M. R. Bailey

In his recent biography entitled, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, Brad Gooch describes how O’Connor (1925-1964) avoided using any word twice on the same page. I avoid repeating words in paragraphs, but entire pages? That sounds like a stretch. It is, and that’s the point. Fresh, inventive expression of similar ideas adds to voice, creates a more forceful narrative, and improves the reading experience. Like jogging new, unexplored miles every morning.

Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor’s works at Amazon

Literary Entrepreneurs

Self-publishing is leveling what has been a uneven field of competition for authors, for readers, and for book sellers.  Writers still write books on spec, but now they can manage rights, take responsibility for when and how their work is published, participate more fully as equal partners in their work’s publication, connect more directly with readers, and be better literary citizens.

Book Publishing is Becoming Self-publishing

The Internet has made every individual a potential publisher. And technology is making every idea, story, and work of art marketable. Even the business side of the transaction is returning to a one-to-one exchange.

JA Konrath has six books in print and thirteen e-books available from Amazon. He has projected that he will earn up to $100,000 this year on sales of his e-books alone. Each sale is initiated by an interested reader who decides to download one of his novels to their Kindle, iPad, PC, Mac, iPhone, iTouch, Droid, or any other of an expanding universe of personal e-reading options. Amazon’s online Kindle Store (or Apple’s iBook and others) completes the transaction within seconds. No shipping. No waiting. From JA Konrath directly to Ima Reader wherever she is on the planet.

After iPad

There are thirty-nine e-readers on the market. Considering the quantum leap forward in quality of the user experience, it is tempting to rephrase that device snapshot to something more like: the Apple iPad and thirty-eight others.

The iPad provides an excellent, even transformational e-reading experience. It feels good cradled in your hands, on your lap or propped up against your thighs for those middle of the night reads. It has a high resolution color screen that is easy on eyes, especially aging eyes. It responds instantly, enthusiastically to any impulse. Turning the page is almost as satisfying as leafing pages in that 600-page Dickens anthology you’ve had since Lit 101. And you can look up words in the dictionary without getting up to go find it. Plug in some ear buds and you can even listen to the voice of your choice read your book to you.

The iPad will dash the ambitions of many early e-readers and the field will inevitably narrow to a select few devices. Sony and other quality device manufacturers will accept iPad’s challenge and up their game. All for the better. Whatever makes the author’s work available in a high integrity transaction, on an enjoyable-to-use device, and to more people is good.

Opportunity is Calling

When in your lifetime did obstacles to getting your work published actually diminish in number? If you have a good book, some appealing cover art, a compelling description and the ambition to grow your audience, now would be a good time to get out there and share your work.

Related:

The Rise of Self Publishing (NYT  26 April 2010)

Which e-readers will the iPad crush? (CNET, 1 April 2010)

Ken Auletta offers a short course on the agency business model and the ever-evolving history of publishing.  This article also includes a situational analysis about the stakes for authors, publishers, bookstores, and device makers in the current competition between the printed page and the panel of pixels known as the e-Reader (Kindle, iPad, Nook and others coming online). The writer, journalist and media critic at The New Yorker has been a keen observer of media trends.  His Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way put the failing big three television network model in stark context for us in 1991. Now, he has once again captured a dynamic period in media history on the page.

His recent article, Publish or Perish Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? (The New Yorker, 30 April 2010), is similarly timely and incisive. A ‘must read’ for authors, agents, publishers and readers.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta

Bruce C. McKenna Goes to War

Recently, Bruce C. McKenna, co-executive producer and lead writer on the HBO television mini-series, “The Pacific,” paused for an interview about his latest project. He provided valuable insights into the challenges of adapting history to television, the importance of persistence in getting any project to the screen, and the role of the writer in the process from research and design of story architecture to defending the vision during production and presenting the final product to audiences. Look here for a link soon.

On the same day, Bruce presented the fourth episode of “The Pacific” in the Powell Family Cinema in the Center for Film Studies at Wesleyan University. His answers to questions display the historian’s deep knowledge of his material, the screenwriter’s respect for storycraft, and openness to sharing his seven year experience. Here are his remarks.

