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The Hallmarks of a Bad Argument

Photo by Yan Krukau

Note from Jane: Today’s post is somewhat tangential to the usual focus of this site, but I’d argue—for nonfiction writers anyway—knowing how to make a decent argument is fundamental to persuasive writing, op-ed writing, and overall literary citizenship. It’s something that I taught in writing classes, in fact, because the students needed the information. Desperately.

Last month, when I was writing and commenting on the AI fraud situation, I encountered some of the most voluble debate of my career—along with some of the most egregious straw-man arguments I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I wondered if people were serious about the points they were making or just really confused. In any event, I often wished for more good-faith arguments from people interested in thoughtful debate.

I have been a subscriber to a newsletter called Tangle for the better part of a year now. It looks at political issues and current events in the US and summarizes what people on both sides are saying. I greatly appreciate how it engages in thoughtful and reasoned debate. Recently, I recommended it in my free newsletter, Electric Speed, and the people at Tangle reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in cross-posting one of their articles on how to make better arguments—by avoiding really bad ones. I immediately said yes.

Because Tangle mainly covers political news and events, the examples you’ll find here are drawn from the political arena. It is probably the first and last time you’ll ever find overtly political content at this site. Keep in mind it’s to illustrate the hallmarks of bad argument and not meant to invite everyone into a political debate. For that reason, I’m turning off comments on this post due to the inevitability of that happening.

If you do wish to comment on this article (in a non-political fashion), you can reach out to me directly through my contact form, or you can comment on social media where I will be sharing this post (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). Political comments will be deleted swiftly.

This post is by Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle—and adapted from a Tangle article published on June 23, 2023.

We need more debate.

I’m a firm believer that one of the biggest issues in our society—especially politically—is that people who disagree spend a lot less time talking to each other than they should.

Earlier in June, I wrote about how the two major political candidates are dodging debates. The next week I wrote about how a well known scientist (or someone like him) should actually engage Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his views about vaccines.

In both cases, I received a lot of pushback. There are, simply put, many millions of Americans who believe that some minority views—whether it’s that the 2020 election was stolen or vaccines can be dangerous or climate change is going to imminently destroy the planet or there are more than two genders—are not worth discussing with the many people who hold those viewpoints. Many of these same people believe influential voices are not worth airing and are too dangerous to be on podcasts or in public libraries or in front of our children.

On the whole, I think this is wrongheaded. I’ve written a lot about why. But something I hadn’t considered is that people are skeptical about the value of debate because there are so many dishonest ways to have a debate. People aren’t so much afraid of a good idea losing to a bad idea; they are afraid that, because of bad-faith tactics, reasonable people will be fooled into believing the bad idea.

Because of that, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about all the dishonest ways of making arguments.

The nature of this job means not only that I get to immerse myself in politics, data, punditry, and research, but that I get a chance to develop a keen understanding of how people argue—for better, and for worse.

Let me give you an example.

Recently, we covered Donald Trump’s fourth indictment, when a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 others over allegations of a sprawling conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory in Georgia. As usual, we got some feedback and criticism from our readers—which we welcome. A couple people asked why Hillary Clinton isn’t also getting indicted, since she also has disputed that she lost a fair and open election.

This, of course, got me talking about the differences in these cases. Clinton conceded the election the night it was called, Trump didn’t. Clinton’s supporters didn’t swarm the Capitol hoping to overturn the results while she—as president—was silent. Trump’s supporters did, and he was.

Then we started having a conversation about what Hillary Clinton did do. She did say that the election was illegitimate and that Russia tampered, and continues to. She did use a private email server…

And now the topic of conversation has changed, from “did Trump deserve to be indicted” to “should Hillary Clinton have been indicted?”

This is an example of “whataboutism,” where the person you’re talking to or arguing with asks you about a different but similar circumstance, and in doing so changes the subject.

Whataboutism

This is probably the argument style I get from readers the most often. There is a good chance you are familiar with it. This argument is usually signaled by the phrase, “What about…?” For instance, anytime I write about Hunter Biden’s shady business deals, someone writes in and says, “What about the Trump children?” My answer is usually, “They also have some shady deals.”

The curse of whataboutism is that we can often do it forever. If you want to talk about White House nepotism, it’d take weeks (or years) to properly adjudicate all the instances in American history, and it would get us nowhere but to excuse the behavior of our own team. That is, of course, typically how this tactic is employed. Liberals aren’t invoking Jared Kushner to make the case that profiting off your family’s time in the White House is okay, they are doing it to excuse the sins of their preferred president’s kid—to make the case that it isn’t that bad, isn’t uncommon, or isn’t worth addressing until the other person gets held accountable first.

Now, there are times when this kind of argument is useful, and sometimes even enlightening. If we are truly asking where the line for prosecutable conduct is for a presidential candidate, it’s useful to find precedent and see where it is being applied inconsistently. If we’re asking “is the government consistent,” comparing Clinton, Trump, Biden, Nixon—it’s all on the table. The same is true if we’re asking about the bias of media organizations, and seeing if they cover similar stories differently, if the subject of the story is the major element that’s changing.

But if I write a story that says your favorite political candidate answered a question in a very poor way, and you respond by saying, “Well, this other politician said something bad, too—I think even worse. What about that statement?” That wouldn’t be helpful, or enlightening.

Furthermore, context is important. If I’m writing about Hunter Biden’s business deals I may reference how other similar situations were addressed or spoken about in the past. But when the topic of discussion is whether one person’s behavior was bad, saying that someone else did something bad does nothing to address the subject at hand. It just changes the subject.

Straw man arguments

This is another common tactic, and it’s one you have probably heard of. A straw man argument is when you build an argument that looks like, but is different than, the one the other person is making—like a straw man of their argument. You then easily defeat that argument, because it’s a weaker version.

For instance, in a debate on immigration, I recently made the argument that we should pair more agents at the border with more legal opportunities to immigrate here, a pretty standard moderate position on immigration. I was arguing with someone who was on the very left side of the immigration debate, and they responded by saying something along the lines of, “The last thing we need is more border agents shooting migrants on the border.”

Of course, my argument isn’t for border agents to shoot migrants trying to cross into the U.S., which is a reprehensible idea that I abhor. This is a straw man argument: Distorting an opposing argument to make it weaker and thus easier to defeat.

Unfortunately, straw man arguments are often effective as a rhetorical tactic. They either derail a conversation or get people so off-track that their actual stance on an issue becomes unclear. For the purposes of getting clarity on anyone’s position or having an actual debate, though, they are useless.

The weak man

There are different terms for this but none of them have ever really stuck. I like Scott Alexander’s term, the weak man, which he describes this way: “The straw man is a terrible argument nobody really holds, which was only invented so your side had something easy to defeat. The weak man is a terrible argument that only a few unrepresentative people hold, which was only brought to prominence so your side had something easy to defeat.”

