Roy Miller's Blog, page 309
January 2, 2017
In July, AAP Trade Dollars Shifted from Adult Hardcovers to New Potter
Still running behind, the AAP issued their monthly StatShot statistics for July 2016 — aka the month when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shipped into stores and went on sale (on July 31). We’ve known since three months ago from Scholastic’s public reporting that the new Potter release helped lift the…
The post In July, AAP Trade Dollars Shifted from Adult Hardcovers to New Potter appeared first on Art of Conversation.
It’s Time to Tighten Up Our Copyright Protections for Authors
Book sales are down. Whether you are an author, publisher, or bookseller, eroding book sales affect you. As members of the book community, we all have that in common.
The reasons given for falling book sales are usually the lack of a few blockbuster books, the competition from the many types of digital entertainment, and the huge amount of time people spend on social media. Rarely does the discussion mention digital piracy as a source of eroding book sales. Yet it’s happening on a large scale. It really is necessary, in 2016, to acknowledge blatant infringement of copyrights when discussing sliding book sales.
Just Google a current bestseller (or any book title). You will undoubtedly find free downloads, many that say “ePub and PDF for free.” This copyright infringement on the Internet affects sales figures of all books: traditionally published trade books, academic books, and self-published books; fiction and nonfiction; and, yes, even bestsellers.
Copyright protection is truly important to all—authors, publishers, and booksellers. Our founders knew the importance of copyright protection. In the United States, copyright protection started with the formation of the U.S. constitutional republic. Our Constitution, ratified in 1788, includes in article 1 (the article outlining the duties of Congress), section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To... promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
In the 21st century, however, Congress seems to forget that paragraph. Congress has consistently failed to pass an effective digital copyright law and cannot seem even to improve the current digital copyright law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998. The DMCA is woefully inadequate.
In addition, the DMCA holds the copyright holder, usually the author, responsible for monitoring copyright infringement. That means an author (or an author’s designated agent) holding a copyright must monitor the vast Internet for copyright infringements, and must file take-down notices to those websites that infringe on the author’s copyright.
As authors have found, when one posting of a free download of a book is taken down, often another posting quickly appears. The DMCA fails to provide adequate protection or to enact realistic procedures for protecting copyrights in the digital age.
Numerous writers’ organizations, such as the American Society of Journalists, the Authors Guild, and the National Writers Union, have addressed the issues of copyright and digital piracy for over a decade. The Authors Guild, in its 2015 letter to the congressional judiciary committee urging stronger copyright laws, quotes the Association of American Publishers as acknowledging, “The publishing industry as a whole loses $80 to $100 million to piracy annually.” Digital piracy erodes book sales and costs authors, publishers and booksellers money—and it must be stopped.
Why should people even visit bookstores when it’s so easy to download books for free on the Internet? Many people, especially those born in the digital age, think first about free downloads (which aren’t free in terms of their cost to the industry) when they want books. They do not think first of purchasing books. We have to change that mind-set if we want the book to endure. Together, authors, publishers, and booksellers could create an effective media campaign to raise awareness of copyright law and digital piracy. We could thereby educate the public, particularly the younger generations, and change their mind-set regarding free downloads.
United, authors, publishers, and booksellers could also convince members of Congress of the ineffectiveness of the DMCA. At first glance, it seems as though it would be a David-vs.-Goliath battle, given the size, wealth, and influence in Congress of the major players of the digital-communications industry. But there is great strength in numbers. There are far more authors, publishers, and booksellers than major players in digital communications. Together, our very large book community can create an effective public relations campaign that educates people about copyright law and changes the public’s free-download mind-set. United we can persistently lobby Congress to establish a stronger and more effective digital copyright law.
Digital piracy of books will not stop unless the community of authors, publishers, and booksellers takes the initiative and unites. We must take concerted action now.
Linda Spencer’s most recent book, Writing Well in the 21st Century: The Five Essentials, is published by Rowman & Littlefield. She lives in Massachusetts.
A version of this article appeared in the 11/07/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Digital Piracy
The post It’s Time to Tighten Up Our Copyright Protections for Authors appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Writing for blogs versus writing online articles
Blogs and online features are standard elements in the digital presence of most news sources and magazines.
That’s good news for today’s freelancers, many of whom routinely reap work from such outlets. Online readers rely on both of these digital siblings for daily news and entertainment.
But for the writer, the terms aren’t interchangeable, and understanding what’s expected with each is key to landing more assignments.