Except your own.

Writing to the market always falls short of the mark. Besides being a soul-numbing experience (because you end up essentially writing someone else’s inspiration), it cannot be researched sufficiently, drafted, rewritten, edited, rewritten again, shopped, edited, and published in time to capitalize on the market trend.  So, you have invested valuable time, energy, and effort in a project to which you are less than 100% committed, and about which you are less than passionate.

Start with what you want to read. Do what you think is right. Draft your concept.  Outline it, write a few chapters and share it with someone whose skill, perspective, judgment, interests, and discernment you respect.  Odds are that those pages will jump to life in the reader’s mind because you care, because you’re invested in something you want to say, in a tale you want to tell.

Trying to forecast the market, or read editors’ or agents’ minds wastes your time.  It also paralyzes your writer’s instrument.  The skills that you develop as a writer are important, high performance, precision tools.  Don’t use your scalpel as a screwdriver.  Don’t use your best sagacious voice to make someone else’s hero sound interesting. Respect yourself, your ideas, and your time.  Follow your muse, your heart, and craft the stories you think matter, the ideas, subjects, and characters that wake you at 3:00 am.

The 82nd Academy Awards, 7 March 2010

Cheers for the writers who created novels, non-fiction books, and memoirs that inspired filmmakers to bring their characters and stories to life on the silver screen.

Oscar nominees derived from a Novel:

“A Single Man” (1964) by Christopher Isherwood

“Crazy Heart” (1987) by Thomas Cobb

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” (1970) by Roald Dahl

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2005) by J. K. Rowling

“Precious” based on the novel “Push” (1996) by Sapphire

“The Last Station” (1990) by Jay Parini

“The Lovely Bones” (2002) by Alice Sebold

“Up In The Air” (2001) by Walter Kirn

Oscar nominees derived from a Book (non fiction):

“Coco Before Chanel” based on the book, “Chanel and Her World” (2005) by Edmonde Charles-Roux

“Invictus” based on the book, “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation” (2008) by John Carlin

“Julie and Julia” by Julie Powell, (“My Life in France” [posthumous] autobiography by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme)

“The Blind Side”  by Michael Lewis (“The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game”) (2008)

Oscar nominees derived from a Memoir:

“An Education” by Lynn Barber

——————-

Walter Kirn, author of “Up in the Air,” and Susan Orlean, whose book, “The Orchid Thief,” inspired the movie, “Adaptation,” discuss film adaptations on New York Times Video:

82nd Academy Awards, March 7, 2010

First prize in the 3rd Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Contest for previously unpublished works is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $15,000 cash advance. 

Almost any opportunity to get your work before interested readers, share a good story, gather some feedback, and connect with other writing professionals is good. ABNA is such an opportunity, yet its modest profile ensures that many writers will miss this chance to break through.  The contest’s low profile is surprising – ABNA’s sponsors are three of publishing’s leaders: Amazon, Penguin Group (USA), and Publishers Weekly. 

Here’s how the contest works: 

During the submission time window, ABNA accepts up 5,000 submissions in each of two categories: General Fiction and Young Adult. They specify ‘up to 5,000′ because ABNA closes submissions upon receiving 5,000 or after two weeks, whichever comes first. 

Initial Round: Amazon editors read 300-word pitches and select 1,000 from each category. 

Quarter-Finals: Expert Amazon reviewers read 3,000-5,000 word excerpts from entries and select 250 from each category. 

Semi-Finals: Publishers Weekly reviewers read and rate complete manuscripts, and select 50 from each category. 

Finals: Penguin editors evaluate the final 50 manuscripts in General Fiction, the final 50 in Young Adult, and select three finalists in each category. 

Amazon customer voting: Amazon customers have seven days to vote for their favorites in each category. 

Grand Prize Winners will be announced in Seattle on June 14, 2010.  Each will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance. 

