Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "publishing"

Sorry. There isn't enough time in a day to tell you that. But what I find as I speak to wanna-be writers is a total misunderstanding of the "life" of an author. People can accept that they have to work hard initially to create that wonderful, sellable piece of writing. Some can even accept that it won't be perfect the first time they come to "The End", and they'll have to do some editing. But the Jessica Fletcher mystique lives on, the idea that once a book is accepted, the work is done and the author's only job is to attend parties and sip champagne.



Recently a listener stopped me mid-sentence to ask, "But aren't there people who put your books in stores for you?" The question revealed her belief that once a book "makes it", i.e. gets published, the author's work is done. The grinds at the publisher will make the calls, set up signings, track figures, and schlepp books. Reality dictates that the author will do a large share of that, at least if she wants to publish more books.



Another question I got that same night was when I mentioned the time I spend formatting a MS for the distinct and diverse demands of different publishers. Again the question: "Don't they have people who fix all that?" Answer: Yeah, they do. Me. Publishers can't afford to pay editors to "fix" things for an author that she can fix herself. They give you guidelines; you format.



What it boils down to is a misunderstanding of the (admittedly lower level) author's duties. I am the one who cares if my books succeed. I am the one my publishers expect to see that it does. Yes, they'll do what they can to help, but I am not their job. It really is up to me to "be" the author now that I are one.

One of the scary things about being published is that one might (probably will) get something wrong. There it is, for all the world to see, and it can't be fixed.

Something equally vexing to me is that people THINK you've got something wrong. One can't hunt them all down and argue the point, but--well, this one would like to.

It has been pointed out to me, twice now, that I used the word "dollar" in HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER. Yeah, I did, in the idiom "squeeze the last dollar" out of something. It does sound anachronistic, and I probably would not have used it outside the idiom. Still, my unabridged Webster's Dictionary tells me that the word "dollar" was in use in the 1540s as a synonym for a five-shilling coin more often referred to as a crown.

The same two readers took issue with my reference to potatoes, arguing that they came to Europe later in history. Again, sources I find say that the Spanish brought the potato to Europe in 1536. I don't think it's unrealistic to say that ten years later, those useful little tubers might have made their way to a table or two in England.

I did get the rhododenrons wrong. A reader informed me that those flowers did not exist until the 1600s, and he is correct. Having visited England in summer, it seemed to me that they were elementals, existing since time immemorial, but then, I never had a botany class in my life.

I suppose I must accept that I can make mistakes, and that people will be critical, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I suppose for some there is an urge to tell the author how wrong she is. I once saw an author almost attacked on an elevator by a man who went far past the bounds of decency to show how clever he was in finding mistakes in the author's work.

My guess is that authors in such situations have two reactions. The first is a defensive thought. "We're novelists, not scientists. We try, but we never said our purpose was anything but a good story." Second might be what one would like to say to the self-appointed critic: "When you write your book, have it edited multiple times, and get it published, send me a copy. I'll see what I can find to point out to you."

Since taking up this writing thing, I am asked about once a year to judge contests. I'm in that process now, and it causes me to wonder, "Who in the world published these people?"
We keep hearing about the gazillions of submissions agents and publishers receive each week, and I don't doubt that. The computer has made it easy to put down a collection of words and call it a novel. But oh. my. goodness. I can't have any sympathy for professionals who can't separate the chaff I'm being forced to read from anything even close to wheat. And yet, somebody published that chaff.
Ridiculous plots. Characters so stereotypical as to be funny, but not meant to be. Gratuitous scenes of sex and violence so childish I could almost hear the author say to him/herself, "Now what else can I do to this character to stretch out the book?" Bad guys so over the top that they should have Snidely Whiplash mustaches they can stroke while they deliver their lines.
If the competition for publishing space is so fierce, then why is so much bad writing being published?

Creating a career in writing is a little like walking through a thick, dark forest at one a.m. on a cloudy night. Your feet find the right path for a while sometimes, but you bounce into tree trunks, get scraped by branches, trip over rocks, and often end up back where you started because you didn't know where you were going.

Let's examine my allegory. Tree trunks might symbolize rejections, that hard thump we get when someone with power over our future says, "Not for us." We reel backward a few steps. We get angry. "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" we shriek. "Is it bad? Is it not marketable? Is it too much like (or unlike) the latest bestseller?" Then the pain sets in. Ow! That hurt. The tree trunk is unmarred, unreactive.

