Mary Sisson's Blog, page 100
August 27, 2012
Progress report
Surprise! Yeah, I wound up not having the kids today, so I took the time to figure out GIMP (it works OK--some things I actually like better) and make up the Foolscap flyer--better to do it now, because things are going to be even more apeshit later.
August 26, 2012
And this is just really funny
The IT Crowd has led me to Richard Ayoade's other stuff, in particular Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It's extremely funny--the idea is that Garth Marenghi is a horror writer who was popular enough in the 1980s that his publisher financed a TV show. A terrible, terrible show, which was "rediscovered" only recently. And Marenghi's a terrible, terrible writer, who, just like Anne Rice, is utterly convinced that he is a genius. Since I find Rice completely hysterical (oh, that works on many levels, doesn't it?), Marenghi was an easy one for me.
The DVD is available only in the UK format (boo! I'd buy it!), but this is from the extras and has a lot of publishing jokes in it. At the 4:02 mark, they even make a joke about returns.
I like this as a motto
In a PV comment, DG Sandru wrote: "Invest Your Time Before You Invest Your Money." Good thinking!
Honest vs. paid reviews
This article in the New York Times discusses the business of paid reviews. Apparently John Locke used them to great effect, something he just so happened to have left out of his how-to book.
Obviously I have huge problems with this on principle, so I am going to point out that:
1. The reviewers did not actually read the books. (So Locke's fantasy that he was buying reviews "from people that [sic] were honest"? Uh, yeah--honest people don't sell reviews.)
2. At least some of the reviews got pulled by Amazon.
If you think it's worth it to pay money for a vague "This is great, whatever it is!" review that may vanish, then I guess I can't stop you, but I suggest that you look past Locke. The guy who Locke hired was at one point making $28,000 a month, which means that he had between 28 and 280 clients every month, and only one of them managed to break out. The article also mentions another novelist who has spent $20,000 (!!!) on reviews and is no bestseller.
Also, it should be noted that Amazon doesn't pull paid reviews because they're some self-appointed Guardian of Reviewing Ethics. They pull them because customers don't like them. I mean, look at Yelp--I used to go there all the time to search for good local businesses, but I got steered VERY wrong a couple of times by bullshit reviews, and now I don't rely on them any more. Amazon really does not want that to happen, and I think that if you hope to sell there, you should appreciate their efforts to stay popular with customers.
I realize that giveaways at places like Library Thing can be unpredictable, but honest reviews frankly are more valuable to writers than paid reviews. Paid reviews are like edits written by your mom--totally uncritical, totally positive, and totally worthless as feedback. Honest reviews give you a wealth of information about how well you are positioning your book and what could be improved.
In addition, honest reviews are a far more valuable source of information to readers, who, it should be remembered, are completely hopeless when it comes to agreeing on what makes a book good. Reviews help you target your book: If everyone is gushing over your book because it's such a wonderful romance, I probably won't buy it. Believe it or not, that's exactly what you want.
August 25, 2012
Creating promiscuous characters who aren't douchebags
For my sins, I am continuing to read a novel starring Mr. Perfect Super Guy, who spends his quite copious spare time bagging the hot babes who reliably throw themselves at him even though he's not very good-looking and really has nothing to offer. (Plot? There's supposed to be a plot?)
Anyway, trudging through this book has led me to think long and hard about how to create promiscuous characters who don't make the reader want to reach through the pages of the book and strangle them. Obviously, you might at times want to create a character who is both promiscuous and an asshole, but you really don't want to do it by accident. And it's a little tricky, because it's safe to say that the large majority of readers have at one point or another in their lives been romantically disappointed, so you want to avoid triggering the "THAT BASTARD IS JUST LIKE MY EX!!!!" reaction.
How do you that? Well, it helps to understand that the main pitfall of a casual sexual relationship is that sometimes people to assume or hope that a casual relationship is merely the first step to something more serious. If your character is someone who has zero interest in having the relationship become more serious, and you want the reader to like that character, then your character needs to guard against creating expectations in the other person that will never, ever be met.
In other words, when interacting with their this-is-just-a-casual-thing buddy, you character should NOT:
1. Make plans for the future.
2. Take the other person to meet their parents, or agree to meet the other person's parents.
3. Accept lavish gifts.
4. Tell the other person at length what a great catch they are.
5. Agree to be the sole source of emotional support or companionship.
NO, a quick talk at the outset of the relationship establishing your character's expectation that this relationship will just be casual is NOT ENOUGH. "Let's keep it casual" is not a magic spell that guards against emotional attachments and romantic expectations for all time, especially if your characters start spending a lot of time together. (And WHY are they spending all this time together?) The other character knowing that your character has other lovers also does not magically fix everything--it just makes the other character look increasingly desperate as they take your character on lavish vacations, has your character meet their parents, and repeatedly grills your character for details on these other lovers. (Honestly--that way leads to bunny boiling, OK?)
A likeable character is 1. aware that they can harm others, and 2. attempts to not harm others. They don't necessarily succeed, but they have to do more in that regard than sit around and think about how goddamned lucky they are.
August 24, 2012
Everything's FINE!!!