For every writer but the winner, the benefit is feedback.  Novel writing can be a solitary enterprise and feedback about work-in-progress can become the difference between good and great writing. 

————— 

UPDATES

25 Feb 2010:  Initial Round – Pitches  

• General Fiction (1,000)
• Young Adult Fiction (1,000)

23 Mar 2010:   Quarter-Finals 

• General Fiction (250)
• Young Adult Fiction (250)

27 Apr 2010: Semi-Finals 

• General Fiction (50)
• Young Adult Fiction (50)

• General Fiction (3)
  • Jennifer Handford:  FORTUNE COOKIES
  • Patricia McArdle:  FARISHTA 
  • Johnny Shaw:  DOVE SEASON
•  Young Adult Fiction (3) 
  • Amy Ackley: SIGN LANGUAGE
  • Alex Airdale:  SERVICE OF THE CROWN
  • Alison Stewart:  DAYS LIKE THIS

————— 

2009 ABNA Winner: Bill Warrington's Last Chance by Jack King

2009 ABNA Winner:  Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by Jack King 

2008 ABNA Winner:  Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm 

A visit to the mystery/suspense and thriller aisles at Borders this afternoon inspired six observations:

1. Deceased authors are publishing new novels (i.e., Robert Ludlum, Margaret Truman)
2. The Cold War is over, the War on Terror has evolved into traditional war, and espionage and conspiracy are bigger than ever
3. Protagonists in thrillers are best when they are deeply, irredeemably flawed
4. Women are gaining market share in the pantheon of mystery, suspense and thriller authors (i.e., Lisa Unger, Lisa Scottoline, Kathryn Fox)
5. The Mystery/Suspense market is growing
6. Successful writers in these genres ‘burn down the house’ and create palpable peril

In these categories, my reading has yet to venture far beyond Silva, Ludlum, Anthony Hyde, Clancy, Forsythe, and Cruz Smith, so forgive me if my categorization of those other above-mentioned writers contains errors.  In this, I suspect I am like many of my fellow shoppers in the aisles, scanning titles, cover art, jacket copy and blurbs – drawn to personal favorites, interested in broadening my horizons, yet conflicted about the burden on my budget and the quality of my reading, reticent about dropping $7-$12 on an unproven author.  LeCarré is a personal favorite.  He set the standard long ago in the spy novel genre and continues to craft writing that seems transparent, the writer’s holy grail.

Larry went officially missing from the world on the second Monday of October, at ten minutes past eleven, when he failed to deliver his opening lecture of the new academic year.

- OUR GAME (1995)

There is an entire novel in that single opening line.

In mystery, Martin Cruz Smith raises my expectations, not only for quality writing, but also for my own work.

Blair lit an oil lamp hanging on the wall. Its wan illumination reached to the glory of the room, an oil painting of Christ in a carpenter’s shop.  Jesus appeared delicate and unaccustomed to hard work, and in Blair’s opinion His expression was overly abstracted for a man handling a saw.

- ROSE (1996)

But I digress.  If there is a single thread that unites the work of all of the above, it has to be the last observation.  These writers burn the character’s house down, usually early in the book, and often more than once.

Why write something if it will not change your life?

Too high a standard?  Not a chance.

Care deeply about your characters, the questions that affect them, the relationships, ideals, and treasure they gamble, and your reader will care.  Writing a book takes time, a year or more, sometimes much more.  At the end of that time when you turn around and look back at what you’ve been doing all of that time, you want to see your book in a window on Main Street, or your characters brought to life by actors on stage, or your screenplay moving people to laughter and tears in the cinema, right?

…if a story is important to you, it may be important to a lot of other people in the audience. And when you’re done writing the story, no matter what else happens, you’ve changed your life.

