Mary Sisson's Blog, page 96

Progress report

1,400 words, whoo!

All my characters will be...the same!

I was watching an anime series the other day--it was a telenovela-type show that was actually pretty entertaining. The problem was, most of the action took place on a train. On this train were no fewer than three criminal gangs. (It wasn't like the train had some valuable cargo that all the gangs were after--it was just a coincidence that the three were there.) The majority of the people on the train who weren't in one of these three criminal gangs were affiliated with the Mafia.

Making it worse, one of the gangs was a gang of...homicidal maniacs! Yes, an entire gang of homicidal maniacs, because there are just that many out there. Some of the non-gang-affiliated characters also happened to be homicidal maniacs.

By the end of it, I was VERY tired of hearing people make speeches about how much they enjoyed killing people. (Homicidal maniacs are apparently a verbose lot, who never tire of prattling on about their hobby.) That sort of thing is unsettling and effective the first time you hear it, but the twelfth time, it's just boring.

When I'm bored, I start asking logical questions like, Where are the normal people? Is pretty much every train ride like this? Who would take the train, then? The train had two conductors, one of whom was part of a criminal gang and the other of whom was a homicidal maniac--doesn't the railroad screen their employees at all?

It's not just this show or anime. I've read fantasy novels where every spot in the entire planet is plagued by evil magicks. That's swell from a putting-characters-in-peril point of view, but if the very air and soil is going to kill you wherever you go, how do people farm? Why are there cities and industries and rich people and a high level of political organization?

Regular, non-telenovela type TV series get lousy with this kind of thing. You have a plot revolving around someone secretly being a spy/mutant/alien/vampire/Mafioso/werewolf, and a few seasons later there isn't a character on the show who isn't secretly a spy/mutant/alien/vampire/Mafioso/werewolf--and every unveiling (you know, of the exact same thing that has been unveiled many times before) is presented as something shocking!! and dramatic!!!

I think even if you're writing about things going on that are unlikely and fantastical, you have ground it in some kind of realism. You need the normal people to set off the freaks. Otherwise it's like eating an entire meal made solely out of habaneros--it's tedious and unpleasant, and it just doesn't work.

Progress report

Yes! I made progress! Only 950 words, but hey, it's a start!

"I’m an author and I’m not good about this stuff"

Passive Voice has a post on Penguin suing authors for not delivering books that they received advances for. Obviously Penguin is a troubled company, and suing is kind of an odd decisions, since unless the advance was huge, suing costs more than just writing it off as a loss.

But forcing people to feel sympathy for Penguin is...Elizabeth Wurtzel! She gave an interview with NPR that contains the hilarious line:

I think at some point they did send me a letter about this. I mean, I think it’s one of those things that I probably should have dealt with and didn’t because I’m an author and I’m not good about this stuff.

She then goes on to say that Penguin shouldn't sue her, because having a relationship with her (you know, the kind of relationship where they give her $33,000 and she give them bupkis) is worth so much more. Sooooo much more!

The whole "I'm an author and I'm not good about this stuff" bit is especially implausible because, as Peter Winkler pointed out, Wurtzel used to be a lawyer. She also graduated from Harvard, was a journalist before getting fired for plagiarism, and pretended to be a lawyer before she actually was one! A woman of many talents, it seems.

And, you know, many problems, most of which appear to stem from her having an ENORMOUS sense of entitlement. Still, that attitude that if you are an author and an artiste, then you don't have to worry about piddly little crap like, I dunno, actually writing books is one that obviously has some traction with people who aren't as pathologically self-indulgent as Wurtzel.

It's an attitude that traditional publishing has encouraged--you don't ask authors to deliver clean files because they'll think it's beneath them. You keep the authors removed from the publishing process, that process remains an intimidating mystery to them, and then they won't run out and self-publish. Everybody wins--as long as "everybody" doesn't include writers or readers.

One of the many things I like about self-publishing is that it forces authors to not be snotty little prima donnas about everything--I mean, you can be, but it's going to cost you. Explicitly. Don't feel like leaving out that junk code? Hope you feel like paying a formatter two or three times as much as you would otherwise! Don't want to think about how you're going to position your book to readers? Get ready for poor sales and angry reviews by people who feel mislead! Too brilliant to worry about the "technical" details of spelling and grammar? Be prepared to have many, many readers fail to understand your genius!

Maintaining a high gloss

I like mysteries, but my sister LOVES them, so I'm always on the lookout for good ones to recommend or get for her.

In the past several months, I've come across two indie mystery books that I thought were really good. Coincidentally, each was the first book in a two-book series. In both cases, I liked the first book so much that I decided to buy a paper copy of it for my sister, and I went on to read the second book.

And, in both cases, I will not be buying a paper copy of the second book for my sister.

