Gail Gauthier's Blog: Gail Gauthier Reads, page 6

Makes You Appreciate Traditional Publishers

In August I gave up on a book and shelved it in my Kindle under "Didn't Finish." I had started skimming by the 10 percent point and still ended up making the decision that life is short. There was just no reason to spend time like this.

My Kindle is loaded with goodies I download during free promotions or buy on sale.* This is my way of discovering new authors. At some point I dip into the Kindle and see what turns up. For instance, I recently found Longbourn by Jo Baker on my Kindle. Must have bought it on sale. Superb book. Believe me, I'll be remembering that writer and considering some of her other titles.

Obviously, that was not the case with the book I gave up on this morning. I hadn't been reading long when I began to suspect it was self-published. Sure enough, it was. What was the tip off?

When Self-Published Books Are Bad, They're Often Bad In The Same Way

Certainly I've read plenty of bad traditionally published books over the years. But when self-published books are bad, they're often bad in the same, recognizable way. For instance:

Telling vs. Showing. August's book had chapter after chapter of telling instead of showing. Some people argue that the show-don't-tell rule is a meaningless cliche. But what telling does to a story is make it incredibly flat. There's not much in the way of action, so there's not much narrative drive to make readers want to continue reading. Here's an example: While a protagonist walks home from work, she can recall (tell us about) having seen a person on the street approached and dragged away by federal agents. She may say it was disturbing, but it's all in the past. We know she is still here to tell the tale. Or, while a protagonist walks home from work, she can witness a person on the street being approached and dragged away by federal agents. The author is showing us the event as it happens and as the protagonist experiences it. For a moment or two, we feel suspense, because we don't know what is going to happen. We don't know what the character witnessing the event is going to do or how it is going to impact her. And that is why show vs. tell matters. As I said, I often find showing missing in self-published books.
Little distinction among characters. They seem very much alike.
No voice. Lack of a strong, distinctive voice for the main character.
No understanding of plot. Random events strung together into a plot instead of events having a causal relationship--Event A leads to Event B leads to Event C. Randomness is both confusing and undercuts narrative drive. Things drag.
Unnatural descriptions. The story stops moving forward so the author can describe a character or setting.
More copy errors than we usually see in a traditionally published book. One or two errors in an entire book are barely noticeable. But much more than that and readers become distracted. Copy errors matter because every time readers see a letter missing or letters transposed they are taken out of the reading experience. They realize they are no longer in the world of the story.

A bad self-published book might include many of these problems.

I have to say I've read only one self-published book that I thought was really good, Do Not Resuscitate by Nicholas Ponticello. I also thought Due North by Melanie Jackson was well done, though it didn't fit into a traditional publishing niche. However, I don't read a great many self-published books. There may be some kind of percentage thing going on with these things whereby X percent are good, and you have to read a great many in order for that X percent to amount to much in real numbers.

What About Bad Traditionally Published Books?

Why is it I recognize a bad self-published book as self-published versus traditionally published? Because when I read a bad traditionally published book it's seldom bad in all the ways I cited above, the way bad self-published books are. With bad traditionally published books you're usually dealing with one or two of these:

Cliches. Copy cat stories. (Think the YA books with autistic main characters that have exploded over the last decade.)
Running out of steam. Series that ran on too long.
Stereotypes. Characters are well defined, but stereotypes.
A strong voice for main characters, but they sound too much like other voices in the genre. (Both YA and adult To Kill A Mockingbird wannabes, for instance, and Catcher in the Rye wannabes, noir mysteries. For a while there were YA books coming out with characters trying to be another Georgia Nicholson.)
Books that are bloated. They just should have been shorter and tighter.
Fantasy series that rely on weird stuff happening. As the series progresses, you're basically just getting more and more weird stuff. The weirdness has to be cranked up, and that's pretty much all there is.

And Why Don't We See More Of The Self-Pubbed Problems In Traditionally Published Books?

My assumption--and it is an assumption--is that the publishing system actually works, to some extent, at least, and agents and editors screen out the tell, tell, tell stories, the stories without distinctive characters, without voice, without a well-constructed plot. And publishing companies definitely employ copy editors, so we see far fewer missing letters and gaps in lines, etc. We get far fewer of those kinds of distractions.


