Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 224

Creating Memoir That's Bigger Than Me, Me, Me

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Today's guest post is from Tracy Seeley,
author of My
Ruby Slippers. Visit her site, or find
out more about her book.




--



Memoir tells stories from our own lives. It says, "This happened to me."  Should
be simple. And yet in writing memoir, we face certain challenges:

How do we rise above a mere retelling of events?

How do we avoid self-indulgence, narcissism, or mere confession? 


How do we make our story compelling to others?  

Meeting these challenges begins with recognizing that events happen in
a context and a memoirist must be more than one person.



Time and Place: Enlarging the Context of Your Story


The story you've come to tell didn't happen in a vacuum. So to get beyond the "me,
me, me" of memoir, consider expanding your sense of time and place.   




The location of events matters. For every place has a multi-layered history and unique
character. Everything from its geological formation to its climate, history and local
stories has contributed to that character and even to who you are. Kathleen Norris' Dakota:
A Spiritual Geography , for example, starts this way:

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West,
often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob's angel, the region
requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing.

From the start, the book focuses on more than "what happened" in Kathleen
Norris' life. It focuses on how the place itself has shaped her experience and its
meaning.



Digging into the history of a place can also help ground your story in more than your
own past. For example, who lived in your house before you did?  Was your subdivision
once a dairy farm? A munitions dump? A town on the Pony Express line? What stories
can you unearth about people who used to live in your town? Before it was even a town,
who was there and what happened? And what does all of this suggest to you about the
meaning of the place, and your story in it?



When I wrote My
Ruby Slippers , I did a lot of research about the places I used to live, and
discovered things that enriched the meaning of my story.  For example, the house
I grew up in stood about a mile from the junction of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers,
which had been the center of Plains Indian culture for centuries.  With a little
digging into the life ways and beliefs of the people who had lived there before me,
I was able to think of my house as more than the center of my story's universe, but
as one layer in a deeper and more interesting story.



Family history can also be a great trove of information. In Where
I Was From , Joan Didion traces her family story back through generations of
women who "made the crossing" by covered wagon to California. And in all of them,
whom she comes to know through letters, diaries and family stories, she detects a
common character. The women were, above all, pragmatic, "without much time for second
thoughts."  "The past could be jettisoned, children buried and parents left behind."
Didion sees these same traits in her own mother, which brings us to the present of
her own life. This grounds her personal story in family history and family character,
as well as in the familiar American story of westward migration. All of these give
deeper meaning to her tale.



If you're not telling such an expansive story, even a little historical research can
take you beyond the limits of your own memory. In his memoir Dough ,
Mort Zachter retells a story he often heard growing up: how even during a famous blizzard,
his penny-pinching uncles still showed up to work at their bread store. But this had
all happened before Zachter was born, so with a little research, he can tell us that
"On December 26, 1947, snowfall officially began at 5:25 a.m." 




Similarly, looking up events that coalesce around a certain date can elevate your
story into something beyond the moment of a limited self. Dinty Moore's memoir Between
Panic and Desire locates his life in the cultural context of the 60s. He tells
us, for example, that "Leave it to Beaver" debuted on the same day the Soviets launched
Sputnik I. This seemingly unlikely pairing helps create the larger story that Moore
belongs to, and explains the lens through which he sees his life. 




In another section, which introduces us to his own Irish father, Moore tells a host
of mini-stories about other fathers, including the one on Father Knows Best, one in
a newspaper article about a divorce, Emperor Penguin fathers, the actor Tim Allen's
father, and others. In doing so, Moore tells a compelling story about himself and
his father within this wider frame.




The Two Selves of Memoir: Distance, Reflection and Self-Awareness


Even in an enlarged context of time and place, the point of memoir is not really what
happened. It's about what you, the writer, make of what happened. What is its meaning?
Why does it matter?    




To arrive at that meaning requires what memoirist Vivian Gornick calls "detached empathy,"
or a distance between the self who writes and the self things happened to. In that
space, we can explore the meaning of events and think about them on the page. We can
also stand back and reflect on who that other self was at the time events unfolded
and what we think of him or her now.   




An example: Meredith Hall's stunning memoir, Without
a Map , tells how at 16, she became pregnant and her town, school, church and
family all turned against her, shunning her, shutting her out. It's a painful story.
And yet what keeps it from becoming a "poor me" confessional tale is Hall's empathetic
distance, her awareness that her writerly self and her 16-year-old self are not the
same. Hall begins the book recognizing both the distance and the connection between
the two: "Even now, I talk too much and too loud, claiming ground, afraid that I will
disappear from this life, too." 




Shortly after, she looks back at that young self who was forced to disappear: 
"Sometimes, rarely, I get a flicker of understanding … and feel a powerful protectiveness
of that stunned and desperate girl."