When Mary Quigley originally launched her personal blog, mothering21.com, she was looking for an opportunity to flex her writing skills on a topic she was passionate about – mothering adult children.
After years of carefully building a readership and a establishing a trusted online presence, she received an offer to contribute regularly to AARP’s blog.
Quigley, a professor at the Carter Institute of Journalism at New York University, says that cultivating a personal blog on a niche topic gives writers the opportunity for editors to see their voice and authority in the subject matter, something important to a blog writer.
“The editor assumes you know something about the topic, and they want you to bring your voice and expertise to the table,” Quigley describes.
“Writing style is friendly, conversational. But it’s also informed, you’re sharing your educational take on a subject.”
Features, in contrast, don’t typically embrace the voice of the writer; instead, writers should demonstrate their ability to follow the age-old advice given to many aspiring journalists.
“Adapt the voice of the magazine,” advices Aileen E. Gallagher, assistant professor of magazine journalism at Syracuse University.
“Read similar features, and follow that. The writing style is largely dependent upon the publication.”
In blogs’ infancy, it wasn’t uncommon for a post to reflect a solo voice: a writer’s reflections, opinion, or unique musings.
But as blogs rose to assume a prominent place in the digital landscape, success followed the meatier blogs that delivered substance to their readers.
“A blog for a client always has original interviews and/or research, such as a recent study or event that makes the piece timely,” says journalist and writing coach Rebecca Weber, of Cape Town, South Africa.
Links have been – and still are – almost expected in a blog post. They’re a useful way to maintain a tight focus, while still giving the reader some additional information.
“You might cite a survey or a study with a link,” adds Quigley.
Traditionally, a feature article is driven by firsthand research, and this remains true regardless if it’s for a print or online medium. But linking to other reputable sources has also become a common practice in online features.
“Be careful not to aggregate data, but do use outside links and research to enhance your own reporting,” says Gallagher.
“Data, transcripts, or another document can enhance the value of your piece, but you should choose wisely.”
She also cautions that, particularly with features that run long, the nature of the link can work against the writer: “You don’t want to lose your readers before they reach the end of the article.”
Basing length on a fixed word count is generally a concept of print journalism and is helpful for planning out physical pages.
In the digital space, online experts agree that counting words takes a backseat to delivering focused writing: keeping your reader’s attention, delivering what’s promised, and inspiring return visitors. This holds true to both blog post or feature.
Blog posts, which debuted as short and sweet, have seen their length inflate over the years, with the wordier posts becoming more standard.
“Some blogs are still aiming for a 500-word sweet spot: one interview, maybe a few bullet points, in and out. Other blogs allow for more complexity and are more like traditional articles,” shares Weber.
A study published by Medium suggests that length of a blog post is best measured in reading time, targeting seven minutes as ideal.
With the popularity of tablets and smartphones, online features have embraced the green light to run longer; articles running upwards of 3000-4000 words are common.
But as with a blog, it’s not the length but the value that both readers and editors applaud.
“It’s not always true that longer is better. It is hard to write a really long feature that’s compelling enough to get the reader to stick with it,” says Gallagher.
“I would rather read a tight, well-structured article of 1500 than a meandering, flabby 4000-word piece.”
The structure of a blog posts tends to be flexible; writers might organize their content as a list, a Q&A from an interview, a step-by-step how-to, traditional prose, or a photo-heavy layout.
When done correctly, this adds to the blog’s appeal; readers appreciate a fresh approach with return visits or the regularity of certain structures delivered on set days of the week.
On the other hand, a feature article sticks with tradition: roughly, beginning with a catchy headline and a focused, promising introduction, followed by body text to tell the story and wrapped up with a neat conclusion.
“The writing style of a reported feature hasn’t changed at all (since moving online),” says Gallagher. “What has changed is that an online feature may include other forms of storytelling – such as multimedia, an infographic, or video.”
Gallagher adds that writers should use this to their advantage and include interactive suggestions to make their pitch stand out: “For example, suggesting something interactive in place of the traditional sidebar.”
Years ago, no one may have predicted the stronghold of blogs in the online world, or the regularity with which a reader fires up their tablet to pour over the news. But to today’s freelancer, the popularity of both of these forms of journalism is a welcome outlet, and understanding the nuances and commonalities between the two can be key to success.
Debbie Swanson is a freelance writer based north of Boston, Massachusetts.
You might also like…
Sign up for our newsletter to receive FREE articles, publishing tips, writing advice, and more delivered to your inbox once a week.
Download our free guide to finding a literary agent , with the contact information and submission preferences for more than 80 agencies.