What Does It All Mean?

I was feeling very warmly toward the traditional publishing world back in August. I felt I was unlikely to find myself reading something like the book I shelved, if I stuck with traditional pub. Yippee doodles for Gail the Reader.

But then I thought, Wait, if the traditional publishing world is doing this great job keeping books out of the publishing pipeline because they're filled with telling instead of showing, characters who seem alike, characters with no voice, stories with no plot, AND the traditional publishing world is also keeping my books out of the publishing pipeline, does that mean that my books are filled with telling instead of showing, characters who seem alike, characters with no voice, and stories with no plot?

I think this makes traditional publishing what is called a mixed blessing.
____________________
*By the way, I do buy full price eBooks. I'm talking here about impulse buying sale books I've heard of and wouldn't have read otherwise or new to me items I'm willing to take a chance on because they're cheap.

A Bread Loaf Pinterest Board

"This year's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference started last week. Don't worry. I'm not going to bore you with another story about the great time I had working in the Bread Loaf kitchen back in the day. No, I'm going to link you to a Pinterest board collection of all my stories about the great time I had working in the Bread Loaf kitchen back in the day, as well as some never before published pictures.

You're not going to see photos like these anywhere else. Anywhere."

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content.

The Summer SCBWI Bulletin

Hard as it is to believe, the Summer 2016 SCBWI Bulletin arrived at my house and just a couple of days later, I had it all read! I know! I sometimes get a couple of issues behind.

If you are a SCBWI member and your Bulletin is floating around the house, here are some articles I recommend:

10 Ways to Gear Up for the Coming School Year by Alexis O'Neill. There were a couple of things new to me. One of them being the Five-Year Rule.

On Series by Bonnie Bader. What I found so interesting about this article is that Bader says that series are a great way "to hook kids into reading." This is a different spin on series Betty Carter's in the March/April Horn Book. Though she was more concerned with series' impact on reading competence than whether or not they encouraged children to read.

Art Tips by Manuela Pentangelo. It's about Pinterest.

And my writers' group colleague Jane Sutcliffe has a big part in the Bologna Children's Book Fair story about Melissa Stewart's Feathers. That's an interesting article, too, even if you don't know Jane. Or Melissa.

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content

So Children's eBooks Do Sell

I have four eBooks out in the world. Three (Happy Kid!, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat, and A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers) were published by G.P. Putnam's Sons at the same time the company published the hardcover editions of those books. I published the fourth one, an eBook republication of Saving the Planet & Stuff, one of my earlier out-of-print books from Putnam. Nonetheless, my impression has been that children aren't big eBook readers. I've heard speakers say eBooks are the next big thing for children. But when visiting schools, speaking with librarians and parents, and in give-and-take on-line, I haven't seen it happening. In fact, I've read that eBooks are very much a middle-aged woman reader thing. Not a kid thing, at all.

Then last month I received my most recent statement from Penguin Random House. They've revised the statement, so it's a little easier to read. (Hey. It's not just me who has trouble with those things.) I was surprised to discover that I've sold a few copies of each of my eBooks during the period the statement covers. What was more surprising was how many eBooks I've sold overall.

Now, we're not talking bestselling numbers here. The numbers are just higher than I expected. When I told a family member how many eBooks of Happy Kid! have sold...Well, let's just say I got a reaction. Our expectations were that low.

Of course, children don't buy many books of any kind. Adults buy books for them. No doubt adults are buying these. Are they buying them for their children's e-readers? Are they buying them for their own e-readers, so they'll have some child reading available for child reading emergencies in cars, doctors' offices, etc.? (I can see myself doing that.) Are they buying them for themselves to read? (I have done that.)

Whatever the reason, someone is buying these particular children's eBooks. I assume that means they're buying other children's eBooks, too.

An earlier version of this post was published at Original Content.

Marketing Program For Young Children's Books

Author Janet Lawler brought a program developed around her book, The Prehistoric Games, to the Cragin Memorial Library in Connecticut this evening. It was an impressive event that included a traditional reading and PowerPoint presentation related to how Janet came to write the book. And then there was everything else.