A memoirist's reflections can take many forms, even examining the writer's memory
itself. In I
Could Tell You Stories , Patricia Hampl recalls an episode during the Vietnam
War when she is traveling by Greyhound bus to visit her draft-resister boyfriend in
prison. When the bus stops to pick up passengers, the young Hampl watches as outside
her window, a "godlike young man with golden curls" passionately kisses a "stout middle-aged
woman in a flowered house dress." She is fascinated, especially when the woman boards
the bus, sits across from Hampl, tells her the young man is her husband and cryptically
says, "I could tell you stories." Years later, Hampl not only tells us what happened,
but puzzles over why it has stuck with her so long.

Whether it was the unguarded face of love, or the
red gash down the middle of the warring country I was traveling through, or this exhausted
farm woman's promise of untold tales that bewitched me, I can't say.

This thoughtful, empathetic, reflective persona is the real heart of
memoir, the voice that readers will follow and want to know.  The discoveries
it makes over the course of the story, the wisdom it uncovers and brings to the tale,
even its confusions and uncertainties—these will carry the audience through, well
beyond the limits of "me, me, me."  




--



[image error]Find
out more about Tracy Seeley's memoir, My
Ruby Slippers.


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Best Tweets on Break (SXSW)

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Best Tweets is on break due to SXSW, where I've been speaking and attending panels.
We'll be back next week.



Keep an eye out for my special project releasing on April 1, The
Future of Publishing: Enigma Variations. If you'd like to receive updates on this
project, as well as other regular news/insights, sign
up here.




Other insightful diversions:




Want to know about the best stuff I read each week?


Click here to subscribe
to my shared items.




List of Tweeps most
often included in weekly Best Tweets for Writers (always under development)



Become a fan at the Writer's Digest Facebook
page (12K fans)

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The Best Education for Writing Memoir

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Today's post is from regular guest and favorite, Darrelyn
Saloom. Follow her on Twitter, or read
her previous guest posts. Pictured above: Darrelyn's mother in 1969 as
she works her way to owning her own business.




--



Mama owned an answering service and worked a switchboard under a beehive of red hair
that matched her bright lipstick. She had no eyebrows, so she penciled dark, wide
arcs over her large, dollar-bill green eyes. She named the switchboard Board One,
because it held her most devoted customers—the ones who followed her from another
telephone exchange as she finagled her way out of a fiasco and into her own business.




I spent most of my twenties working for my mother. I'd take off now and then for the
Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Northwest. But after a few months, I'd return to South
Louisiana and slap on a headset and plug into one of her ten switchboards. It was
the best job I ever had. Not only did I get a paycheck every two weeks, I amassed
a PhD's worth of education in human nature.



Every day I observed Edward Albee-like dramas played out with Cajun and Texan accents.
Each switchboard held one-hundred phone lines for big and small oil companies, large
trucking conglomerates, and individual hotshot drivers. Some of my favorite characters
were a geologist, a veterinarian, and a political lobbyist. But the most entertaining
was a married couple similar to George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?




Armed with a headset and a few patch cords, I was able to connect customers to their
callers who held on another line. This was before cell phones, so messages piled up
while I beeped clients and waited for them to call in, usually from a pay phone. If
clients had numerous calls to return, I'd be asked to stay on the line in order to
dial up each person on the message list. This saved coins and time.




I spoiled my customers by staying with them as Mama and other operators picked up
my slack while I sat privy to men and women's private lives. I'm still amazed people
would allow me to listen to their most intimate conversations. The person they called
did not know I eavesdropped and spoke freely. But my clients knew I was there and
trusted me with their wildest shenanigans.



The only time I had to say no to the practice of listening was during checkout time.
Every plug on ten switchboards would be crossed and stretched in artful webs. The
women beside me had no time to reach over and answer my phone lines while their boards
exploded in a frenzy of buzzing and light. Arms flew and mouths yammered for two hours
straight as operators noted the whereabouts of service personnel, another eye-opening
aspect of the job.




For instance, the couple I alluded to earlier as George and Martha kept me on high
alert. George would check in to tell me he'd be at his girlfriend's apartment as Martha,
his wife, would call with her own secret whereabouts. At the end of the evening, those
two would collide at their residence rip-roaring drunk. George would phone in to slur
that he was home and I could hear Martha spouting obscenities in the background.  



One evening, I realized they'd both checked in to the same hotel with insignificant
others. In a panic I told Mama the situation. Without hesitation she sent an operator
to drive by the hotel to ensure George and Martha's rooms stood far apart so the married
couple wouldn't spot one another at an ice machine or stumbling across the parking
lot. Fortunately, their rooms rumbled at opposite sides of the Holiday Inn.