The weak man is best exemplified by the prominence of certain people. For instance, have you ever heard of Ben Cline? What about Marjorie Taylor Greene? I’d wager that most of my readers know quite a few things about Greene, and very few have ever even heard of Ben Cline. Both are Republican representatives in Congress. One is a household name, and the other is an under-the-radar member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. Why is that?

Because Greene is an easy target as “the weak man.” Democrats like to use her to portray the Republican party as captured by QAnon, conspiracy theories, and absurd beliefs because they found social media posts where she spouted ridiculous ideas about space lasers and pedophilia rings.

The weak man is largely responsible for the perception gap, the reality in our country where most Democrats vastly misunderstand Republicans and vice versa. For instance, more than 80% of Democrats disagree with the statement “most police are bad people.” But if you ask Republicans to guess how Democrats feel about that statement, they guess less than 50% disagree; because the weak man is used so effectively that it distorts our understanding of the other side’s position.

Anecdotal reasoning

An anecdote is a short story about something that really happened. Anecdotal reasoning is using that real event to project it as the norm, and then make an argument that your lived experience is representative.

Frankly, I’m hesitant to include this one in the context of today’s post, because I do think politics are personal—and personal experiences should be shared and considered. They are often enlightening, and anyone who reads Tangle knows I regularly lean into personal experience. But they can also be a trap. Anecdotal arguments are dangerous because they can prevent people from seeing that their experience might be the exception rather than the rule.

We actually just had a great example of this, too. As you may have heard, our economy is—by most traditional measures—doing well right now. Unemployment, for instance, is near an all-time low. At the same time, though, the tech sector (which is a fraction of the economy) has been experiencing a lot of layoffs and downsizing. This has left many people in tech concluding that the job numbers are somehow wrong or being fudged. Take a look at this exchange on X/Twitter:

This is a classic example of an anecdotal argument. Because personal experiences are so powerful, we struggle to see beyond them. While anecdotes can add color or create context, they shouldn’t be used to extract broad conclusions. 

Circular reasoning

I would never make one of these bad arguments. And because I wouldn’t make a bad argument, this argument I’m making isn’t a bad argument. And I am not a person who makes bad arguments, as evidenced by this argument I’m making, which isn’t a bad argument.

Exhausting, right? That’s an example of circular reasoning, which uses two claims to support one another rather than using evidence to support a claim. This style of argument is pretty common in supporting broad-brush beliefs. Here are a few examples:

Women make bad leaders. That’s why there aren’t a lot of female CEOs. That there are not a lot of female CEOs proves that women are bad leaders.People who listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast are all anti-vaccine. I know this because RFK Jr. was recently on the podcast spreading lies about vaccines, which proves that his anti-vaccine audience wants to hear lies about vaccines.The media is lying to us about the election in 2020 getting stolen. If the media were honest, they’d tell us that the election had been stolen. And the fact that the dishonest media isn’t telling us that is more proof that the election was stolen.

Circular arguments are usually a lot harder to identify than this, and because they’re self-enforcing are often incredibly difficult to argue against. In practice, there are usually a lot more bases to cover that reinforce a worldview, and it’s difficult to address one claim at a time when someone is making a circular argument.

Of course, these aren’t all the ways to make dishonest arguments. There are a lot of others.

There is the “just asking questions” rhetorical trick, where someone asks something that sounds a lot like an outlandish assertion, and then defends themselves by suggesting they don’t actually believe this thing—they’re just asking if maybe it’s worth considering.

There is “black and white” arguing, where an issue becomes binary this or that (is Daniel Penny a good samaritan or a killer?) rather than a complex issue with subtleties, as most things actually are. There’s ad hominem argument, when someone attacks the person (“RFK Jr. is a crackpot!”) rather than addressing the ideas (“RFK Jr. is wrong about vaccine safety because…”). There is post hoc—the classic correlation equals causation equation fallacy (“The economy grew while I was president, therefore my policies caused it to grow.”). There are slippery slope arguments (“If we allow gay marriage to be legal, what’s next? Marrying an animal?”) and false dichotomy arguments (like when Biden argued that withdrawing from Afghanistan was a choice between staying indefinitely or pulling out in the manner that he did). There is also the “firehose” trick, or the Gish Gallop, which essentially amounts to saying so many untrue things in such a short period of time that refuting them all is nearly impossible.

In reality, a lot of the time we’re just talking past each other. There is one particularly annoying example of this I run into a lot, which is when people interpret what you said as something that you didn’t (close to a straw man argument), or ignore something you did say and then repeat it back to you as if you didn’t say it. This happened to me the morning I wrote this article on X/Twitter (of course).

It started when news broke recently about an IRS whistleblower testifying on damning text messages from Hunter Biden that were obtained through a subpoena. I tweeted out a transcript of the message Hunter Biden purportedly sent to a potential Chinese business partner. In the message, Hunter insists his father is in the room with him, and they are awaiting the call from the potential partner. Obviously, this would undercut President Biden’s frequent claims that he had nothing to do with Hunter’s business dealings.

I tweeted this:

“It’s a WhatsApp message, whose to say Joe was even in the room?” one user responded.

“Addicts tend to lie a lot, don’t they? Steal from grandma and such?” another person said.

“Hunter was a crack addict at the time. A crack addict lying for money??? No!!” someone else wrote.

Of course, I aired this possibility right there in my tweet. Again, emphasis mine, I said: “These texts from Hunter Biden insisting his dad was in the room are very, very bad. Hard to know if he was being honest or just bluffing, but Joe was just barely out of office and it looks extremely gross.”

But as people, we often come into conversations already knowing what point we want to make, and we’ll try to make it regardless of what the other person said. In one case, when I pointed out that I had literally suggested this very thing in my tweet, someone responded that it buttressed their point—as if I had never said it all.

Of course, just as important as spotting these rhetorical tricks is being sure you are not committing them yourselves. Dunking on bad ideas, styling ideas few people believe as popular, or using anecdotes to make broad claims are easy ways to “win” an argument. Much more difficult, for all of us, is to engage the best ideas you disagree with, think about them honestly, and explain clearly why you don’t agree. And even more difficult is to debate honestly, discover that the other person has made stronger arguments, adapt your position and grow. Because of the current media landscape, arguments that don’t contain these bad-faith tactics aren’t always the ones that end up in my newsletter, Tangle—but they are the kind of arguments I aspire to employ myself, and the ones I think we should all strive to make.

Does Your Multiple Storyline Novel Work? Questions to Ask Yourself

Photo by Aditya Wardhana on Unsplash

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Friday, Sept. 15 for the online class Handling Multiple Storylines.

Writing a cohesive, layered, deeply engaging story can feel like conducting an orchestra where you’re also composing and arranging the music and playing every instrument. Add in multiple storylines—more than one POV or timeline—and the task becomes exponentially more complex.

Multiple storylines come with even more challenges than writing a single compelling story thread, but they can also offer faceted, layered stories that deepen the reader’s engagement and experience.

Whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or something in between, a little forethought and planning can help prepare you for the challenges writing multiples can present. And asking yourself a few key questions can help you ascertain whether multiples are working in your story.