We're talking an Olympic torch, a parade of athletes, and an array of games for child audience members to play. And they did. At length. The dino dig and long jump were particularly popular, but there were more things to do. The evening concluded with a medal ceremony.

What Janet has created for The Prehistoric Games is a fine example of what Kirsten Cappy of Curious City discussed at a NESCBWI program last month. Janet is marketing her book by providing the adults in children's lives (librarians and parents this evening) with engaging materials for those children.

Coming soon to Janet Lawler's website: How to use The Prehistoric Games as part of a birthday party.

This post originally appeared at Original Content.

Is Stroking My Ego A Good Use Of Time?

A couple of months ago, the administrators of a regional writers' conference announced next year's conference theme. Lo' and behold, not only did I actually understand the theme, I liked it. Very rare, people. Very rare. It was something I became interested in just this past winter.

As a result, I decided I'd submit workshop proposals for next year's conference. I say "proposals," because the conference wants faculty to teach two workshops in order to cut down on administration and costs. I have two workshops I've led in the past that I thought would fit the theme well. I didn't think it would require a lot of time to work up the proposals, because I know this material. Because I'd taught the workshops in the past, I thought I'd be able to handle teaching both of them over one weekend. I was a woman with a plan.

Then I learned last week that next year all faculty are expected to attend the entire conference, not just the days they teach, as has been the case in the past.

This is not a drastic imposition. The conference is only three days, not three weeks. In fact, it's probably closer to two and a half days. Plus I live only an hour away from the conference site, so I could (I assume) cut out for the evenings and wander in for my first workshop each morning while whatever opening event is running. I really like conferences for the workshops, not the rubbing shoulders, so, though I'd have to pay for at least a day of conference time I may end up not wanting, at least I wouldn't have to find something to do during the long evenings or early in the morning before the workshops started. But going home each night also means I won't have a hotel room to escape to during the day to work or nap, which is what I've heard other writers do when they can't find workshops to fill all those conference hours.

Thinking about how I would manage time if I'm on the conference faculty next year has led me to think about other time-related issues involved with teaching at a conference. There are a number of them. Among them what will I be getting for my investment of time? Should I or should I not submit workshop proposals?

Reasons To Submit Proposals

Vanity, Total Vanity. If my proposals are accepted and I make the conference faculty, I will feel that, despite whatever career setbacks I've experienced over the years, I am still a contender. I am still one of the writer tribe. I know this is the case because I was on the faculty several years ago and felt very tribal. This is pretty much the only reason I want to do this, to pump up my ego. Try as I will, I cannot come up with another one.


Reasons Not To Submit Proposals

Submitting Takes Time. While the sponsoring agency requires faculty to teach two workshops, it suggests we submit proposals for three or four for its staff to choose from. This would increase our odds of having workshops chosen, but it will also increase our workload substantially now. If you have ever worked as a consultant or known people who have, responding to Requests for Proposals in order to get jobs is a financial black hole. It takes time to put proposals together. Time is money. The money consultants make is for the work they are proposing to do, not for the work they did on the proposals. They never get that back. They may consider it the cost of doing business, but it's still a cost.

For writers, the time used on creating workshop proposals is time we could be generating work or submitting. Some writers who have a portfolio of workshops on hand may not have to put that much time into writing a proposal. You may recall that right now I only have two that I think will fit the theme. If I want to submit more, I'll have to put in time starting from scratch to come up with others. Even if I end up being selected for next year's faculty, there's no financial return on the time it will take to make the proposals.

If the submitted proposals are rejected, I will still have some planned workshops that I could use somewhere else. So I could justify the use of time that way. I have to say, though, that I've had a few proposals rejected over the years and as of today have not used them anywhere else. An outline is required with the workshop proposals. If rejected, that outline could become an article I could submit. Again, this hasn't gone anywhere in the past.

Workshop Prep Takes Time. I know writers who have years of experience teaching grade school or high school or who are adjunct writing teachers at the college level. My guess is that they're skilled enough and comfortable enough that they don't need the weeks of prep time that I put in before a presentation. If we're talking new material, I'll start working months ahead of time, creating a script, designing slides, working on timing. If the two workshops I think fit the theme were selected, things shouldn't be that bad because I'll have run variations of them before. But if I were to come up with a third or even fourth workshop proposal and have that selected, that's another thing. Again, this is all time I could put toward generating new work or submitting.