That kind of quick thinking made my mother a great operator. I was good but not the
best. Like Mama, I learned to recognize voices even in the clearing of a throat. Before
callers could finish saying their names, I'd spin a wheel on top of my switchboard
and pull out a 3x5-inch notebook to record customers' itineraries—tiny journals of
their lives.




It's no wonder I'm compelled to write nonfiction, even though I set out to write fiction.
Perhaps I've just heard too many true stories and observed a cast of characters that
entertained me so thoroughly I've no need to make up things. For a decade, I jotted
down details and worked as a keeper of marvelous secrets and fabulous lies.




It's been twenty-five years since I plugged into other people's dramas. Since then
I've sporadically attended the local university. Mostly I've learned the craft of
writing by reading and studying on my own. Looking back, I now know that it was my
job at Mama's answering service that provided the best education for writing memoir.




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If you'd like to read more essays by writers about day jobs, I highly recommend "Fear," which
originally appeared in The Three Penny
Review by Charlie
Haas, author of the wonderful and quirky novel, The
Enthusiast .




Also, check out Sonny
Brewer's collection of essays by authors such as Howard Bahr, Larry Brown, Rick
Bragg, Pat Conroy, Tom Franklin, Connie May Fowler, John Grisham, Tim Gautreaux, Silas
House, and many more of my favorite writers titled Don't
Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.

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Catch SXSW PubCamp Streaming Live!

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Tomorrow I'll be giving a brief talk at SXSW PubCamp in
Austin, along with some outstanding speakers from the publishing industry.



The free event is now wait-listed, but catch
it live and online here.







AGENDA

4:00 p.m. (CST)

Keynote by Sarah Wendell, Smart
Bitches, Trashy Books




4:30 p.m.

A word from publishing insiders


Calvin Reid and Rachel
Deahl, Publishers Weekly



5:00 p.m.


Choosing the Right Publishing Option for Your Project


Jane Friedman




5:30 p.m.

Marketing the Smart (er, Not Annoying) Way

Kat Meyer, Kelly
Leonard, Kevin Smokler and Meg LaBorde
Kuehn



6:00 p.m.

Keynote by Scott Dadich, Executive Director, Editorial Development for Condé Nast
and Rick Levine Senior Vice President, Editorial Operations for Condé Nast

A look at the growing digital publishing industry and Condé Nast's current initiative
to bring all of its 18 award-winning brands to tablets and other mobile devices.

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Ask the Agent Power Panel

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This weekend, Writer's Digest is hosting its first online "power panel" that features 4
agents ready to answer all of your questions related to getting published. The
price of $129 comes with:



A query letter critique from Writer's Digest publisher Phil Sexton

A 3-month subscription to WritersMarket.com (which
includes all listings in Guide
to Literary Agents )

Exclusive 3-day access to four agents, during which no question will be left unanswered!

Agents participating include:



Ted Weinstein


Verna Dreisbach


Kelly Sonnack (Andrew Brown Literary)



Michelle Wolfson


Click here to read
all bios.




If you're starting to look for an agent, write a query, or wonder why your work keeps
getting rejected, this is the perfect opportunity to get educated.



Go
sign up!


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The Relationship Between Authors, Agents and Publishers

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Today's guest post is by John Rember, author of MFA
in a Box, as well as a memoir and two short story collections. He is Writer
at Large at The College of Idaho.




--



It was a good novel.  It was going to need a little attention from an editor
willing to shape it for a specific readership, but it passed the Barnes & Noble
test: it was more interesting and better written than at least half of the books on
the New Releases table.  



It was a classic bildungsroman. The narrative character was an intelligent
young woman, still in high school in rust-belt America, hired part-time by a medical
research lab at the start of the AIDS epidemic. She used her new awareness of the
wider world and its tragedies to deepen her own capacity for love and empathy, and
to leverage herself into an Ivy League university. By the novel's end, she understood
and forgave the harsh forces of family and economy that had shaped her.




The author was one of my MFA students, and she had sent the novel to two agents to
see if they would represent it, and as often happens in these matters, both of them
chose the same week to notify her that they would pass on it.



It was a bad week for her, and a bad week for me. You hope to see your students succeed,
even if it's only in their search for an agent. In a gentler system, an agent would
have taken her on and spent time and effort finding an editor who would have loved
the book and fought for its publication. That didn't happen. I hope it does. I don't
think it will.  



Agents aren't at all like Broadway Danny Rose. They should be, but they aren't. I
don't currently have or want an agent, but I started with one of the more high-powered
agents in the business, now known to me only as She Who Must Not Be Called Spider
Woman. Working with her cost me a fair amount of my blood supply. The manuscript for
my memoir Traplines ,
eventually published by Pantheon, came back from her office by return mail.