I think the same thing happened with both series. Two talented writers each wrote a mystery novel and spent the next, oh, five or ten years trying without success to have that novel traditionally published. Those years, while frustrating, weren't wasted--the writers, each assuming that their book wasn't quite good enough to get published, spent a lot of time gathering feedback and improving the books. The result was a pair of books that were very fine indeed--but still not published!

Enter self-publishing. Our two mystery novelists self-publish their by now EXTREMELY good books, and readers LOVE them! Reviews are ecstatic, sales are grand, and our two writers realize that their debut novels didn't get published not because they weren't good enough, but because traditional publishing is an industry in crisis.

They each say, A-ha! I am a writer of talent! And of sales! I'd better crank my follow-up novel out in a great big hurry!

So, they each crank out novel number two. Maybe they give it to a beta reader who is really more of a friend or a fan than an editor, and this person tells them that the book is awesome and they are a genuis--or maybe they don't even bother with that.

The result is a very frustrating read, because in both cases, Novel #2 is something that with a little more work could have been just as good as Novel #1. Things are bad in a way that is annoying and fixable: Lengthy and original descriptive phrases are repeated word-for-word in different places in the book; climactic events happen off-stage; sub-plots (and since these are mystery novels, there are a lot of those) are wound up in ways that are opaque and confusing. Both books need a serious edit--not a fluffy, "You're so great! I love your stuff!" kind of thing.

A good edit is always somewhat brutal. The job of an editor is to yank all your failures out and rub them in your face so you can fix them. If you're not feeling like someone could be a little kinder to you, or if you're not feeling like, Holy crap, this is going to be a lot of work, you're not getting a proper edit. There's always that moment of wounded ego and despair.

I totally understand writers not wanting to go through it--hell, I don't always want to go through it--especially after they've seen through the whole traditional-publishing lie that their book is not quite good enough to sell. If you've been in a situation where people have been stomping all over your talent for no other reason than to get you to shut up and go away, it can be hard to acknowledge that there is such a thing as legitimate criticism.

But no matter how talented you are--and these writers are both quite talented--you need to be edited. A real edit, not a love-fest, done by someone who does not care about your feelings and who is not afraid to tell you the stuff that's hard to hear.

Just a rat with a button

Anyone else get an e-mail about Amazon's Author Rank program and roll their eyes? Oh, goodie, another set of numbers to make you feel inferior! This time you're listed by name, so you're SURE to feel inadequate!

Amazon is very good at handling authors, and that has a dark side. Camille LaGuire did a recent post on how Amazon's immediate feedback is so compelling that LaGuire thought her books had stopped selling, when in fact they were selling fine at other retailers.

Writes LaGuire, "[Amazon's] whole site is optimized for you, to reward you and make it easy for you to just focus on them and forget everyone else.... [B]y giving you that little hourly reward, Amazon conditions you to watch Amazon's stats and keep doing things to make them move."

And yet, people want more. There was a recent post on FutureBooks by a Web designer complaining about how little data Amazon and the other e-book publishing platforms give you when compared to, say, a Web site. Passive Guy linked to it with the note, "PG seconds this complaint. He understands far more about the visitors to The Passive Voice than he does about the people who purchase Mrs. PG’s books."

As a practical matter, yes, I understand the issue. But, wow, I feel deeply ambivalent about all the data I can access regarding visitors to my blog (although is it hilarious at times). A big part if it is that I want writing novels to be a higher priority than writing the blog. But you know, I've been sick lately, so I've been writing blog posts rather than working on Trials. And when I do that, I gain a lot of traffic to this site.

Do you know when I lose traffic to this site? When my blog posts are all titled "Progress Report" and are all boring one-liners about how I wrote X many words today. In other words, the more productive I am with the novels, the less of a reward I get from my blog stats.

That's just something I have to inure myself to, but I know that subconsciously it's working away at me. That's part of why I occasionally go read reviews--I need a different kind of prodding, the kind that comes from readers, not other writers.

I feel like having access to lots of sales data is also a two-edged sword--I mean, yes, it indicates whether or not you're reaching readers, plus of course it's money. On the other hand, it is so easy to get all wrapped up in that world. You do need to act like a publisher at times--thinking long and hard about how you want to position your book, for example--but a lot of that stuff is easier and less intimidating than writing novels, and at least for me it can become just another form of procrastination.

Book discovery nowadays

This is an interesting article (via PV) on how book discovery has changed in recent years.

Of special interest: 

Two years ago, 35% of book purchases were made because readers found out about a book in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, the single-largest site of discovery. This year, that figure has dropped to 17%, a reflection both of the closing of Borders and the rise of e-readers.