Performance Anxiety. A large part of the reason I put in so much prep time. The more time I put into prep, the less anxious I am. One of the reasons I make appearances is to prove to myself that I'm tough enough to deal with performance anxiety. I recognize that that may not be particularly healthy. In fact, I think at least one family member has told me as much.

Income Flow. I haven't seen any information on what the sponsoring agency is offering for compensation next year, but when I taught in the past there was a small honorarium, the conference registration fee was waived for the day I taught, and I was offered a room for the night I taught. So if my proposals were accepted, the real income generated would be that honorarium.

However, recall that next year faculty need to attend the entire conference, meaning we'll be paying conference fees for the day(s) we don't teach. As conferences go, the fees for this one are quite reasonable. But depending on which day(s) I'm teaching and which day(s) I have to attend and pay my fee, I could end up spending nearly as much to attend the conference as I'd make for teaching. Which is why I didn't put "Generate Income" under "Reasons To Submit Proposals." In reality, I may not be generating any.

What To Do?

Given that I have only one very shallow reason for submitting workshop proposals to this conference, I think it's pretty obvious that in terms of time, there's very little reason for me to do it. In the best case scenario, one in which my proposals are selected for the conference, I'd end up taking a lot of time from writing just to make me feel good. I felt pretty good the last two years attending the conference without being on the faculty. I can do that with a whole lot less effort.

I have until August 1st to submit, so perhaps I'll change my mind. We'll probably discuss this at my writers' group next week. Maybe someone there will have a really compelling reason to try get on the conference faculty.

This post originally appeared at Original Content.

How Creativity Happens

The Readers And Advocates Program

On Sunday I went to a Build Your Readers and Advocates program. As a result of the morning session, I began to toy with an idea relating to the picture book I've been working on for months and will, no doubt, be working on the rest of my life.

Add Writers' Group

Then Monday night I went to my writers' group with that picture book manuscript that I had thought, until I printed it, was in pretty good shape. But by the time I was stapling it together, I was unhappy with the lack of voice. And reading the thing aloud made clear there was some structural problems. (Little aside--Writers' groups hear your awful work.) I came up with an idea for a big revision.

Add Tuesday Morning's Workout

Actually, for a couple of years now some of my workout time has gone to yard work, because ours is kind of overgrown. (And that, lads and lasses, is another example of a multiplier--a task that addresses two goals.) So I was dragging a rake through the periwinkle Tuesday morning when I had a breakout experience. Which was:

If I was going to do the big revision I'd decided to do at writers' group on Monday, anyway, I could revise in such a way that I could use the idea I was toying with at the workshop on Sunday!

Bringing together different parts of your life or different experiences to make something different...X + Y = Something New.

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content.

The 48-Hour Book Challenge: That's A Wrap

At the end of May, 2006 I signed up for the first 48-Hour Book Challenge, the inspiration of Pam Coughlin at MotherReader. I did a magical realism tour for my first book challenge with seven stops. I took part in 2007 and 2008 and again in 2014 and 2015.

The 48-Hour Book Challenge was a reading and blogging binge. You picked 48-hours over a 3-day weekend Pam selected, usually at the beginning of June, and during that period read as much as you could of whatever you wanted and blogged about the books you completed. Because that's what litbloggers do. There was a list of participating bloggers at Pam's site so you knew which of your friends were reading and blogging with you. There were prizes.

No 48-Hour Book Challenge this year. Pam/MotherReader is calling it a day, figuring ten years is a good wrap-up point. There may be some interest in bringing it back next year, but for now the Challenge is a happy memory.

Some litbloggers who were around back then refer to the mid '00s as the Golden Age of Blogging. As I'm sure I've said before, I think of that time as a wild west/frontier experience. There were no instructions on how to blog, no talk of writers building platform, no articles on why writers need blogs or how they can get by with a blog instead of a website. Internet book bullying was still in the future. No one had come up with ways to use blogs to market books. No one had started companies organizing blog tours for writers. Magazines weren't sponsoring blogs.