Are multiples even necessary?

Oh, sure, it sounds like a fun idea—tell a particular story from the point of view of all the players involved, or weave together different timelines that intersect or affect one another. But not every story lends itself to the format. Watch for the warning signs that your story may not be the multiple you thought it was:

The storylines aren’t meaningfully connected to each other. There has to be a reason for these stories to be unspooling in the same manuscript. How do they affect, impact, or reflect one another? What makes each one intrinsic—what ties them together into one cohesive story arc, theme, or idea? Do they build on one another? Illuminate each other? Intersect, correlate, or even present alternate realities of a single storyline? How would the overarching story arc be diminished or fundamentally changed without all the storylines you’ve included?One storyline or character is consistently more fun to write—and more engaging to read—than the other. Almost every story will be difficult to write at some point—you may stall out, dead-end, or get lost in a detour. But if you or your early readers find yourself repeatedly struggling to get through one point of view or thread of the story, you might consider whether it’s actually meant to be a separate storyline. Writing (or reading) that feels like a slog can be the GPS equivalent of “make a U-turn”—a signal that you’ve gone off course and the route lies elsewhere.One thread peters out or you’re padding. If a storyline wraps up too early, or you find yourself struggling to fill chapters for it, that can be a warning flag. You may be trying to create a separate storyline from something that ought to remain backstory, or you may have a supporting character(s) who isn’t meant to be a POV character.

One way to check this is to ask: What overall story are you telling, and whose story is it? Defining these answers clearly can help you determine which threads are intrinsic—as can the next question.

Is each storyline fully developed?

A separate POV or timeline in a story is a promise to readers: that this thread is important, that it’s essential to the story in some key way.

If you introduce a POV, readers make an unconscious assumption that this character is essential—and thus we expect them to be fully fleshed out, intrinsic to the story, and to travel a clear arc. If the story encompasses multiple storylines or timelines, readers expect that each one will be fully developed, cohesive, and have its own story arc and resolution.

If not, it may be a sign that that particular thread doesn’t need to be a separate storyline, but might perhaps work better woven into the main story.

How does the story unspool?

Structuring multiple storylines has been commonly diagnosed as a leading cause of anxiety, depression, hair loss, fatigue, and digestive issues.

Okay, maybe not in any medical journal, but any author who’s tried wrangling multiples can likely attest to the frustration factor of not only giving each storyline a compelling, fully developed story structure in its own right, but also weaving them together into one effective and cohesive whole.

Multiple-storyline story structure shouldn’t feel random or disjointed—ideally you will lead your readers fluidly between them so that each thread heightens, illuminates, reflects, and/or adds impact to the other(s). That means considering not only the structure and arc of each independently, but how they interrelate throughout the manuscript.

One protagonist may be “up” when the other is down and vice versa, or their arcs may parallel one another—but whatever is happening to one character in their thread should be germane to the other character(s)’ experience and arc in the other.

Romance novels, for instance, often alternate the hero’s and heroine’s POVs in a linear, chronological structure where each storyline offers another facet of or perspective on the other, but both move the overarching story forward, and each character is playing an essential role in furthering the arc of the other. In multiple timeline historical, a “past” thread often sheds light on a later or present-day thread.

In Between Me and You, Allison Winn Scotch alternates both POVs and timelines in telling the story of a couple’s courtship and eventual divorce from each of their perspectives: The wife’s story unfolds chronologically forward from meeting her husband as her career as an actor skyrockets, alternating with his thread told chronologically backward from the end of their marriage, when his once-promising career as a filmmaker is also on the rocks. When the two timelines intersect, the POVs stay separate but the timelines run together.

But a linear structure is far from the only possible choice for multiples. They may be “chunked,” with multiple chapters from one storyline grouped together (as in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half); or they may be “tree branched,” following seemingly diffuse threads that all lead back to one central trunk (as in Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao). Or, one storyline may serve as a framing device for a main storyline, as in Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys or Camille DiMaio’s The Way of Beauty.

Some stories use combinations of these and other techniques. Anthony Doerr in All the Light We Cannot See, for instance, alternates POV chapters chronologically in certain sections of the book, and also offers a linear progression of multiple timelines, one of which spans years while the other spans days.

There are no “rules” for how to structure multiple storylines—except that you should ensure that your structure allows you to answer yes to both of the following questions:

Do you reorient readers early in each storyline?

Shifting between storylines can be confusing to readers, and you may risk losing them.

It’s crucial to let readers know not only which thread they’re in early in each transition, but to offer “connective tissue” to remind readers where you left the protagonist of each thread when they last saw them, and—if time has passed in the storyline—what has happened to the characters since.

The former can be accomplished through devices as simple as time or date lines, chapter titles, or section headings (for instance, a character’s name). But you can also do it with context—details about each story, the characters, historical facts, the setting, etc.—or with character voice (as in Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures).

Do readers stay engaged in each storyline throughout?

If readers don’t feel fully invested in a storyline, they may put your book down (and not pick it back up). Making sure readers stay fully engaged with each thread is largely a function of all the above—making each storyline essential, fully developed, and tightly structured.

But it’s also a more granular challenge: How do you engage readers deeply chapter after chapter, and keep them hooked and invested even as you move the “camera” away to do the same thing in each additional storyline—over and over again for the entire duration of the story?

Just as in chapter and section ends of single-storyline stories, do you leave readers with some unresolved tension, a question, or some other type of “cliffhanger” each time you transition to another thread? It’s especially crucial with multiples to end in medias res as well as begin there. You’re planting a hook each time you draw readers away from one story that will leave them eager to return to it—and then you take them exactly where they don’t want to go at that moment: to another thread.

But you drop another hook there, beginning the new thread also in medias res, plunging readers into the action, keeping momentum and stakes strong, and building them even stronger as the storyline unspools—before you repeat the process all over again.

Doing this consistently throughout results in the “unputdownable” stories where readers can’t stop turning pages, desperate to know what’s happening in one thread even as they get powerfully sucked into another.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Friday, Sept. 15 for the online class Handling Multiple Storylines.

Lessons from 23 Years as a Self-Publishing Novelist

Photo by karina zhukovskaya

Note from Jane: In the earliest days of my career, I served as managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, and one of the nicest parts of my job was calling up winners of our writing contests, including the National Self-Published Book Awards. John Sundman was one of the winners I called—and one of the first self-publishing authors I came to know and consider a friend. I’m delighted that he reached out to me about his return to the writing and publishing space.

After four years of hard work with a well-known New York City literary agent, around Christmas 1999, I gave up on the traditional route and decided to publish my first novel, a Silicon Valley cyberpunk thriller called Acts of the Apostles, myself.

My agent, Joe, had guided me through endless rewrites and three rounds of submissions to publishers in New York and producers in Hollywood. We had some serious nibbles—big name editors took me to lunch, and over one weekend in April 1998, 26 producers read the manuscript in advance of an anticipated auction of the movie rights—but we never got an offer. Joe was willing to work with me on one last rewrite, believing we still had a chance of getting a million-dollar payday. But I had reached my limit. I was flat broke and my wife and children had had more than enough. My dream of literary stardom had cost them plenty.