I have to stop and say WOW to that one--the percentage of books discovered via bookstores has dropped that much in only two years!? Holy crap. I mean, I know things were changing, of course, but I am constantly amazed at how fast it's happening.

Anyway, the article goes on to say:

In the same period, personal recommendations grew the most, to 22% from 14%. . . . A problem for publishers and authors of new titles is that the vast majority of personal recommendations are backlist titles. Only 6% of books recommended personally have been published in the past half year--and just 2% were published within three months

Yeah, more backlist recommendations would be a big problem for publishers, because they are rapidly losing their ability to monetize those titles. That's an unpromising confluence of trends right there.

And if you don't want to spend all your time flogging social media, that article provides you with an excellent rationalization: "[D]igital mass media, including Facebook and Twitter, rose just to 4.5% from 1.9% as a place people learned about the books they have bought." Music to my ears....

Fairness, monopsony, and other unhelpful concepts

Some people are taking great umbrage at Amazon for forcing publishers to provide them with books they can actually sell. What apparently is at issue is not the basic concept that Amazon need saleable inventory (although that is a concept that seems rather lost on the publishers themselves), but the fact that Amazon is going to punish these suppliers by not selling ANY of their goods, rather than simply not selling the goods that arrived damaged.

This, it seems, is not "fair" and is an example of Amazon using its "monopsony power."

Yeah, that's a bunch of crap. I'll start with the idea that Amazon has a "monopsony." Just like Amazon isn't a monopoly because it can't shut out competing online retailers, it is not a monopsony, because it (say it with me) can't shut out competing online retailers. You can sell your books other places.

On to "fair." "Fair" is one of those terms that kind of drives me crazy, because it doesn't really have any agreed-upon meaning when you start talking about specific situations. Is our current tax system fair? Is the percentage of tax paid by wealthy people fair? If it is unfair, is it unfair because wealthy people pay too much in taxes, or because they pay too little?

I don't (NO I REALLY DON'T) want you to actually answer those questions. Why not? Because there are people who are completely, 100% convinced that the current system is unfair because wealthy people pay too little in taxes--and they have many long, self-righteous justifications "proving" that they are right. And there are other people who are equally convinced, and have equally tedious "evidence," that the current system is unfair because wealthy people pay too much.

That's "fair" for you--it means whatever you want it to mean.

But what does "fair" get you? Not much. Say you decide (what with your long rationalizations and your many friends who agree with you) that the tax system is unfair, and that it is specifically unfair to you, because you shouldn't ever have to pay any taxes. So you don't.

You can protest the unfairness of the system until you're blue in the face (and people do), but you will still get fined and perhaps even imprisoned (and people do). That's because the government has a different idea of what's fair, and unlike you, they have cops and prisons. (I once heard a young man on the bus discussing his many drug arrests, the latest which was felony weight. He objected bitterly it being classified as a felony, because it was--you guessed it--"not fair." Oddly enough, these magic words did not have any noticeable impact on his situation.)

What is Amazon? Amazon is a major retail outlet. If you sell books on Amazon, you are a supplier to that company. To be a supplier to Amazon, you must agree to their terms: You price your book a certain way. You get a certain cut. You use certain file formats. You can't put up certain kinds of material.

If you don't agree to their terms, there are other suppliers out there. (And, since Amazon doesn't actually have a monopsony, there are also other retailers out there who might be more accommodating to you.)

Now in book publishing, suppliers actually have a relatively large amount of power--larger than in most other industries. Stephen King gets really nice contracts because he is the sole supplier of Stephen King books, and people really want those and don't want anything else. It's a stark contrast to, say, supplying Wal-Mart, whose customers are so price-conscious that they'll happily switch brands if something cheaper comes along, which really puts the suppliers in a position of weakness.

Even so, the power of book suppliers has it limits, as those art-book publishers are discovering. Amazon is having such a problem with their stock that it's willing to stop selling their books altogether, which suggests that Amazon thinks readers won't really miss those books and will be able to find suitable substitutes.

And guess what? Amazon has a perfect right to make that call. It's not the government censoring people--you have no First Amendment right to force a retailer to carry your product.

People seem to constantly want to have some kind of reciprocal emotional relationship with Amazon, which makes them lose sight of the fact that it is simply a business and a retailer. If a business partnership is unprofitable, Amazon will drop that partner. This is how business works--it's about making money, and if pairing with someone doesn't make a company money, the company will terminate that relationship.

Is that "fair"? Hell if I know. I just know that's the way the retail business works, has always worked, and will most likely work in the future.

Is that scary to you? Well, maybe it should be, because if you've put all your eggs in the Amazon basket, then you are taking a risk. Amazon's not your mom, it's not your friend, it doesn't love you, and it's under no obligation to take care of you. It's a major retailer, you are a supplier, and that's all. If they don't like what you do, they'll terminate the relationship--and if you don't like what they do, you are free to do the same.