Because we sponsored ourselves! Yeah! Ya just went out and blogged in those days! Sink or swim. Blog free or die hard.

Blogging was truly social media then, at least in the childlit world, because bloggers interacted, commenting on each others' work and posting links to one another. You were part of a community. Kind of an underground community. Which was cool. The 48-Hour Book Challenge was an on-line ball for the childlit blogging world.

Well, nostalgia isn't healthy. So let's hitch up our big blogger pants, toss back a little of whatever we like to toss back when we're paying tribute, and get back to whatever bloggy things we do these days. And Twitter. I'm going over to Twitter when I'm done here.

We had some good times, Book Challenge. Have fun in retirement.

Post originally appeared at Original Content.

Binging On Cooking And Podcasts

Could I Get Along Without Podcasts?

Last week I was just about ready to throw in the towel with podcasts. I'd been interested in listening to them while working in the kitchen as a way to take in work-related material while doing an unnecessary creative act. I did pick up some good information, particularly on content marketing, but I was trying and discarding a lot of podcasts. Things I liked the first time I listened to them got old fast when I tried them again. When pods involved more than one personality, the ratio of chitchat to important content was often pretty high. I guess you can tell you're an introvert when you can't even take listening to others having a good time.

But I really like something going on sound-wise when I'm working in the house. Music is a definite option. Nonetheless, last weekend, I was embarking on a big cooking binge and thought I'd take another quick look on-line. Somehow, I stumbled upon The Memory Palace.

All About The Story

The Memory Palace's creator, Nate DiMeo, describes his podcast as "a storytelling podcast and public radio segment about the past." He takes isolated historical events and creates a written narrative about them. If you go back to the early days of the podcast, the story is often just an account of something that happened. But eventually his pieces began to include something on the event's significance. For instance, in his story about nineteenth century singer Jenny Lind, he talks about a major difference between her time and ours. In her day, before sound could be recorded, before recording sound was even thought of, you could only hear music during a performance. In many cases, you would never have another opportunity to hear a singer. Did people even give that a thought? Or was it just a normal part of life?

The significance part of these stories is important. History isn't just a list of facts. It means something. And in terms of The Memory Palace being a storytelling podcast, meaning is huge. Many times without including an understanding of a real event, all a storyteller/writer is doing is passing on a list of things that happened. What does it all mean, Mr. Natural? brings a piece of writing to another level.

Another thing that's neat about these podcasts is they're short. So far, I don't think I've listened to one that's more than fifteen minutes. DiMeo is "interested in keeping things small because I was interested in the smallness of those things" (the historical "moments" he finds) "and the way they added up to a larger picture."

These short podcasts are like flash nonfiction. They are intense and complete. They give listeners an opportunity to see how someone finds meaning in an event in a quick, concise way. They have the potential, I think, to become a painless model for looking for and finding stories.

Hope I still like them in a few weeks.

A slightly different version of this post appeared at Original Content.

Is YA Fantasy Dark?

I recently read the first three Lockwood & Co. books by Jonathan Stroud. (A fourth one will be published this fall.) These are really dark books. Death is a daily threat for everyone, and there doesn't appear to be any hope of a Heaven waiting for those who don't make it to tomorrow. There's no talk of school for children. They go to work young and at horrible, dangerous jobs dealing with the ghosts in the Lockwood & Co. universe. If these kids don't die first, they'll grow up and lose their ability to see the dead. What will become of them then?

A lot of YA fantasy is dark. The Bartimaeus books certainly are. So is Skullduggery Pleasant. The Daughter of Smoke & Bones series is pretty grim, particularly for a romance. And, now that I think of it, I believe all those books have a violent climax, too, just as each of the Lockwood books do, with some characters at risk or even lost altogether.

Well, conventional wisdom claims that young (and not so young) readers can safely explore disturbing or even frightening subjects in fantasy because none of this stuff can really happen. The dead don't come back. There are no demons controlled by high-ranking politicians. (Yeah. I know. There's a joke there.) Skeletons don't wear fedoras and drive fancy cars.

Not only can readers explore disturbing stuff in fantasy because it doesn't happen, it's okay to enjoy it. If these things could really happen, it would be so wrong.

This material appeared in a longer post at Original Content.