I formatted the book, got an ISBN number, designed a cover, and somehow convinced a local printer to print 5,000 copies on credit. The printer released a few hundred books to me and locked away the remainder in their warehouse. The deal was that as I sold those books and paid down the bill, the printer would release the rest—in increments.

Desperate to generate some notice, I put the first 13 chapters of the book up on my obscure website. “If you want to read the rest of the book, send me a check for $15 and I’ll mail you a copy.”

I established an Amazon Advantage account and set off in my falling-apart car on a coast-to-coast book tour, pitching my book at hacker meets and scientific conferences, in Silicon Valley cafeterias, on street corners, and even at a bookstore or two. Over three weeks I sold enough books, barely, to cover my expenses. I made it back home by the skin of my teeth. I didn’t have enough money for a McDonald’s Happy Meal or one more tank of gas. I was defeated. I set aside my novelistic ambitions for good and got a day job, back in the world of tech, which I had left five years earlier.

But then a funny thing happened. Checks started showing up in my mailbox. They came from all over. Mostly from Massachusetts and California, but some from as far away as Italy or the Philippines. And with the checks, sometimes, came letters of encouragement. Glowing reviews started appearing on the internet too. Bookstores started faxing in orders. My Amazon ranking went from one million to one thousand.

And then one day while I was hard at work at my job at a software startup near the MIT campus, I got a phone call from an editor at Writer’s Digest magazine. Her name was Jane Friedman, and she was calling to tell me that Acts of the Apostles had won that year’s National Self-Published Book Award and that a check for $500 was in the mail.

Fast forward to 2023. I’ve been a self-publishing novelist longer than some readers of this essay have been alive. In addition to Acts of the Apostles I’ve published two novellas (Cheap Complex Devices and The Pains) and an alternate universe version of Acts, called Biodigital: A novel of technopotheosis.

I’ve also had plenty of day jobs—everything from freelance technical writing for Silicon Valley startups to long-haul truck driving. Whatever it took to pay the bills as I continued to work on my books.

This fall, in conjunction with a new novel, Mountain of Devils, I plan to publish new editions of my four existing titles (in English and in Spanish, ebook and paperback), each with a new introduction by a prominent writer. With people like Cory Doctorow, Ken MacLeod, David Weinberger, and John Biggs vouching for the value of my work, I confess that I feel somewhat vindicated. Those New York publishers who took a pass on Acts of the Apostles twenty-some years ago missed the boat.

I’m not going to address tactical topics such as how to format, publish and distribute your books, or on the pros and cons of recording your own audiobooks, or even how to write a good book in the first place. There are plenty of other authors who address such things; Jane’s resources page is a good place to start looking.

What I am going to offer here, rather, pertains to the mindset required to succeed in this business. Some of it may not apply to you, but it’s a good place to start.

10. Have a thick skin. You are going to encounter naysayers. Some of them may be quite obnoxious. It’s always good to listen to constructive advice, but you don’t owe anything to people who are out to bring you down.

9. Get out into the world. Make yourself known. Be proud. Don’t be shy now. Speak up! When people you’ve just met ask “What do you do?” reply, “I’m a writer.” Even if you’ve only sold one copy of your first book.

8. Get organized. This job entails writing, editing, book design and production, distribution and marketing. And that’s just for starters. Read, study, consider hiring a mentor if you can afford one.  Make a plan, and keep track of your progress. You’re now an “authorpreneur.” You’ve got a business to run. Act like it.

7. Expect some failures. Some things just aren’t going to work out. You will make mistakes, and some of them will be embarrassing if not downright humiliating. Learn what you can and then move on.

6. Don’t chase bookstores. Sell direct, sell through Amazon, and through any local retail outfit that invites you. But don’t waste your time trying to get a distributor or to get into bookstores without one. If your book becomes a colossal hit, those bookstores will find you, I promise.

5. Your book(s) must be good. It’s true that some authors have had great success with books that are objectively pretty crappy. Some book gurus even tell you that quantity matters more than quality. “Don’t waste time trying to make your book perfect!” they say. “Keep cranking out titles!” That approach might work for some people, but from what I’ve seen, having a quality product offers a higher probability of success.

4. Be flexible. The publishing world changes fast. When I put the first 13 chapters of my first novel online for free download in 1999 and started selling my novels at hacker meets and scientific conferences, I was hailed as an innovator.  There was no such thing as an ebook in those days; no Venmo or Paypal for electronic payments, and there was certainly nothing like BookFunnel to help you build your mailing list and find collaborators to work with. But as the world of self-publishing changed, I didn’t change with it, so now I’m playing catch-up. Don’t you do that.

3. Your mailing list is your greatest asset. It took me much too long to acknowledge that what all the experts were saying about this were right. Make growing your list one of your highest priorities.

2. Be kind. Be helpful. What goes around comes around. Be kind to your readers, be helpful to fellow writers, just try to be a decent person in general. I’m an old guy. I know what I’m talking about. Trust me on this one.

1. Being your own publisher is liberating. I’ve made some money doing this, but frankly, not a lot. I do have high hopes that that’s going to change with my forthcoming releases, but nobody can see the future. Maybe my big launch will be a bust. Yet I consider my self-publishing career a success, and I’m glad that I stopped beating my head against the “real publisher” wall all those years ago.

Being my own publisher forced me out of my comfort zone. It wasn’t always fun or easy, but it opened up a world for me. I’ve hand-sold thousands of books, and in so doing I’ve made hundreds of honest-to-God friends. I put together a panel at SXSW on “the future of the novel in the digital age,” and I even got Jane Friedman to moderate it. I’ve given talks at the DEFCON hacker conclave, in schools, and at the opening of a synthetic biology laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. All in all it’s been a blast.

Good luck! Let’s help each other!

There are lots of ways for indie writers to help each other out. Joint promotions, newsletter swaps, guest blog posts, podcast interviews, introductions, the list goes on. If you think you and I might be able to help each other, let me know. I’m open to suggestions.

How to Read to Elevate Your Writing Practice

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Today’s post is by book coach Robin Henry.

Writers are frequently advised to read more to improve their writing. The problem is, no one seems to tell them how to use reading to elevate their writing practice. Reading alone is not enough—osmosis is not a viable strategy for learning.

You’ll find books on this topic, such as Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer and How to Read Like a Writer by Erin Pushman, but they tend to take a generalist approach. They are usually aimed at beginning writers, and contain reading lists that would lay even an enthusiastic graduate student low. Classic literature is great (mostly)—I am a fan! But to write a book that will be a work of art and have a chance of succeeding in the modern marketplace, I suggest writers focus on more recent fiction for their writerly reading.

How to choose books for mentor texts

The first hurdle is choosing which books to use as your mentor texts. Selecting books can be challenging in the modern world, not least because we are spoiled for choice. Hundreds of books are published every year, and writers need criteria to craft their reading lists. Fortunately, as a librarian trained in collection development, I can help.