Hey, that's a joke!

Recently I watched the "Gangnam Style" video, which has become something of a Internet sensation. Watching it was kind of an odd experience. I have a really hard time laughing at people who aren't trying to be funny. I'll do it--I'm only human--but I feel odd about it, and I don't make a habit of seeking out stuff that's really bad or unintentionally campy when I feel like having a good laugh.

So the first I watched "Gangnam Style," it really perplexed me. Then I read the Wikipedia entry on it and twigged that, oh, it's supposed to be funny. Psy, the South Korean rapper who created the song, is making fun of people who are trying way too hard to be classy, so he runs around terrorizing the upscale Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam with his silly dance. The odd-looking and -acting men in the video are Korean comedians. They're not trying to look cool--they're trying to look like people who are trying to look cool and failing miserably.

And then I watched the video again, and I laughed and laughed. Because it was OK.

I'm not the only person who responds this way--Mel Brook's The Producers is about two guys trying to create a Broadway show that is sure to fail so they can make off with their investors' money. But they do too good a job, and everyone assumes that their awful show, Springtime for Hilter, is a hilarious parody of the Third Reich. The show becomes OK for the audience, they laugh and laugh, and the hapless producers have a monster hit on their hands.

It's also interesting to see situations where there's a joke (the histrionic "I am NOT drinking any FUCKING Merlot!") and people don't realize that it's not meant to be taken seriously (sales of Merlot fall). One of the funny things about Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is the level of effort they went to in order to ensure that the whole thing looks and sounds like a crappy low-budget '80s TV show--one of the actors even went through and re-dubbed all his lines so that they don't quite match up with the movements of his lips. But the problem, of course, is that some people didn't understand that it wasn't really a crappy '80s TV show. You also see this in some responses to Richard Ayoade's movie Submarine, which is deliberately pretentious, because it's about an adolescent, and adolescent pretension is funny, see?

I think this is where is helps to have a brand (and to also make sure a humor book is actually filed under humor and possibly has "humor" or "comedy" or "parody" or "It's OK, you can laugh at this" on the cover)--when Koreans see Noh Hong-chul doing what Wikipedia calls "his trademark 'lewd dance,'" they're expecting it and find it far less baffling and unsettling (What is that guy DOING!?!) than I did the first time I saw it. If you don't realize that Ayoade is a comedian, and one with a special interest in visual world-building, then the pretentious French New Wave-style cinematography of Submarine just seems like...pretentious French New Wave-style cinematography.

Who do publishers think pays for all this?

This just amazes me--Amazon is forcing publishers to ship expensive art and gift books in single boxes, because otherwise the books get messed up and can't be sold. (Via PV.)

Why does Amazon have to force publishers to treat their high-end products so that they can actually be sold to people? Well, God forbid the publishers produce saleable goods!

Seriously, read this and marvel: "One frustrated publisher said, 'Isn't it Amazon's problem if their customers want their gift book [sic] in each individual box? Isn't their problem [sic] to deal with?'"

Wow. If you are wondering how far publishers have removed themselves from their readers, read that again. It's Amazon's problem that they can't sell what you sold them? Because once Amazon pays the publisher the wholesale price for that book, well, hey, everything's finished. There's no additional step past the wholesale level of sales--Amazon mints money itself for no other purpose than to hand it over to publishers.

There's certainly no reader involved in this, no consumer who shells out $150 for a beautiful-looking art book only to receive one that looks like it got jumped after school for its lunch money. Seriously, have these idiots ever purchased anything on the high end? Have they seen how expensive purses get treated so that they have no nicks or scratches? When people shell out for luxury goods--especially a gift, or something to ornament a living room--they want something that doesn't look like it got run over by a truck.

(I mean, come on. Why did I stop shopping at The World's Worst Barnes & Noble? Because the books were damaged. It astonished and infuriated me that they would sell damaged good for full price. I wondered if any of them had ever actually bought anything before, ever. You don't walk into a clothing store and see a bunch of shredded clothes on the rack, do you?)

Of course it is, in fact, Amazon's problem that it can't sell these goods, which is why Amazon is going to kick these particular publishers in the crotch until they give Amazon a product that it can actually get paid for. And how publishers respond? By calling up a reporter and whining about how much their balls hurt! Because that's how business partners resolve a business dispute, especially when the dispute arises from the fact that you are making it so your partner can't turn a profit.

Honestly, who are these clowns? Are they 12 years old? Have they never gone shopping? Is this their first foray into business? Capitalism? I cannot--I mean, my mouth is literally hanging open as I struggle in vain to understand what they hell they are thinking.

And these are the experts who will save you from the pit of self-publishing....