The post Writing for blogs versus writing online articles appeared first on Art of Conversation.
January 1, 2017
This Week’s Bestsellers: January 2, 2017
Local Favorites
As the holiday shopping season drew to a close, Jeff Kinney’s Double Down was the #1 book in the country. But breaking things down by region, the newest Wimpy Kid installment only claimed the top spot in the Pacific states. The rest of the regions were split among other books by big-name authors, including the Boss, whose autobiography saw a 43% Christmas spike.
This Week’s #1 Book by Region
Northeast, Middle Atlantic
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
East North Central, Mountain
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (screenplay) by J.K. Rowling
West North Central. South Atlantic, South Central
Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
Pacific
Double Down (Wimpy Kid #11) by Jeff Kinney
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
Welcome Back
The last week of holiday shopping was extra good to a handful of books, returning them to our lists after a prolonged absence.
Attention, Last-Minute Shoppers
If adult coloring books are no longer the new hotness, they may be taking on a more mature role: gift-season perennial. Seven coloring books made our trade paper list in the run-up to the holidays, including these five, which saw a surge in print unit sales compared with the week before.
Fantastic Beasts: Magical Creatures Coloring Book
up 79%
Magical Jungle by Johanna Basford
up 63%
Imagimorphia by Kerby Rosanes
up 61%
Curious Creatures by Millie Marotta
up 52%
The Dr. Seuss Coloring Book
up 37%
Top 10 Overall
Rank
Title
Author
Imprint
Units
1
Double Down (Wimpy Kid #11)
Jeff Kinney
Amulet
130,997
2
Killing the Rising Sun
O’Reilly/Dugard
Holt
128,829
3
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (screenplay)
J.K. Rowling
Scholastic/Levine
124,666
4
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
J.K. Rowling et al.
Scholastic/Levine
116,850
5
The Whistler
John Grisham
Doubleday
99,737
6
The Magnolia Story
Gaines/Gaines
W
96,438
7
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen
Simon & Schuster
72,572
8
Jesus Always
Sarah Young
Thomas Nelson
68,915
9
Settle for More
Megyn Kelly
Harper
61,430
10
Hillbilly Elegy
J.D. Vance
Harper
61,191
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.
A version of this article appeared in the 01/02/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: PW Bestsellers
The post This Week’s Bestsellers: January 2, 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Weekly Round-up: Looking Ahead | WritersDigest.com
Every week our editors publish somewhere between 10 and 15 blog posts—but it can be hard to keep up amidst the busyness of everyday life. To make sure you never miss another post, we’ve created a new weekly round-up series. Each Saturday, find the previous week’s posts all in one place.
Kickstart Your 2017
Get ready to start 2017 on the “write” foot. Make some Poetry Resolutions for 2017 (or use these examples to inspire non-poetry writing resolutions).
Next, prepare your mindset for two resolutions at once with 4 Lessons Running Can Teach You About Writing.
Finally, refresh your approach to literary agents with this three-part series:
Opportunities
This week, our new literary agent alert is for Rick Pascocello of Glass Literary. Rick is interested in working with nonfiction authors who bring a unique perspective to memoir, biography, business, history, narrative nonfiction, sports, popular culture, social commentary, and other thought-provoking ideas, as well as mainstream and literary fiction writers whose voices ring true on every page.
If you’re looking for an agent, make sure to enter our 30th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest. This time, the contest is focused on middle grade fiction.
Poetic Asides
For the last Wednesday Poetry Prompt of 2017, write a poem with the title “An Unsuitable (blank) for (blank),” replacing each blank with a word or phrase. Then try out the roundelay poem.
Did you try all of 2016’s poetic forms? If not, check out the 2016 List of Poetic Forms.
Looking Back to Look Forward
This time of year, some might adopt the mantra “out with the old, in with the new,” but we think there’s a lot to learn from the past. In 6 Tips for Reading Like a Writer, find out how to learn through re-reading a piece of writing that you already love. After that, write like you’re from the 1920s-1950s by embracing short fiction to build a lasting readership.
After looking back, look inward and be emotionally honest to improve your writing. Read about approaching your writing with the right attitude in 2017 in Collaborating with your Subconscious.
What better way to start a new year than by revisiting a childhood classic? Check out Behind the Scenes of Platforms of Yore: Not Every Cat Wants to Be The Cat in the Hat as a preview to our February 2017 issue.
You might also like:
The post Weekly Round-up: Looking Ahead | WritersDigest.com appeared first on Art of Conversation.
The Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years
The end of December is a time when we are bombarded with end-of-year lists—so much so that they start to blur together. But what about the books that stay with us for years? In an effort to come up with a more enduring, definitive list, I reached out to some of my favorite contemporary writers and asked them to name the most important books published over the last two decades. To my surprise, there wasn’t a lot of overlap in their respective choices: only 14 titles were chosen by more than one author. The top three titles are Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, The Known World by Edward P. Jones, and fittingly (as we hurtle toward a Trumpian apocalypse?), The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Though no books by women made it into the top three, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, the Neopolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis each received two votes.
The end to this year has left many of us in a state of shock and despair, but I took comfort in Toni Morrison’s words in The Nation: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
I’d add one other thing to that list: we read.
Article continues after advertisement
CONTRIBUTORS
Ann Patchett · Azar Nafisi · Ben Fountain · Colson Whitehead · Colum McCann · Curtis Sittenfeld · Eileen Myles · Geoff Dyer · Jane Smiley · Jesmyn Ward · Jess Walter · Jo Ann Beard · Jonathan Franzen · Jonathan Lethem · Kaitlyn Greenidge · Lauren Groff · Leslie Jamison · Maggie Nelson · Paul Harding · Peter Straub · Patti Smith · Porochista Khakpour · Rebecca Solnit · Rick Moody · Roxane Gay · Sarah Waters · Stewart O’Nan · Ruth Ozeki · Victor LaValle.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño (2)
A Big Enough Lie by Eric Bennett
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Against Identity by Leon Wieseltier
All Souls’ Rising, Master of the Crossroads, The Stone That the Builder Refused by Madison Smartt Bell
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2)
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (2)
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
Beneath the Roses by Gregory Crewdson
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Building Stories by Chris Ware
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2)
Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
Conference of the Birds by Peter Sis
Counternarratives by John Keene
Debt: The First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber
Decreation by Anne Carson
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Drown by Junot Díaz
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben
Falling Out of Time by David Grossman
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2)
Global Crisis by Geoffrey Parker
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Hateship, Courtship, Loveship, Friendship, Marriage by Alice Munro
Head Off and Split by Nikki Finney
How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (2)
Inferno by Eileen Myles
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (3)
Intoxicated By My Illness by Anatole Broyard
Jane by Maggie Nelson
Lovely Green Eyes by Arnost Lustig
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Mind of an Outlaw by Norman Mailer
My Perfect Life by Lynda Barry
My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2)
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Neopolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante (2)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
NW by Zadie Smith
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
One Big Self by CD Wright
Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings by Subcomandante Marcos
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Paradise by Toni Morrison
Pastoralia by George Saunders (2)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Power Politics by Arundhati Roy
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
Proxy by R. Erica Doyle
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Reason In A Dark Time by Dale Jamieson
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Selected Poems by Eileen Myles
Selected Stories by Alice Munro
Solitude of Self by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (reprinted in 2001)
Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds
Steal Away by C.D. Wright
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Tenth of December by George Saunders
Testo Junkie by Beatriz Preciado
The Activist by Renee Gladman
The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
The Aegypt Quartet by John Crowley
The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron
The Boat by Nam Le
The Book of Frank by CAConrad
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2)
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
The Freddie Stories by Lynda Barry
The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Great Wave by David Hackett Fischer
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (3)
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth
The Moon Before Morning by W.S. Merwin
The Mooring of Starting Out by John Ashbery
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2)
The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (3)
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
To The Wedding by John Berger
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Underworld by Don DeLillo (2)
Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People by Jonathan
Schell
Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
War by Sebastian Junger
We Others by Steven Millhauser
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
White Girls by Hilton Als
Why the West Rules, For Now by Ian Morris
Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A total of 128 books were mentioned by contributors; 56 of those were written by women; and 35 by writers of color.
Feature image: Adieu, by Guy Laramee.
The post The Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years appeared first on Art of Conversation.
PRH UK Returns to Negotiate New Collective Agreement
After a tumultuous week of stories that do not fully align, Penguin Random House UK and the two unions representing some of their employees are talking again, and reporting progress towards a new agreement. On Wednesday, PRH UK and the unions Unite and the National Union of Journalists issued a…
The post PRH UK Returns to Negotiate New Collective Agreement appeared first on Art of Conversation.