Read professional reviews rather than those on Amazon or Goodreads. They don’t have to be from the literary establishment (New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, the Guardian), but they do need to be written by professionals, because you want to know that the books have been analyzed with some attention to plot, tone, character development, language, etc. Choosing books that have been professionally reviewed by at least two sources narrows the universe of books to a manageable number. “Best of” lists and literary prize lists are great places to find books to read, too. They usually include annotations, which can be helpful. Consider NPR, Booklist (the librarian’s favorite), Library Journal, librarian/library blogs, and literary podcasts.

After deciding which review sources or lists you will use, consider genre. Try to select a mix of genres, including the one you write in. One of the best ways to give yourself the distance you need to analyze books is to read outside your usual genre. You will see new ways of writing, as well as different kinds of plots and characters, which serve to feed the imagination. Try adding a little non-fiction, too. Human brains are great at seeing patterns, and varying the field in which one’s brain is searching will help bring novelty to your novel.

Finally, check your newly minted TBR pile for diversity. If you’ve skewed in a particular direction, consider going back to your review sources and seeing what other titles might take your fancy that are not in that demographic—either author or character-wise. Look for international books. Americans especially have a tendency to select American-centric titles. Branch out. NPR’s Books We Love and the international Booker Prize contain books from other countries, either written originally in English or translated.

Questions to keep in mind while you are reading

Now that you’ve selected the book(s) you want to read, you are ready to think about a framework to use as you read. It is important to have questions in mind beforehand so that you know what to pay attention to.

In The Well Educated Mind, Susan Bauer suggests that one way to get at the deeper meaning of a book is to ask yourself, “What is the message the author is trying to convey, and do I agree with it?” By analyzing your own response, you will consider reader response versus author intent and how both affect the overall effect of a novel. What readers think the author intended may be different to the message a reader takes from the book. Often the most effective way to convey a message is through questions that the reader asks themselves about the novel. These may be big picture, story questions about human nature, or they may be plot-level questions. The best novels use both.

For example, in the novel I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, there are many questions the reader could choose to focus on. However, if I consider the author’s intent, I land here:

(Story) How does society’s fascination with true crime reduce victims, especially women, to disposable people and wreak havoc on the lives of suspects, who may or may not be guilty, during the course of an investigation? (Plot) Who really murdered Thalia?

The message she sends to me as a reader regarding the story question is that we make victims into girls who never had a chance, so that we can live with the fact that they were harmed. We reduce victims to disposable by blaming them or by arguing that it was fate. We justify the harm done during an investigation as collateral damage in the quest for justice, when in fact, there is no justice. On the plot level, you will know who the real murderer is by the end.

Other questions to ask about a book before you begin reading include nuts and bolts kinds of questions:

What are the basic “facts” of the book?GenreCharacters—who is the central character?Basic plot events and turning points—what is the most important event/decision point?Character arcWhat does the main character want?What stands in her way? (interior and exterior)What does she do to overcome this obstacle?What POV does the writer use?What is the beginning and the end—is there change over time?

Finally, choose a few passages you find particularly beautiful and analyze them. Notice the rhythm, word choice, metaphors. What do they teach you about language use? What about the author’s writing did you find particularly enjoyable? Or not? Make notes to inform your own writing. When you see a word or an image you like, write it down so you can ponder it. Writing is a process, and it takes time to internalize the lessons you glean from the beautiful novels you read.

Close reading versus reading for enjoyment

As a former school librarian, I have spent hours in workshops about the different stages of reading enjoyment. “Stages of Growth in Literary Appreciation” by Margaret J. Early is from 1960, but modern scholarship has not altered her basic thesis. There are three stages in reading/literature appreciation. Most people read in all three of them and move between them. When we reach for a summer beach read, we are probably in Unconscious Enjoyment. We know we like it, but are not concerned with why we like it. When we reach for a thriller or a mystery, we are most likely in Self-Conscious Appreciation. We like it and we do care why. We care that the plot makes sense, that the characters are acting in ways that are logical in the story world. When we go looking for literary or upmarket fiction, we are usually reading in Conscious Delight. We know it will take some effort to read this book, but we also anticipate that it will be worth it. We want to think about big questions concerning humanity, we want to be asked to use our analytical powers to understand it. The reward is the experience of reading a deeply beautiful book.

The best writers write for all three stages, because readers come from all of them, and on any given day, they may slide to a different stage. Thus the rise of book club or upmarket fiction and genre fiction by literary writers. If you want your work to have lasting appeal, you will want to keep readers in mind and make it possible for them to enjoy the book no matter where they are. However, when you are reading like a writer, you must be in Conscious Delight. You must understand what you are reading and why; you need to be prepared to analyze it in order to apply the skills you see.

Annotating is one of the best ways to engage with a text. Unfortunately, many readers have been discouraged from writing in books. While you should not write in books you don’t own, annotating your personal copy is completely fine, and in fact I encourage it. Lest you think I am leading you down the garden path, historians study the marginalia in books for clues about what readers are thinking as they read. H. J.  Jackson has written several fine academic books about this, including Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books and Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia. Give the future literary critics something to think about when your library is turned into an archive. Write in your books.

Take notes and flag places where you notice the answers to questions in the framework. Notice where the turning points of the story are. Read again and see if you notice foreshadowing on the second read that you missed the first time. Reading like a writer is a commitment, which is why you choose the books carefully.

Interrogate the text: How does it work to create emotion? How does the language sit with you? How does the writer achieve a spectacular plot twist or something else unexpected? Make notes and think about how it was done. Did an image or a small piece of interiority click with you? Did a choice of verb leap from the page? Make a note.

Apply the lessons to your own work

When thinking about how to apply what you learn, take it one layer at a time.

Start with the message. What is your intended message to the reader? Do you have it in mind as you write? How do the characters’ choices reflect the message?Next, go to the plot events and character development questions in the framework. Do you see the obstacles (interior and exterior) in your own story? Does your story have the genre markers you see in other works? Does it have the basic plot elements you notice in the books you read?Think about point of view. Are the POV choices you have made the best ones to tell your story? What happens if you retell it from another POV—what changes? Who is narrating the story and how does the narrator’s voice impact the story? When you consider the narrators of the books you have read, what do you notice? How does the telling change with who tells the story?What is the change in characters over time? Be specific. For example, in I Have Some Questions for You, the narrator begins the tale as an unreliable narrator and the main character, but over time, she becomes more truthful and more confident as she uncovers the past, and by the end, she is completely honest with herself and the reader. How does your main character change over the course of the book?Finally, think about language. A possibly apocryphal story about Gustave Flaubert relates that he sometimes worked for hours on a single sentence. Whether or not that is true, art takes time. Using language well is not the purple prose of overwriting, but the true beauty of choosing just the right word for just the right sentence—conveying meaning on more than one level.

If you embrace reading like a writer, it may ruin you for Unconscious Enjoyment, it’s true. The tradeoff is that it will open your eyes to the world of how to craft a beautiful and meaningful novel and how to appreciate on a deep level the skill that the art of writing well demands.