There's a movie out there called You Can Count on Me, which is about an adult brother and sister who have a troubled relationship. I didn't think it was a great film, but it does a really good job of capturing a certain sibling dynamic in which one kid (the sister, in this case) is The Good Kid, and the other kid (the brother) is The Bad Kid. Of course, The Bad Kid is only marginally more screwed-up than The Good Kid, but she's got it together enough to do things like hold down a job and stay out of jail that the brother can't seem to manage.
The whole Bad Kid/Good Kid pigeonholing is, naturally enough, very corrosive to their relationship as adults. That's captured in the first interaction you see between the two of them. They haven't seen each other in a while, and it should be noted that at this point, the audience knows that the sister (who has a son) is really struggling because she's a single mother who works, and she just got a new boss who's being a real dick and messing up her child-care arrangements for no good reason.
The conversation goes like this:
Terry [the brother/Bad Kid]: So how are ya?
Sammy [the sister/Good Kid]: I'm fine, Terry
Terry: So um... um, how's Rudy [her son]?
Sammy: We're fine, Terry.
[beat]
Sammy: How are you?
Terry: Uhhh, yeaahhh...
It's hard to capture the delivery, but when the sister says "I'm fine" or "We're fine" she's saying it very quickly, because what she's really saying to him is "We are not going to talk about that--we're going to talk about you, because you are the mess here."
The sister doesn't consciously mean to do this, but with her insistence that everything is fine, she's shutting her brother out of her life. She's not allowing him to sympathize with her or even to learn anything about her life--"I'm fine" presents him with a blank wall of superiority that has no handholds and no way in.
Think about that before you start creating characters who are all fine--confident and capable and unflappable and content and marvelous. With perfect teeth. And there's no self-delusion or naivete there--they honestly are totally fine and perfect!
For one thing, hello fantasy figure! I've known a lot of people whose lives look very good from the outside, but trust me, they have problems both big and small--think of Helen Harris III in Bridesmaids, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, or more ominously, Vic Mackey in The Shield. Just because someone looks perfect, or worse yet, actually thinks they are perfect, doesn't mean they are perfect--in fact, it usually means quite the opposite.
For another thing, if your protagonist is Mr. Perfect Super Guy, why should I worry? I mean, he's clearly going to fix everything handily without ever breaking a sweat. He's never going to be wrong, or make a mistake, or worry that he might be wrong or might make a mistake. Everything's going to end happily for him--the bad guys will be defeated, and he will get laid lots and lots of times by hordes of fantastically beautiful women. Since I know all this without actually reading the book, why should I bother? You've built an impenetrable wall, and there's no way in.
August 23, 2012
A quick guide to scams
August 21, 2012
A whole bunch of good links
Definitely a good day at the Passive Voice, and Edward Robertson has a good one, too...
This post (via PV) outlines what a bad deal Author Solutions' services are--the person is trying to be polite about it, but it's pretty damning.
This post (via PV) notes that Nook sales are flatlining, which is not good news for Barnes & Noble.
This (also via PV) is a really interesting comparison of e-books and the introduction of paperbacks during the Great Depression. What's fascinating to me is the fact that, just like e-books, paperbacks weren't just a new kind of book--they revolutionized the entire industry.
If paperbacks were going to succeed in America, they would need a new model. [Robert] De Graff [founder of Pocket Books], for his part, was well acquainted with the economics of books. He knew that printing costs were high because volumes were low—an average hardcover print run of 10,000 might cost 40 cents per copy. With only 500 bookstores in the U.S., most located in major cities, low demand was baked into the equation.
Fascinating, no? Since the 1990s, we've been moving back to that pre-1940s model of bookselling, with book sales moving back into bookstores and books getting more and more expensive. At Westercon, Greg Bear said that, in his opinion, there had been a Golden Age of publishing that dated from about the 1950s to the 1980s, when the industry really did work and could sell a lot of books. In my opinion, it's not a coincidence that this Golden Age happened at a time when books were inexpensive and widely available in all sorts of places.
This is a pretty neat article (via, of course, PV) about why science fiction can be very cool.
Edward Robertson has a post for new writers. What I really like about it is his realism about initial sales, which will likely be extremely low if you are unknown (so, you know, plan accordingly), and his appreciation of the value of giveaways as a means of gathering feedback about your book's presentation.
August 20, 2012
Oh, goodie, another windmill!
I must draw your attention to this post at the Passive Voice and the comment about DAISY. You know I'm going to be investigating this....
Guess who's buying?
One thing that I've noticed since I started reading e-books is that I'm buying a lot more books rather than picking them up from my (excellent) local library. Part of this is because indie books aren't always available at the library, but a larger reason is that they're so cheap, half the time I don't even bother to check if the library has them.
And it turns out I'm not the only one buying more. E-book readers are more likely to buy their own books (via DWS). I would argue that it's the low, low price combined with the fact that e-books are harder to borrow. (Not that it's impossible to lend them, but it takes some thought--are we on the same format?--and it only takes one click of a button to buy....)
How does the future look? Well, according to the press release for the latest 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review (via PV), younger adults, who are more likely to read e-books, are now the spendiest readers.
GenY's 2011 book expenditures rose to 30 percent -- up from 24 percent in 2010 – passing Boomers' 25 percent share. And with 43 percent of GenY's purchases going to online channels, they are adding momentum to the industry shift to digital.