How to Really Scare People With Fiction
It’s tough to scare people—to make the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end, to make them feel deeply and irreversibly alone, to make them genuinely frightened. Of course, you could always go for shock tactics: blood or guts or Saw-esque horror, or the “Oh no, there’s a monster behind you!” jump scare. But those are too easy. The McDonald’s of horror, all empty calories, with nothing to stick to the audience’s ribs. These tactics don’t work because they’re expected and banal, laying everything out on the table. To really scare someone, you have to dig deeper.
When my coproducer Daniel Powell and I dreamed up Archive 81, a fiction podcast in which a lone archivist struggles to make sense of a trove of disturbing audio tapes, we wanted to really scare people. We were looking for deep horror. We wanted to convey the disquieting loneliness of cities, touch on the terrifying urban isolation, and explore the frightening possibilities of audio. We learned how to do all this by reading weird fiction.
Weird fiction is a type of horror that examines the thin barrier between reality and the fantastical. It’s dreamlike, uncanny, and concerned with, as the fantasy writer Jeff Vandermeer says, “the spaces between.” (It’s described in far greater detail in The Weird, a wonderful door stopper of a collection edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer.) I’ve been a fan of writers like Kelly Link, Laird Barron, Franz Kafka, Shirley Jackson, and Samuel R. Delaney for a while now, but it was as I was writing Archive 81 that I really dove into figuring out why these stories terrified me so much.
After reading and rereading stories such as Link’s “The Hortlak” and novels such as Kafka’s The Castle, I think I figured it out. Weird fiction transports you to a world where the rules that you thought you knew just don’t apply, and where everything is hazy, as though you can’t quite put a finger on the essence of the world you’re in. It draws forth something we’ve all felt—the first night in a new bed, the oppressive sameness of roadside diners, the gnawing sense that you can never truly understand even the people closest to you—and heightens that feeling, teasing it out and using it to explore themes of alienation and distance.
Writers like Vandermeer and Jackson don’t just call forth this feeling by describing the unsettling worlds they create. They also do it through a lack of description—by not clearly explaining the rules of the fictional universe, by not describing the monster or the monstrous men in great detail. They give a few key specifics, then leave the reader to fill in the rest. They shine a flashlight on one corner of the mind-shattering temple, on one tentacled eye, on one always-screaming mouth, and leave the rest in shadow.
That’s what Powell and I took from weird fiction as we were making our audio drama. The lesson we learned about making a terrifying sound production was to let the listeners terrify themselves.
As I wrote the scripts, I thought about ways to leave certain details out. For example, the protagonist encounters a tape of a museum tour, in which the exhibits are all strange, unsettling objects. The tape is a dead end, the museum’s history is never explained, but the information on the tape serves to let listeners fill in their own details of the world.
We also took this lesson to heart in our sound design. If there are monsters approaching our protagonist, we hint at their appearance with the sound of dripping flesh, rather than force our characters to describe them in every detail.
What we learned from weird fiction is that the audience—readers or listeners—will fill in the blanks with their own fears. The stuff readers—or listeners—can conjure up on their own will be far more frightening than anything an author can come up with. Show a tooth, unleash the steady beat of a heart under the floorboards, or play an unearthly opera that shatters the minds of those who hear it. Be specific, but only illuminate part of what’s going on. That’s what really terrifies people.
Scaring people is difficult. You have to strike a balance between suggesting something and spelling it out. It’s tough not to resort to gore or jump scares. It’s tough to get people out of their comfort zones. But when you do it right, what happens next is only limited by the audience’s imagination.
Marc Sollinger is the cocreator of the podcasts Archive 81 and The Deep Vault.
A version of this article appeared in the 11/14/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Multimedia Fear
The post How to Really Scare People With Fiction appeared first on Art of Conversation.
What to do when you meet an editor
Editors can sometimes remain hidden behind the fortress walls of big publishing companies, with no names or contact information to be cyber-sleuthed. In most cases, that is simply to cut down on the number of unsolicited submissions that accumulate in the infamous slush piles on an editorial assistant’s desk.
But here’s a secret: Editors actually want to talk to writers. And writing conferences are one of the top places where that happens.
“I love meeting directly with authors and hearing about what they’re working on,” says Anna Michels, associate editor at Sourcebooks and Sourcebooks Landmark.
“As editors tend to spend most of their time behind computer screens, it’s always refreshing to get out and meet other people who love books as much as I do.”
Still, the chance to get face time with an editor is a big deal. Attending a conference can get you within eyeshot, whether the editor is participating in a panel discussion, taking appointments for one-on-one consulting sessions or mingling at a social event.
Mallory Kass, senior editor at Scholastic, does not accept unsolicited submissions, so attending a conference means meeting people she wouldn’t meet otherwise.