How to Successfully Pitch Op-Eds and Timely Cultural Pieces

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted from Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published by Estelle Erasmus.

Writing an opinion piece (or op-ed) about a topic in the news or in the zeitgeist is one way to get the attention of editors, even if you are not an experienced writer. Almost all news outlets have op-ed sections, where writers not affiliated with the publication’s editorial board can contribute. Many online publications feature op-eds as well. (Fun fact: Op-ed is short for “opposite the editorial page,” and not “opinion.”)

It always helps if you can tie your personal experience to the topic you want to write about. When Charlize Theron was in the news because someone called the police on her while she was disciplining her small child, it enraged me, and I published an opinion piece in a parenting publication about what my reaction would be should someone do that to me. I wrote about why my husband does the laundry, and should, for the Washington Post, because research showed that fathers who participated in housework—like my husband—had a positive impact on their daughters’ health, happiness, and future success. And I wrote for Romper about how sheltering in place during the pandemic removed all the usual worries about parenting.

Op-eds aim to persuade the reader to accept the writer’s point of view or recommendations. The best op-eds are provocative or counterintuitive: they may be controversial, go against the conventional thinking on a subject, or add fresh perspective to news stories. However, Holly Baxter from the Independent says her publication has banned the word must from op-ed headlines. She recommends crafting a pitch that a reasonable person can disagree with, one that can start a conversation or a debate. For example, “We must do more for starving children” is not a winning op-ed idea because no reasonable person would argue against it.

With an op-ed it’s always good to take an unusual or opposing viewpoint or go against the grain. If everyone agrees, then what would be the point of writing about the topic?

When it comes to arguing for an idea on the page, passion is good; ranting is not. If you are going on and on and making the piece only about you, without making it relatable or providing any new insight or information, then you risk losing your audience. A better bet is to explore the issue while sharing your personal feelings and how they are connected to the problem or solution that others are facing or dealing with, too. It’s a delicate balance.

Give the facts

Op-eds are not long diatribes or soliloquies. They start with an opinion, maybe about something that annoys you, but that opinion needs to be supported by facts. Lay out why your opinion makes sense and support it with data, such as studies, statistics, and poll results. Just make sure you cite primary sources—the original publications or websites that presented the findings.

Have a nose for news

To find inspiration for op-eds, check the daily news on TV, online, or in the newspapers. (Tip from Jane: Memeorandum is a good thing to scan, along with its sister sites on tech and media.) Figure out whether you have something to add to the national conversation or an important point of view and use that as the basis for the piece.

If you can propose solutions to the problem, even better, as I did when I wrote about my distress that Dressbarn was shutting down its brick-and-mortar stores. I wrote, “Dressbarn was the perfect outlet to focus on the midlife market—and the buying power of women in their 40s and 50s—that the chain never really took seriously or tried to explore.” Then I shared how important Dressbarn had been in my life—I wore a Dressbarn dress for my engagement party and another for my bridal shower—and suggested that Dressbarn ignored and didn’t create partnerships with online retailers such as Amazon and QVC or on social media, they didn’t have good mobile technology, and their DB dollars and loyalty codes were too complicated and confusing. This piece was published in AARP’s The Girlfriend. The editor told me she had gotten a lot of comments about the situation, and my op-ed landed in her lap at the perfect time.

Adapt an essay into an op-ed

You might have written up something as a personal essay, but if you are new to publishing, it might be easier for you to get it published as an op-ed. For example, I wrote my New York Times piece “Singing My Dad Back to Me” as an essay, but it could have also been an op-ed, using research to support my premise that music helps Alzheimer’s patients, like my dad, stay connected to what’s around them. My student Jennie Burke wrote her New York Times piece “Defying the Family Cycle of Addiction” as an essay, with reported elements about her family’s history of opioid addiction and her concern about her daughter being prescribed opioids after surgery, but it could have easily been an op-ed on how to protect teens from addiction.

If you have a long essay that might work as an op-ed, try to shorten it to 600-700 words.

Consider a call to action

After you have laid out your opinion and supported it with facts and information, you need to conclude. A good way to do it is to circle back to something you said in the intro of your piece and add one new insight or thought. The most persuasive op-eds often end with a call to action: a rallying cry, a way for readers to join the cause or at least think about it.

For example, in an op-ed I wrote for the Independent about Britney Spears—about the army of lawyers, researchers, data experts, and other professionals (called the Britney Army) supporting her in her fight against the conservatorship she was under for thirteen years—I ended my piece with a quote from someone involved in the movement calling for the government to fund home aides who leave at night. This would be an alternative to providing grants to states that make it easy for unscrupulous people to get involved in corrupt conservatorships and commit conservatorship abuse.

Get paid

Most publications pay for op-eds. For information on op-ed fees, check out the site Who Pays Writers? For a list of US newspapers that publish op-eds, check out the OpEd Project.

Bookshop • AmazonSeize the moment

Although writers can pitch and submit an op-ed whenever they have an opinion on a situation or issue, it’s important to know that editors frequently send out calls for pitches for op-eds and other short pieces on social media or to writers they have worked with, pegged to new TV shows, movies, or books. Often these “rapid-response” editors commission pieces only a day or so before they run. The key to getting noticed is to get in first. The news cycle moves fast, so when you find a topic you want to write about, act quickly.

How Smaller Organisms Adapt to Amazon in the Self-Publishing Ecosystem

Today’s post is by writer, podcaster and editor Wayne Jones.

I’ve had a couple of experiences over the past six months or so that have provided some intriguing glimpses at how publishing services are trying to make even just a little more money, while the behemoth Amazon dominates search and sales in self-publishing.

My first discovery involved FriesenPress, located in the province of Manitoba in Canada. I was seriously considering them as the company to publish a book I’ve written—in fact, had chosen them and was beginning to talk details—until I noticed something very odd. The price of any FriesenPress-published book was routinely not only higher on Amazon, but sometimes substantially higher. I am talking in some cases 70 percent higher, but on average around 20 to 40 percent. I checked more books on the FriesenPress website just to confirm that I wasn’t just happening to select anomalies, and it turned out that, no, I wasn’t. Then I talked to some folks who know more about publishing than I do, including the company I ultimately chose to publish my book as well as someone named—just a sec, I’ve got the name here somewhere—yes, a certain “Jane Friedman.” They weren’t involved in any checking or research I did, but they both said that it is virtually unheard of that the Amazon price is higher than the price on the publisher’s site. It may be a bit or a lot lower, but not higher.