John Truby – The ANATOMY OF STORY (2007)

Comparing The Modern Library Board’s List of the Top 100 Novels 1900 – 1999 to the Readers’ List gives me some reasons for hope.  Looking at the top 10, for example:

Board’s List

1.  Ulysses, James Joyce

2.  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

4.  Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

5.  Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

6.  The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

7.  Catch-22, Joseph Heller

8.  Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler

9.  Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Reader’s List

1.  Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2.  The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

3.  Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

4.  The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

5.  To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

6.  1984, George Orwell

7.  Anthem, Ayn Rand

8. We The Living, Ayn Rand

9.  Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

10.  Fear, L. Ron Hubbard

This 1990′s poll continues to generate discussion about the most popular books vs. best literature of the 20th century.  The Modern Library’s talking points are just the beginning.  For example:

Is it possible to compare books as different as Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World? Are there any features that unite these three books? More widely, are there any literary features that unite the best books as a whole?

My interest here is less intellectual or academic.  What I see is the state of literary art in 1999, not just from writer’s and publishers’ perspectives, but from the reader’s perspective. What moved readers sufficiently that they were willing to take time to vote, and write, and talk about it?  Aside from the fact that we are wired to be social creatures, inclined to exchange ideas, count and make lists, what is it that makes these novels in particular list-worthy?

These measures of popular appeal and perceived importance can be a source of information. Of course, they also can be a time sink amounting to nothing more than another set of questionably useful information.  Still, writers appreciate the hunt, the mystery, pulling back the layers of the story, even when it’s their own.

So what can we learn from the Lists? If the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novel List provides any lessons that are useful to the novelist, these might include the following:

Screenwriters tend to write novels that appeal to everyday readers more than to cultural leaders.

It’s true. Ayn Rand (a.k.a. Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum), Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, holds four places in the Readers’ Top Ten List for her novels, Atlas Shrugged (1), The Fountainhead (2), Anthem (7) and We The Living (8). Ayn Rand was a screenwriter?!  Yes.  Her first literary success was the sale of her screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal in 1932. Rand’s aforementioned publications are novels, not screenplays; yet her initial success as a screenwriter suggests her creative instincts began in the language of showing rather than telling her stories.

By the way, the fact that L. Ron Hubbard comes second after Rand with three novels in the top ten almost made me toss this post-in-progress. But that’s another entry.

Everyday readers buy more novels than the cultural elite buy novels.

There are more readers than cultural leaders and scholar-readers, hence more demand and larger market. Unless you are writing scholarly theses, which is good too, focusing your energies on the significantly larger market of novel readers increases the odds that your agent will succeed in closing a deal with a publisher who, after all, is very much in a numbers game.  If he/she can’t sell it to at least 5,000 readers, it’s D.O.A.

The top-twenty most popular novels in both lists, Board’s and Readers’, are dense with screen adaptations.

What, if anything, does this tell us?  Consider all channels as you develop your concept.  Popular sentiment has the printed book on the mat and down for the count.  That may or may not be true; only time will tell.  What is clear is that the story, the tale, the CONTENT is king. Demand for story/content is greater than ever before.  So it makes sense to adapt your material to your reader’s/viewer’s/listener’s preferences.

♦

On another front, a glance at Publishers Marketplace offers even more to confuse the muse…

> Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Books Editor Geeta Sharman-Jensen Takes Buyout

Is the book review market so deflated that early retirement, unemployment or part-time teaching at the community college look like reasonable career choices?

> Teen Sues Amazon for Deleted Kindle Homework Notes

What can the U.S. justice system possibly make of this ‘dog ate my homework’ story? Intellectual property and privacy issues notwithstanding, I’m following this case for what it reveals about the game changing ramifications of epublishing, wireless downloading, and even cloud-based computing for writers, publishers, and service providers.

> Supermarkets Responsible for One in Five UK Book Sales

That’s bad news, right? No, that’s good news; supermarkets are one of the sectors least damaged by the economic downturn. Rising paperback sales there suggest a market opportunity for novels – procedurals, romances, mysteries, conspiracies, religion – novellas, and self-help.

♦

What’s your view on the physics of successful publication?  What is the role of technology … of publicity and exposure … of representation … of literary merit … of perception as a genre master … what differentiates the published from the unpublished … is it any different in its end result than the old model?