Then there are the branches that reach out into the path. They don't stop us, but we have to either duck them, go around them, or let them scrape off some hide as we pass. Nasty comments from readers and reviewers. Agents who are too busy to answer our emails or help us plan our careers. Friends who ask why our books aren't on the bestseller lists and why Oprah has never let our names cross her lips.

Rocks that rise up from below and wait to trip us are the things that slow us down: should we write the next chapter or answer those emails that promise better promotion? Being asked to judge a writing contest contributes to a writer's renown, but is the time it's going to take worth losing all those hours? And it's only lunch with a friend! What can a few hours off hurt?

And then there's the aimless wandering. We think we know where we need to go, but so often the paths split, circle back on themselves, or dead end. We spend so much time going the wrong way, and it simply can't be avoided because it's so darned dark out here!

Some of us make it. We don't know how, really, but persistence is a big part of it. One eye is watering from that branch that slapped us in the face, and it took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we reach our goal.

And what do we do? We plunge back into the woods, in the dark, unsure how far ahead that next stopping place is. After all, it's only four a.m. now. There's bound to be a sunrise somewhere up ahead.

We all whine about stress, and we certainly have enough of it. It contributes to all sorts of health conditions, which is enough to add stress to the stress you already have: What if all this worrying about stress is causing too much stress?
I think we should step back every once in a while and consider that life is all about stress. Primitive humans must have had stress, because they did not know when the next natural disaster would hit or how such things occurred. They must have worried about being unprepared, which led to all that sacrificing firstborn sons and whatever. Stressful to give up a child, but appeasing the gods seemed like the best stress reliever at the time. We, on the other hand, are warned about most natural disasters well in advance, so we can start worrying early on and avoid the last minute rush.
People in history certainly had stress. The fact that your job performance could get you disemboweled has to lend a certain edge to the morning commute as you ride a donkey to the local castle.
Stress occurs on two levels. First is the stress of having work to accomplish. Knowing you have a deadline, knowing there are multiple steps to master, knowing there will be obstacles. A healthy, functioning person can handle that type of stress. It might make him tired or cranky or frustrated, but it doesn't send him to a rubber room.
It is the things that we cannot change that stress us most. Tasks we don't feel capable of mastering, forces we cannot control, things we cannot fix.
For me, writing and publishing create good stress. I like the challenge, even when it is really challenging. Setbacks might make me sad or mad, but they don't diminish my overall determination. That's good stress, and it actually counters some of the other stresses life throws at a person. Weird, but there it is.

Submissions are tough. Oh, I remember back in the beginning, when I really, really thought that agents were out there just waiting for me to write something they could hurry to a publisher and make into a bestseller.
Those days did not last.
Now I have to be excited about a project to garner any sort of enthusiasm for submissions. Not that I don't believe in my work. I do. But I have lost the belief that just because it's good, it will sell. I don't know what the formula is (no one does), but I do understand that it's a screwy business. An agent can like a MS but know she can't sell it. An editor can appreciate good writing but know he can't make a case for the book to his marketing department. And with changes coming swift and sure in the business, no one even knows if a given company will be publishing within six months. The roadblocks between reader and writer are high...and even if you get past all of them, the reader may not buy the book ("So many choices!") or may not like it ("It isn't funny like Evanovitch!").
So today is submission day. Again. It's not as much fun as it used to be, but at least I know more than I used to. To use a simile apt for mystery, it's like shooting a pistol as opposed to a shotgun. The shotgun sends out more ammo but tends to have less power. The pistol, aimed correctly, travels to the target and makes its mark.

I planned to submit an older book to a publisher this week. It was one that several publishers showed interest in just before the Big Drop when everyone stopped buying everything.
Anyway, I thought I'd read through it and clear it up: move the dates up a year, freshen the clothing styles, whatever.
Ha!
I can't just skim through. I have to read, and then I find things that could be said better, things that should be clarified, things that need paring down. In other words, I'm in the middle of a full edit.
And it's going to take a while.