My current relaxed attitude toward my own writing, which is that I'm content to be
posthumously famous, is a direct result of working—or not working—with this agent.



But my troubles with my agent were never her fault. They were inherent to the relationship
between agents and writers, which is a predator-prey kind of deal. Agents are not
hoping to find, in you the writer, a diamond in the rough, a talent to be nurtured,
a friend to be encouraged. They're looking for the next John Grisham and they're looking
for 15% of a multi-million dollar advance. They are cold and hard businesspeople—if
they aren't, they end up living under bridges, and not the bridges in the Hamptons—so
your talent or niceness is not their first consideration.



Many writers assume that with the big houses, a few bestsellers subsidize midlist
writers. That's the way it used to work. Now the CFOs of publishing houses demand
that every book be a money-maker. In practice, this means editors are told to look
for the next bestseller, and they, not being psychic, think that it looks like the
last bestseller. Hence John Grisham, James Patterson, Dan Brown, and the dead Swedish
guy.



And hence the advice I've given to my students who want to make money as writers:
Look carefully at the structures, characters, and language of bestsellers if you want
to be taken seriously by agents or editors. It's not bad advice—J.K. Rowling was following
Tom Brown's School Days when she sent Harry Potter off to Hogwarts—but it's
seldom advice that new writers with literary ambitions want to hear.



It certainly isn't what you want to hear when it means that you have to rewrite a
novel that you've poured years of life into, especially if rewriting means eliminating
subtleties and ambiguities, and simplifying characters. You don't want to hear that
you were writing for your reader's neocortex when you should have been focusing on
her limbic system. It's occurred to me that every MFA program should include a course
in neurology.



But there is hope, however perverse: the publishing industry is going through a climate
change Al Gore could only dream of. Publishers have little idea about what will happen
with e-books, although anyone not in Gaddafi-style denial knows they're going to be
the The End of the World As We Know It.  



And self-publishing is easier and cheaper than ever. The trouble is, you have to be
your own marketing department and quality control. Traditional media won't normally
review self-published books unless you've become notorious or you somehow manage to
sell a hundred thousand copies. Publisher's Weekly does not look favorably
upon books that haven't come from their mainstream clients.  



The Huffington Post has featured several articles written by authors who are taking
their work directly to Kindle. So far they're vampire-genre books, but I expect that
more and more literary works will go directly to e-distribution, especially once Amazon
hires a heavy-duty acquisitions editor. If enough e-copies sell, they'll think about
printing hard copies.



Traditionalists are dismayed by this situation, but the arithmetic can be more favorable
for a midlist writer than the author-agent-editor-publisher daisy chain we're used
to.




My latest book is MFA
in a Box: A Why to Write Book . My editor at Pantheon passed on it when I offered
it to him—when he mentioned the dead Swedish guy, I said I didn't mind dying for art,
but I drew the line at becoming Swedish.  



I went looking for a university press, but then Dream of Things Publishing appeared
on the scene, with a business model that is taking advantage of the opportunities
left by the ongoing collapse of the old system.  



Mike O'Mary, the Dream of Things publisher,
is trying to look at the current realities of the business, and to fill a need, and
to make money.  Here's his booklist so far, and all of them pass the Barnes &
Noble test:



Saying Good-bye, a collection of wise, humorous, and deeply human stories about
loss. O'Mary is shopping it to hospice and hospital organizations and college psychology
classes, with encouraging results so far. [Disclosure: It's edited by Julie Rember,
the person I'm married to, who knows a good story when she hears one.]

Everything I Never Wanted to Be, the comedienne Dina Kucera's authentic, affecting,
dark and funny memoir of addiction and family dysfunction. 

My MFA in a Box, which is a writer's memoir focused on making the lives of
writing students easier and happier. It's an existential instruction manual for anyone
in an MFA program. And it's a defense of going through life as an artist, even if
you don't get rich at it.

The Note, Mike O'Mary's short  and elegant book about how to recognize
situations that require gratitude, and how to express gratitude when you're wise enough
to feel it.



Within a year of start-up, Dream of Things has
acquired four high-quality niche books, identified organizations and individuals as
likely readers, and is making a profit. O'Mary's costs are low because payment for
writers comes out of receipts, not advances. He uses print-on-demand and generally
doesn't take returns, which means you'll never see a Dream
of Things book on the Barnes & Noble New Releases table.



But O'Mary's business model allows him to use literary quality as a major criterion.
It also can be better for writers, who can sometimes be confused by the accounting
methods of mainstream publishers.



Dream of Things is doing something that mainstream publishers haven't done in a long
time, which is to work with writers to actively craft their books.