“To go to these conferences and talk to people who are so clearly overflowing with passion for reading and writing and storytelling is invigorating,” she says. “It makes me proud to be able to launch careers, and it makes me excited to do what I do.”
To best take advantage of the editors attending a conference, research the genres that they cover and the types of work they are seeking. Even if you can’t do much sleuthing on the web, the conference may have editor bios to familiarize you with their backgrounds. If you know an editor is not interested in nonfiction, for example, concentrate on spending time talking with someone else about a memoir.
While Michels welcomes conference attendees to approach her outside of workshops and sessions, she does prefer that writers who make an appointment with her during a conference wait until that time to discuss their book.
“That’s when I’ll have my notebook with me and can jot down notes to look back on later,” she says, and is quick to add, “I love talking about books and publishing, and even have a few nonindustry conversation topics I can run with if you’re burned out on books and just looking for someone to shoot the breeze with.”
Provided Kass isn’t rushing off to a panel or turning in for the night, she is ready and willing to talk to writers. She says, “I think I’m there for them. I want to connect with as many people as possible, and I want to be helpful.”
To capitalize on an in-person encounter with an editor, work on an elevator pitch, two or three sentences that succinctly sum up your project.
The chance to grab an editor’s interest could be fleeting, so Michels says, “Give me that teaser up front, and then sit back and let me dig for more.”
When it comes to scoping out a potential new author, both Kass and Michels say that face-to-face meetings make a big difference.
“It does help to have the context and to feel a connection to authors and get a sense of how they might work,” says Kass. “But it comes down to what’s on the page. I’ll never acquire something just because I liked a person.”
That said, before the self-proclaimed hands-on editor acquires a manuscript, Kass wants to talk to the writer to match her assessments with a writer’s goals, to understand his or her vision for the book so she can deliver the tools needed for revision.
“I’m looking to make sure that we speak the same language in terms of craft and storytelling,” she says, “and that they’re as excited to revise as they were to draft.”
Most editors emphasize the importance of knowing comparable titles, or “comps”: previously published books in the same category as yours that could appeal to the same readers.
Editors use comps as a gauge of whether a book could have success and will use the titles as leverage when meeting with the publishing team to decide which books to buy.
“I’m always disappointed,” Michels says, “when it’s clear authors haven’t considered their comps or say that there aren’t any comps at all for their book.” So be prepared – especially at the conference.
Meeting editors and agents is only one of potentially many benefits of attending a writing conference.
“Whenever writers at conferences ask me what they should be doing to increase their chances of getting published,” Michels says, “I tell them that they’re already doing some of the most important things – educating themselves about the craft of writing and the industry, and making connections that could turn out to be valuable down the road.”
Meredith Quinn is an editor and a graduate of New York University.
You might also like…
Sign up for our newsletter to receive FREE articles, publishing tips, writing advice, and more delivered to your inbox once a week.
Download our free guide to finding a literary agent , with the contact information and submission preferences for more than 80 agencies.
The post What to do when you meet an editor appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Monthly StatShot, July 2016
The release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child helped lift sales in the children’s/YA category 31.1% in July over the same month in 2015, according to figures released by the Association of American Publishers as part of its StatShot program. Cursed Child gave a particular spark to the segment’s hardcover format, where sales soared 95.2%. The other formats in the children’s/YA category all declined in the month. Sales in the adult book segment fell 5.4% in July. The biggest decline came in hardcover, with sales falling 22.2%. Last July, Go Set a Watchman was a huge hit in hardcover. The brightest spot for the adult segment was digital audio once again, with sales up 23.2%. E-book sales fell again, dropping 12.7%. For the entire publishing industry, sales fell 17.9% in July compared to the previous year. Sales figures are based on reports from 1,208 publishers.
Category
Change July
Change YTD
Adult Hard
-22.2%
-7.4%
Adult Paper
9.1%
9.0%
Mass Market
11.4%
-0.8%
Physical Audio
-6.6%
-11.7%
Audio Download
23.2%
31.0%
Adult E-book
-12.7%
-17.3%
Children’s/YA
31.1%
6.3%
Religious Presses
-5.5%
8.3%
Professional
-21.4%
-19.4%
K–12 Materials
-20.2%
-8.9%
Higher Ed.
-27.1%
-18.1%
University Presses
-11.7%
-3.9%
(Comparisons of $ sales against same periods in 2015)
A version of this article appeared in the 01/02/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Monthly StatShot, July
The post Monthly StatShot, July 2016 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