Thus began my ultimately fascinating quest to talk to FriesenPress about why this is the case. The answers I got, and especially the ones I didn’t get, were telling. Not telling in the sense that they told me everything I wanted to know, but in the sense that even after I talked (mostly by email) to an increasingly senior parade of employees and executives at FriesenPress, I basically got:

What I would call a non-answer to my questions about why this was the caseWhat can only be called an incorrect answer to the direct question of whether they informed their author-clients about the fact of this price discrepancy before they signed contracts

Let me give some updated examples of the different pricing. Here are three books published by FriesenPress, in various genres and lengths, some brand new, some published a few years ago, along with the current prices on the FriesenPress and Amazon sites as I write this (August 4). Prices are in Canadian dollars, as they are on the FriesenPress site and on Amazon.ca:

When Love Comes Knocking (Power)FriesenPress: paperback $19.99; hardcover $34.49Amazon.ca: paperback $21.09; hardcover $39.70Chosen by the Blade (Sereda)FriesenPress: paperback $21.49; hardcover $32.99Amazon.ca: paperback $31.45; hardcover $47.69The Other Side Of Autumn: Selected Poems, 1969–2022 (Phipps)FriesenPress: paperback $9.49; hardcover $18.49Amazon.ca: paperback n/a; hardcover $31.98

And on it goes like that. To be fair, occasionally the FriesenPress and Amazon prices are more or less the same, but in the random checking I’ve done that is exceptional.

So I contacted various staff at FriesenPress to get an explanation. I started with the Publishing Consultant who had been dutifully contacting me when I had at first expressed enthusiastic interest in having FriesenPress publish my book. She told me there was no one who could give me more information than she already had, but I persisted and eventually talked to the Communications Officer, the Lead of Sales, the President (who threatened to sue me for libel because I had talked about the issue on my podcast), and finally the Director General, who sent me a series of long, detailed emails. He did say, yes, authors were informed of the Amazon pricing issue before they signed with FriesenPress, but I also talked to a few authors, who said they had not been.

Part of the sales strategy for FriesenPress is built on a premise that I consider fundamentally flawed. They advise their authors, when doing publicity or otherwise touting their book, to point potential buyers to the FriesenPress site and not to Amazon. But readers don’t necessarily find out about a book through the limited marketing that any self-publishing author likely has time to do. These same readers also don’t start at the publisher’s site (mostly they couldn’t because they wouldn’t know who the publisher is). And, increasingly, readers don’t even frequent their local bookstores. They start with Amazon. In my opinion, the FriesenPress strategy does a great disservice to their authors: there are doubtless many sales lost when the hopeful buyer comes across the high prices on Amazon. No sale means no royalty.

Another organism I came across in this ecosystem was Pro Audio Voices, an independent producer and seller of audiobooks based in Oregon. I had a lively chat with the CEO on my podcast, which ended even livelier when I asked if Audible is the only game in town. She said no—which is true in that they may be dominant but there are competitors—but then went on to say that people shouldn’t buy audiobooks through Audible/ACX. (ACX is a company whose website brings together authors, narrators, and producers. ACX is owned by Audible.)

I wrapped up the interview there, but as I was editing and piecing together the episode I visited the Pro Audio Voices website again and noticed something odd. Again it was about pricing and again it seemed to be related somehow to Amazon’s pricing. (Amazon markets and sells audiobooks via Audible.) The situation was reversed this time: nearly every audiobook on the Pro Audio Voices site is priced two or three dollars more than it is on Amazon. I emailed the CEO through her agent at Farrow Communications, but two weeks went by and I heard nothing. My questions were simple. Is there a reason for the markup on the Pro Audio Voices price? And does the author get a bigger royalty from that sale than from an Audible one?

The other broader issue I was interested in, analogously to the situation with FriesenPress, was the likelihood that anyone looking to buy an audiobook would even discover the version for sale on the Pro Audio Voices site in the first place, since most buyers start their search on Amazon. I suggested to him that encouraging an author to ask their friends or followers to buy on Pro Audio Voices might put only a very small dent in the sales that Audible will get.

So as I wait to hear back from the Farrow agent after prodding him (August 3) about never having received a reply, I draw two inferences from these incidents with FriesenPress and Pro Audio Voices, but am left with a mystery as well. The first inference is an obvious one. Neither of these players in the self-publishing space are truly serving their clients by simply encouraging them to entice prospective buyers away from Amazon. You might be convinced that faxing messages to your friends is a better way to communicate with them than using that newfangled email and texting, but if you persist, in the end you’ll have fewer friends or won’t know what they’re up to or one particularly concerned one may stage an intervention of some kind. Someone who wants to buy a book goes to Amazon, and so a publisher’s efforts at showing their clients’ work to best advantage (and price) should hinge on that fact.

The second inference is that the two different pricing adjustments that FriesenPress and Pro Audio Voices (or Amazon) have made are so pervasive that the examples I’ve found can’t be characterized as mere exceptions. What these two have in common is trying to find some way to work around or account for the dominance of Amazon.

And that’s still the mystery for me. Is there something in the business practices of either of them that compels them to do something out of the ordinary? In the case of FriesenPress, for example, does the fact that they use Ingram’s Lightning Source for their print-on-demand, and not Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, have anything to do with it? As for Pro Audio Voices, does that price markup of a few dollars make enough of a difference in royalties and income that it’s an essential adjustment for them? This may be proprietary operational information that neither is willing to acknowledge or share with a curious podcaster, and so I’m just left wondering.

Note from Jane: I asked FriesenPress if they would like to respond to Mr. Jones’s comments, and here’s what they sent.

We would like to thank Jane for reaching out to us for comment on this guest post.

As an employee-owned publishing services provider, we are proud to offer our authors a wide variety of printing and distribution options so they can self-publish and promote their books in a manner that best aligns with their goals. This includes the ability for authors to set distinct list prices on our proprietary bookstore and through our wholesale distribution partner, Ingram, should they so choose—a standard practice within the assisted-publishing landscape.

Many of our authors choose to markdown their FriesenPress Bookstore price, taking advantage of lower costs when selling directly to readers. As there are no distributors or retailers adding gross markup (which commonly accounts for 55% of the list price of a book), our authors receive a much higher royalty for the sale of their book while offering a competitive discount, when compared with other retailers.

We inform authors of our professional recommendations, but pricing—as well as editorial and aesthetic—decisions are ultimately theirs to make. We do not force our authors to conform to our will on any of these matters and have attempted to convey this to Mr. Jones on numerous occasions.

Each of our authors is unique, and so too are their strategies to reach readers. Though Amazon has a massive impact on book-buying behaviour, we believe that not all readers want (or choose) to purchase their books solely on Amazon. When we advise our authors on their promotional strategies, we in no way minimize the importance of leveraging Amazon, nor do we set the expectation that the majority of readers will organically discover their book in our bookstore. Our coaching philosophy focuses on generating awareness and eliciting action from their readers; retail channels are just one piece of the multifaceted puzzle.

Our role is to help our authors publish their best book possible, and we offer as much support and respect as we can in service of this endeavour. Though our model and publishing philosophies were not a fit for Mr. Jones’s book project, we wish him all the best on his path to publication.

Thank you, once again, to Jane for the opportunity and space to share. And thank you, for reading all the way to the end.

– The FriesenPress Publishing Team

How Can I Convince Editors That My Information Can Be Believed?