Over the next couple of years, Dream of Things—like Barnes & Noble and a bunch
of fine old names in New York publishing—will make it or won't.  



But so far I've made more on MFA in a Box than
I've made on some of my other books, and working with Dream of Things has been a pleasure. 
It's been the sort of deal that an agentless posthumous writer with a few good stories
can feel happy about.




--




John Rember's w[image error]eekly
blog on writing can be found at mfainabox.com.

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The Future of the Novelist

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This week, I'll be at SXSWi in Austin, where
I'm presenting a brief session on your publishing options at PubCamp (free!),
and moderating a SXSWi panel,  The
Self-Publishing Novelist.



I can't envision a more exciting or opportune time to be at a national event, guiding
a discussion on self-publishing. Why?



Take these 3 high-profile cases that have received broad media attention in the last
6 months:



Self-publishing novelist Amanda Hocking. Here's a BusinessInsider report that's typical
of recent coverage: "This
26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle"




JA Konrath (along with other mid-list authors, e.g., Lee
Goldberg or Alisa
Valdes). Here's a TechCrunch report focused on Konrath's success, "Have
We Reached A Tipping Point Where Self-Publishing Is Better Than Getting A Book Deal?"




Seth Godin's launch of Domino, in partnership with Amazon, written about here by GigaOm
[scroll to end of article]: "Book
Publishers Need to Wake Up and Smell the Disruption"






Tension between traditional and indie communities is ever visible in my Twitter & Facebook conversation
streams. Some are adamant that 99% of self-published work is total crap. Others are
adamant that traditional publishing has become a total crap game that no longer serves
a need.




Take a look at this message thread on my Facebook wall, after I made a post about
Amanda Hocking. It goes on for three pages (even longer than what I'm showing here).



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There are perhaps thousands of opinions and predictions about where all this is headed.
(And I'll be issuing my own prediction on
April 1.)




The one thing I know for certain, at this moment, is what
Amanda Hocking recently said on her blog, in response to all the sensationalized coverage
about her story:

Some books and authors are bestsellers, but most
aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but
in all honesty, it's harder to be a bestseller self-publishing than it is with a house.

This viewpoint is echoed by Lee Goldberg, over at JA Konrath's blog, when
he offered the following advice. (Keep in mind this is for an audience of storytellers,
mostly genre novelists.)

If you've never been in print before, I believe
you'd be a fool not to take a midlist paperback or a hardcover deal … even a terrible
one … over self-publishing on the Kindle. Financially, you might make less (either
in failure or modest success) … but the difference will be more than made up for in
editing, marketing, wider readership, wider name recognition, and professional prestige
(and that prestige does mean something, whether you want to admit it or not).



You can always go back to self-publishing … and when you do, you will be bring that
wider readership, name recognition, and professional prestige with you. But a book
deal doesn't come along every day, and that's still going to mean something for a
long time yet … and I suspect it still will even if half the bookstores in America
close tomorrow.



Of course, that's assuming you have an agent or publisher interested in your work.
What if you don't? What if you just want to get your work out there?



You better be damn sure your book is up to professional standards.

And to build on that, you also better realize that publishing your book
isn't the hard part. Marketing it is the hardest part. (Thanks to Jason
Pinter for reminding us of this on a recent Digital
Book World webinar.)



John Sundman, one of the SXSWi panelists,
is an author I've known for more than a decade. Or, that is to say, I've watched him
struggle for a decade. He hand sells like a demon and tries to get attention any way
he can. His efforts have caught the attention of Cory Doctorow, Slashdot, and cyberpunk
celebrity Bruce Sterling.




One thing that's fascinating about John's journey is that Bruce Sterling posted about
John's time-consuming and weakly remunerated marketing efforts under this headline:

The
Future of Printed Fiction

I read his post as either sarcastic-derogatory OR a sad prediction on
the growing reality that the novelists who make a name for themselves are often the
ones who actively self-promote and market (whether as part of a meaningful online
"community"-"conversation" or not!).



Is this the future of fiction? First, I think printed fiction is probably something
that becomes marketed mostly to one's biggest or most devoted fans. Electronic editions
become the mass-market (catch the new reader) editions.



Take for instance what Lincoln
Michel says over at The Faster Times:

… We should understand that [Amanda Hocking's] bulk
sale model is closer to the bulk cheap paperback sale model (think Harlequin Romance
novels in drug stores) than the traditional literary publishing model that people
are comparing it to. For one thing, Hocking's model is based on quickly written series
of works. Hocking, at age 26, has 9 books for sale and has written 19. Hooking readers
with ultra-cheap first books doesn't work if you spend years on your next novel that
has nothing to do with the first. Let's just say it isn't a model that is
going to work for your Thomas Pynchons and Marilynne Robinsons of the world.