I just finished Martha Grimes' FOUL MATTER, a send-up of the publishing industry that I found thought-provoking. She touched on so many aspects of writing and publishing that I have felt or observed, things like author fantasies (I could write a great novel if I had someplace to go and write uninterrupted), author insecurities (What if I can't finish this mess? What if I'm really not any good at all?), and the outrageousness of publishing (the fact that talent is way down the list of why an author gets published, the manipulation of sales figures and contract wording, and the lack of serious editing, especially for authors who have already "made it").
Aside from enjoying the book immensely, I found that some things I've been subconsciously aware of were confirmed, at least for me. Talent is subjective. We don't know if we have it, nor do our editors, agents, and readers. Writing is an art, and people only know what they like. There are those who try to speak for the world, hence Pulitzer Prizes and the New York Times Bestseller List. But no one can define talent outside his or her own opinion. To me, if you put William Kent Kruger's prose alongside John Grisham's, there is no comparison, and they both tell a good story. But which of them is making money hand over fist?
Perhaps time is the best judge of writing talent, although there are those who hate the classics and claim Ernest Hemingway bores them. For genre fiction, time is an enemy in most cases. Reading Agatha Christie today requires a suspension of modernity; one has to step back in time mentally and appreciate what she was doing at the time. I doubt she would be widely published today.
So what's a writer to do? I guess we have to assume that we can write, that what we do will be appreciated by somebody. Maybe we'll hit the scene at just the right moment and make a splash. Maybe we'll be mildly successful and have a string of respectable successes. Maybe we won't be recognized at all, even though we know in our hearts that we're better than that other guy. In that case, we have to hope that we're ahead of our time and will be wildly popular in the future. Maybe Steig Larsen is watching from some shadowy afterlife and chuckling into his beard.

Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling—
Look out how you use proud words.
—Carl Sandburg, American poet and essayist, Primer Lesson, 1922

The same can be said for self-publishing.
I went to a book-selling event last week, and of seven authors in attendance, two were traditionally published. As we chatted, all five of the self-pubbed authors admitted to me privately there were mistakes in their books they wish could be fixed.
That is what's wrong with self-publishing.
To be fair, it can be done and done well. But in too many cases, self-publishing equates to impatience, and we all know the adage about haste making waste.
Sometimes it's just plain ignorance, like the author who kept informing prospective customers that her book was a "fiction novel". Sometimes it's frustration, like the man who tried for seven years to get the attention of The Machine and could not. Often it's lack of study of the industry, a lack of awareness of consequences. And sometimes--perhaps more so of late when e-publishing has begun to take off--it's a conscious decision. The writer understands that she will be doing her own promotion; she gets help with editing and formatting; she carves out her niche and works to make it as attractive and visible as possible. She keeps in mind that if people read a book with her name on it that is badly produced, full of errors and weak elements, they are unlikely to repeat the experience.
So take Sandburg's warning to heart. Like proud words, self-published books cannot be taken back once they are out there. Writers should send them out only under carefully considered circumstances. Every collection of words you offer the world should be words that make you proud.

I belong to several on-line chat groups for authors (probably too many). The gist of what's going on is that authors are catching on to the e-book revolution, some reluctantly, some anxiously, some willingly. It's scary, because a lot of things change with e-books.
For example: you don't need an agent to publish an e-book. You don't even need a publisher, if you're willing to do some homework. There isn't that assurance that some of us need that we've got professionals behind us. Then again, some authors have felt for some time that there really isn't an Oz behind the curtain.
You do still need an editor, but there's an interesting change there, too. When an author hires an editor, she maintains more control over the book. An employee, the hired editor, SUGGESTS changes, where a publishing-house editor tends to DEMAND them. One I had a few years back kept prefacing his proposed changes with "I want..." I began thinking, "Whose book is this? It's my name on the cover!" When you disagree with a pub-house editor, you can fight with them (I have) or you can give in (I've done that, too). When you hire an editor, you are wise to listen to what they advise, to get your money's worth and to recognize what objective readers will see in the work you love so much. But if you love it the way it is, it's up to you.
A current discussion in my chat groups is ISBNs. Once considered mandatory for a professional publication, questions have arisen about them for e-books. They're expensive, and if you're only going to publish electronically, you have other options. (If a book goes into print, the ISBN would be different anyway.)
Of course, traditional publishing is pulling on the reins, and I think they have to. It would be a mistake to let every joker who thinks he/she can write throw a book at us and make the pool of candidates for panels, awards, and reviews so large it's beyond managability. Rules are established, and even if some authors don't like them, they keep us honest. Yes, someone read my book other than my sister. Yes, my publisher works with multiple authors and does not guarantee publication or charge me for publishing.
Still, the publishing world is changing, so quickly that we can hardly keep up. Some predict that books will soon come out initially as e-books. If they do well, someone will take the chance and put them into print for libraries and those who love "real" books. My February release, THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY, is e-book and POD. I like that, because I will have physical copies for display and electronic copies for all those people who have never met me.
E-publishing is ecologically better, quicker, and easier. Like Dorothy and her friends, authors are treading with caution into the forest of e-books. Our sense of "Oh, my!" is fear for some, awe for others, and for the un-cowardly: "Look at all the possibilites!"