done, and a remarkable number are making a living at it. At the book-signing session, a ballroom was filled with long tables where authors sat behind piles of their books, beaming like proud mamas.

Yes, I heard the common gripe, “I just want to write, I don’t want to do all this social media,” and the firm answer, “Today, being a good business person is half your responsibility as a writer.” Even an agented book that goes to a traditional publisher needs promotion at the author’s end. With only one major bookstore chain left, the competition for attention is keener. Meanwhile, the biggest physical store selling books is Wal-Mart. Marketing expert Jen Talty reflected on the myriad forms available to authors now, from self-publishing to e-books to audio to video game scripts to film, to you-name-it and said, “The product is not the book, it is the story.”

About the zombies. “New York Times best-selling author” Jonathan Maberry—an entertaining speaker—said, “a zombie book isn’t about the zombies. It’s about how people behave when faced with an immediate life-threatening crisis.” He recommended World War Z by Max Brooks, son of Mel. This summer, a movie version will be released, starring Brad Pitt. Maberry borrowed a great image for keeping the action in a thriller moving: “Imagine your character is walking a tightrope and behind him, it’s on fire.”

All the people in one workshop seemed to know about enneagrams except me. They are typologies of people’s personalities—nine types, precisely—and the traits associated with them, reduced to a dense chart. Authors can use these typologies to assess how their character might react in a particular situation. For example, a character of the “perfectionist” type tends to react with gut instinct and under stress becomes moody and irrational. I suspect such charts are helpful to the writers who use them, but that many characters are combinations of types, and one or another comes to the fore depending on circumstances. It seemed to simplistic to me, and Wikipedia notes that the system isn’t science-based or easily tested.

My reason for attending the conference was to talk face-to-face with literary agents. It’s bad form to collar an agent in the hallway and pitch your book, but the conference arranges brief (5-minute!) appointments, and I signed up to meet all three agents there who represent mystery/thriller authors. But first, I attended a workshop on pitching, which was filled with good advice and timely reminders, which I immediately adopted. And, all of the agents I talked to want to see all or part of my manuscript. A possible first step on a long road ahead, while I get cracking on the video game adaptation.