So, what model will work for the Pynchons and Robinsons of the world?
If they need traditional publishers to support them in their careers, is that the
role that New York publishers primarily serve? (That seems doubtful, since that's
not where the big bucks are. Publishing would have to revert to its roots as a gentlemanly
occupation where profits amount to pennies.)




I don't know many authors who are willing to do what John does, but, on the other
hand, what John does can also be done in various forms online, and this is exactly
what Hocking did:

This is literally years of work you're seeing. And
hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing
is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that
isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies
me.



I also have this tremendous sense of urgency, like if I don't get everything out now
and do everything now, while the iron is hot, everything I've worked for will just
fall away. For the first time, I truly understand why workaholics are workaholics.
You can't stop working, because if you do, it unravels all the work you've already
done. You have to keep going, or you'll die.

Is this the future of the novelist (regardless of format)? These are the issues and
dilemmas we'll be discussing on
the SXSWi panel. Hope to see you there.



Bonus: Margaret Atwood discussed this issue at TOC 2011. Go
watch the video!






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7 Don't-Miss Sites for Online Marketing

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Today's guest post is from author Meg
Waite Clayton. You may remember her from an earlier guest post, How
Book Club Readers (and Bookstores) Can Drive Success.




--



How friendly are you, really? Do you have enough followers to qualify as a cult? Are
you still blogging, or have you bought into the headlines announcing blogging is dead?
Do you tweet?




Let's pause for a minute to imagine those questions being asked of Hemingway or Austen.
Dickens … well, maybe Dickens.



My third novel, The
Four Ms. Bradwells , makes its way into a considerably different world than The
Language of Light did eight years ago. When I asked the publisher of my first
novel what I could do to help spread the word, the answer was "we're doing everything
that needs to be done"—which involved a few bookstore readings and a lot of postage
stamps and long-distance phone calls. They did allow that if I sent them a list of
addresses—snail mail ones—they would send out postcards announcing the book to my
real-life friends.



Now the question about online marketing for authors isn't "if" but "where."




The obvious answers are your author website, your blog, Facebook and Twitter,
perhaps Tumblr and Scribd.
But here are seven others you might consider participating in, and why.



1. Goodreads


2. Library Thing


These are two of the most popular online forums for readers. Many publishers will
do book giveaways on these sites to stir up early enthusiasm; ask your publisher,
or consider adding giveaway books yourself. You can also host author chats. (One drawback:
With so many authors on-site, it can be a challenge to get readers to come to your
particular party.)



3. Amazon Author Central


Set up an author profile on Amazon, and you can stream your blog to Amazon, and—this
is perhaps the main reason to do it—gain access to weekly Bookscan numbers, along
with geographical sales data. Trying to decide whether to set up a Milwaukee reading
while you're in town to visit your Aunt Margaret? You can see how many readers you
have there who might be interested in your next book.



You also get an easy way to register the mistakes Amazon makes—and like everyone,
they do occasionally make mistakes. When The
Four Ms. Bradwells page went up, the author line for the hardcover read "Karen
White, reader." It wasn't even Karen White the actor, who is reading the audio version.
And last I heard, readers still have to read hardcovers themselves.




4. Booktour.com


You enter your readings once here, and news of them goes out in e-mails to people
wherever you're reading, as well as on Amazon, GoodReads, and elsewhere. You
can add a widget to your website so they show up there, too.



5. Redroom


This online site comes with a number of perks for authors, including a separate listing
of author blogs. The folks who run it reach out beyond its own font, too, to help
authors place work on Aol News.



6. Sites Where Writers Connect


Sites like the Writer's Digest community and SheWrites are
full of writers, most of whom are also readers (one would hope!). And they tend to
be supportive forums.




I've certainly read books for authors I've met on these kinds of sites with a eye
to providing blurbs for book jackets, and received invitations to join group marketing
efforts. They're also good for sharing knowledge about writing and publishing, and
making writing friends.




On book tour this month, I'm sharing in-person after-reading time with writer-pals
I've met on these forums rather than returning to empty hotel rooms. And I've discovered
some terrific books to read, too.



And last but not least:




7. Wherever your own target market hangs out


Your own mileage may vary on this one. Where do readers who might like your book in
particular hang out online? If you've written about, say, a woman runner, you might
try the Women's Running forum at RunnersWorld.com.
It may take some thought and some sleuthing around. Or you may already participate
in these forums.



Which brings me to the most important point about online outreach. Consider this:
If you look through your front door peephole and see someone obviously wanting to
sell you something, does that make you more or less likely to open the door?



If you post jumbo-sized copies of your book jacket in places that rightfully belong
to others—their walls on chat sites, their Facebook pages, their blogs —folks will
recognize your cover in stores. But they will also think "that's the obnoxious author
who is spamming my space," even if it isn't on MySpace. If they pick up your book,
it will likely be only to stick it in the back of the frozen fruit case. If your every
post says, "Buy my book," your novel is more likely to end up in the technical books
section than in the check-out line.



Be yourself. Be nice. Be a friend to the people you friend.




Don't spam people, just interact.




If you're an interesting, interested person online, folks you cross paths with will
take a look at your page on whatever site you're on, and click over to your website
or blog—places where your book jacket belongs. They'll recognize it in bookstores
and think, that's that nice author I've met online. And in the process, you might
also find that you make some meaningful friendships, and broaden your own horizons,
reading and otherwise.





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Meg Waite Clayton's newest book, The
Four Ms. Bradwells, will be released this month. Go
take a look.


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Best Tweets for Writers (week ending 3/4/11)

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I watch Twitter, so you don't have to. Visit each Sunday for the week's best Tweets.
If I missed a great Tweet, leave it in the Comments. Want to know about the best stuff
I read each week? Click
here to subscribe to my shared items.




Quick plug: check out these live, online classes from Writer's Digest:



Ask
the Agent Power Panel, March 11-13. Get all of your personal questions answered
by Ted Weinstein, Verna Dreisbach, Kelly Sonnack, and Michelle Wolfson





Breaking
Into Corporate Writing, presented by I.J. Schecter, on March 10





















Best of the Best

"Traditional
publishing and indie publishing aren't all that different" - @amanda_hocking [must-read
for indie authors]

@janefriedman



Marian Lizzi of @PerigeeBooks lists top 10 reasons
she rejects a proposal


@twliterary



How to Extend the Value of In-Person Events with Social
Media


@DanBlank

Getting Published + Agents/Editors

Agent Lucienne Diver on writers who
don't listen


@victoriastrauss



Reasons agents reject queries: Opening with a question,
too many issues/plotlines/characters.


@inkyelbows



Confessions of a literary magazine editor


@ladyjournos

Craft + Technique

Sometimes it's the little things that can
get you rejected--cliches, overused actions, predictable dialogue


@elizabethscraig



What is "play-by-play narration" and how do you avoid
it?


@Kid_Lit



Great advice from @WritersDigest: 8 Ways to Write a
5-Star Chapter One


@dbschlosser

Publishing News + Trends

Here @DigiBookWorld interviews me [video]
on the new realities of digital publishing


@MichaelHyatt




From Mashable: Five Digital Media Trends to Watch


@PublishersWkly



40 years of e-books [infographic]


@BubbleCow

Marketing + Promotion

9 Ways to Give a Better Book Reading


@MrMediaTraining

Social Media

Expand Your Social Media Mix: Twitter
Alone is Not Enough


@jowyang

Self-Publishing + E-Publishing

A smart analysis of sloppy Amanda Hocking
self-pub stories by @TheLincoln


@Nosowsky



Dos and don'ts of ebook formatting by Joshua Tallent


@unrulyguides



Kindle Publishing Made Easier > useful info and links


@nickdaws

Looking for more?




Want to know about the best stuff I read each week?


Click here to subscribe
to my shared items.




Follow me on Twitter (@JaneFriedman)







List of Tweeps most
often included in weekly Best Tweets for Writers (always under development)



Follow Writer's Digest editors on Twitter: @writersdigest @brianklems @robertleebrewer @jessicastrawser @chucksambuchino @psexton1 @kellymesserly




Become a fan at the Writer's Digest Facebook
page (11K fans)

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Fact Versus Truth in Writing Fiction

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Today's post is from regular guest Susan
Cushman. Visit her
blog!





--



If you've been following the lawsuit filed by Ablene Cooper against Kathryn
Stockett, author of The New York Times bestseller The Help, I'm sure you
saw this article in the February 17 issue of the Times: "A
Maid Sees Herself in a Novel, and Objects."




Ablene Cooper is a 60-year-old black woman who works for Stockett's brother and his
wife, and the Times article says they encouraged her to sue Stockett for "an unpermitted
appropriation of her name and image, which she finds emotionally distressing."




The name Stockett used for the character in the book is "Aibileen." There are similarities
in the lives of the fictional character and the real person of Ablene Cooper. The
Times article also says, "The lawsuit, filed in Hinds County Circuit Court, contends
that Kathryn Stockett was 'asked not to use the name and likeness of Ablene' before
the book was published, though it does not specify who asked."




Two years before this Times piece, I
met Stockett at a reading/signing at Lemuria Books in Jackson (Miss.), where she
read before her hometown crowd for the first time. Her work fascinated me; I came
of age in Jackson, and grew up in the neighborhoods fictionalized in The Help.
Stockett has received lots of criticism for the light in which she portrayed blacks
during this era, even for her use of dialect, which I thought was point on.



I read the New York Times article with interest and wanted to write a post about it,
but I felt inadequate to address the legal issues. So, I asked John D. Mason, who
is a literary agent and a literary/art and entertainment attorney with The
Intellectual Property Group, PLLC, in Washington, D.C. to answer a few questions
about the situation.





Was this a dangerous move on Stockett's part to use such
a similar name and assimilations of image?

Generally, it was not wise for an author to have a character name so similar
to that of a living person and to also have facts so closely match real life in fiction
(I am using public reports on the lawsuit for my facts).




These types of cases are expensive and fact intensive, and frequently it is difficult
to establish damages. I would be surprised if this went to trial and Ms. Cooper was
ultimately successful in achieving a significant recovery, although I have been surprised
many times before.




As a general rule, fiction authors control their work and so doing something so close
to reality just does not make sense. If Ms. Stockett had thought about it and changed
the name and facts only a little bit, this wouldn't be an issue at all. Better safe
than sorry.

The Times article says, "Though the character of Aibileen is
portrayed in a sympathetic, even saintly light, she endures the racial insults of
the time, something that Ms. Cooper said she found 'embarrassing.'" I read the book,
and having grown up in "North" Jackson, Mississippi, during the 50s and 60s, I found
the descriptions of the times to be very accurate, and Stockett's voice to be non-judgmental.
How legitimate are Ms. Cooper's claims that the book harmed her? What do you think
the chances of the plaintiff winning this suit are? And, should Ms. Stockett have
done more to protect herself? 

I don't think it is likely that this case will go to trial or that Ms.
Cooper will receive a significant award of damages if it does and she is successful.




This is a name and likeness/right of publicity case and those tort claims arise generally
from an individual's right of privacy. This lawsuit is most likely what is known as
an action for appropriation of Ms. Cooper's name and likeness, which is an action
a non-celebrity brings for unauthorized use of their name and likeness, generally
where there is no commercial use involved.




A right of publicity case generally is one where a person is a celebrity or uses their
persona in a commercial sense and thus they have a property interest in controlling
exploitation of their persona or name and likeness. The goal of the state laws which
create the action for appropriation of name and likeness cause of action are to prevent
emotional/reputational injury and protect people from invasions of their privacy (it
does not appear that this is a false light case).

I believe that Ms. Stockett's attorneys will argue that she
has first amendment defenses, that any similarities are incidental and de minimis
in their impact, if any, on Ms. Cooper, and that her artistic expression is only coincidentally
and not intentionally similar to Ms. Cooper's name and/or likeness. (It should be
noted that a likeness is generally understood to literally be the face of an individual,
which does not appear to be an issue here).




If Ms. Cooper is successful in convincing a jury or judge that the use made by Ms.
Stockett is a misappropriation of her name and likeness and violation of her right
of publicity, she would be entitled to her actual damages, which may be difficult
to quantify and prove by evidence but could arguably be an apportioned amount of profits
attributable to the commercial exploitation of her name and likeness or right of publicity.




If there is a showing of bad faith on the part of Ms. Stockett—the reason the complaint
notes that Ms. Stockett was asked not to use or appropriate Ms. Cooper's persona—then
Ms. Cooper may be entitled to a trebling or other enhancement of her actual damages.




Similarly, in the event of such a bad faith finding, Ms. Cooper may also be entitled
to attorney's fees and costs under the Mississippi statute.




All of the foregoing gets very complicated and the bottom line is that it will be
an expensive effort and trial with, in my opinion, a potentially small likelihood
of success and little likelihood of recoverable damages. I think it is most likely
that there will be a settlement based on the cost of defense. Essentially, I think
it is likely that Ms. Stockett will buy peace based on how much it will cost to defend
the entire case through trial.

We've been discussing the risks involved in portraying real people in a negative light
in fiction-writing. Are authors "safe" from lawsuits if they change the names of the
real-life people they portray in nonfiction books, like memoirs?

Not necessarily. If the people they are writing about are sufficiently
identifiable, even after changing the name the author may be exposing his or herself
to claims for libel, false light, public disclosure of private facts and related cases.
Obviously, the truth is usually a good defense to some of these types of claims, but
there can even be situations where disclosing true facts can be actionable in certain
jurisdictions. If you are unsure, best to consult a literary attorney to conduct due
diligence on the manuscript. This
is a great discussion of the issue.

--



John D. Mason lectures 10–20 times a year on legal issues for artists and writers,
and will be among the faculty at the 2011
Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop in September, along with his client, Bob
Cowser, Jr. They'll be doing a presentation on author-agent relations and other
legal issues that writers need to know about. (Registration is open!)

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