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Late deadline: September 5th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top literary agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

Question

I am facing writing a query letter about a topic that many have written in. I am making some very bold statements/claims—it’s true crime [about a serial killer]‚ and I worry those claims will ring with editors as “Oh great, another guy claiming he’s solved this!” Because of overwhelming evidence, I have absolute certainty I am correct, but getting editors to even be receptive is my concern.

—A Writer’s Writer Righting Wrongs

Dear Writer’s Writer,

My colleague Allison K Williams often advises writers: If there’s a big, glaring obvious issue with your project or your submission, then “tie bells on it.” In other words, don’t try to hide the problem or pretend the issue doesn’t exist. Address it upfront. Show self-awareness about the challenge and (just maybe) how this could be a strength or selling point.

In the very first paragraph of your query letter, you’ll say something like, “Ever since such-and-such year, thousands of sleuths say they’ve solved [famous serial killer case].” Then you might point to the most recent/popular documentary or article that has recently discussed the case, or gotten the case entirely wrong. This should take about a paragraph.

In the second paragraph, you’ll introduce your book as the definitive solution to the case because of new evidence or research, or whatever sources/access you have that no one else has. This is important for a successful pitch. If this true solution is based on nothing but your armchair musings, editors will indeed have a hard time taking you seriously. Maybe you could get away with it by pointing to some fact that literally everyone else in the world has missed, or a consistent misinterpretation of some kind. But it needs to be a stunning twist or reversal that, let’s hope, is easily understood or explained, because disbelief will take over with lightning speed.

In your other notes submitted with this question, you mentioned, without elaborating, that you are held to a strict non-disclosure agreement. I hope you meant that in regards to submitting your question for this column, and not an NDA that would affect your ability to effectively pitch the book. Editors and agents have little tolerance for authors who play coy at query stage with what they know. They can’t reasonably evaluate a project without you putting all your cards on the table. At the very least, you have to give enough information in the query or book proposal to look credible, and perhaps an agent would be willing to have a phone conversation about how to proceed if you truly have sensitive information.

Unfortunately, most writers I encounter who insist on an NDA or who are working under an NDA never make it to traditional publication. A desire for an NDA can be fundamentally incompatible with the traditional publishing process, and there are precious few people who can insist on secrecy or NDAs—Prince Harry, politicians, or certain celebrities, for example. But these people typically have lawyers on retainer or agents working on their behalf that are accustomed to their special needs, and know how to shepherd them through the publishing process so that everyone is happy.

If you’re an “average” or unknown author? The general response to an NDA will be silent eye-rolling. Agents and editors have seen just about everything under the sun, and you’re not likely telling them anything they haven’t heard before. Your notes mention you’re a co-author on the project, so perhaps the NDA is somehow related to that other person? If so, that puts you in a very difficult position that will likely impede progress.

Finally, your notes also mention that you might need to self-publish due to the sensitivity of the information. Here’s the thing, though: If you’re seeking some level of acceptance or attention from the mainstream media and if you want to achieve the highest possible credibility, then self-publishing may only further reinforce the notion that your information can’t be trusted. While traditional publishing is fallible and notorious for not fact-checking, the top publishers (big and small alike) do exercise some level of quality control. The sales, marketers, and publicists have to be able to pitch the book with some level of confidence or belief in what they’re peddling. And publishers regularly get eviscerated by readers and the media if they put out a book that’s considered harmful or that can be blatantly disproven. (Just see what happened here.)

Self-publishing a book on a well-known serial killer, with the true solution no one’s heard before, will most likely get you shelved with conspiracy theorists and snake-oil salesmen—if the book is discovered at all. The sensitivity of the information shouldn’t affect how you publish. Traditional publishers deal with sensitive information all the time. If this sensitive information can be verified or if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your true solution holds water, then editors and agents will give you fair hearing. But you have to give them the ability to consider your evidence upfront if you want to be taken seriously.

—Jane Friedman

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Late deadline: September 5th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top literary agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

Explore the Fictional Character That You Present to Readers

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

Today’s guest post is excerpted from the new book The Writer’s Voice: Techniques for Tuning your Tone and Style by Anne Janzer (@AnneJanzer).

In December 2022, the New York Times challenged several children’s authors and writing teachers to identify whether ChatGPT or human 4th graders wrote a collection of essays.

The experts could not always tell the difference. Nor could I. Many of us find that unsettling.

When we read, we form an image of the narrator as a human being. With good fiction, characters come to life in our heads. Even when we encounter writing from a “brand” or a chatbot, it’s hard to resist giving it a personality. (I thank automated help chatbots when they answer my questions.)

Your readers probably don’t know you personally. As they read your words, they interpret your voice and create an idea of the person writing those words. They construct an image of you that is, in a sense, a fictional character.

Even the most dedicated journalists, memoirists, and professional writers engage in a type of fiction: the way they portray themselves in print. When we write in our own voice, we present a curated version of ourselves. The complete self would never fit.

We do this almost without thinking. In my survey about writing voice, two-thirds of respondents reported writing in a professional voice for a portion of their work. No doubt they sound different when writing fiction, personal essays, journals, and emails to friends and family.

What happens if we think of ourselves as fictional characters—even if we write nonfiction? Could this increase the fluidity of our writing?

Here are three exercises you can use to explore the fictional character you present, even if you write nonfiction.

Sketch your character 

In this exercise, you’re going to sketch a brief character profile of the narrator (which might be you) as that persona relates to the work at hand.

If you write in your own voice, remember that you present only a specific slice of yourself on the page—the one the reader needs. If you write fiction with an omniscient narrator, that persona still has a point of reference, a lens on the world, and a distinct voice.

How about memoir? Isn’t that really you on the page? Yes, although it represents you at a specific time of life. So, draw a quick character profile of yourself at that time, as related to your memoir’s theme. Your entire life won’t fit.

This isn’t the bio that would appear on a book jacket, filled with your credentials—leave that for another time. You’re trying to capture the personality you hope to project in the writing voice. You can do that in a few short paragraphs.

Keep the writing in the third person so you can zoom out and get perspective.

Remember, you don’t have to show this to anyone.

As you do this, consider:

What can you do with the insights from this exercise?Does this shape ideas about what you want your writing voice to be?Pick 3 adjectives 

Here’s a useful marketing trick. Pick three adjectives that you would like to embody in your writing. They can be anything: smart, expert, funny, compassionate, nerdy, whatever. The options are nearly infinite—and that’s the fun of it.

You can only claim three, so choose carefully. You’ll be lucky to communicate two consistently.

Now choose one of your adjectives and take it to an absurd extreme. For example, one of my adjectives is curious. If I went overboard, I might write an email like this to friends:

Remember that we’re getting together Saturday for wine tasting at 6pm at Pat’s place. I wonder what wines everyone will bring—and if there are any great tasters in our midst. I read a book by a Master Sommelier, and it includes a tasting grid. Does anyone want to try it with me? Maybe we should make it a blind tasting and see how our different senses compare. Is anyone planning to spit out the wine? And what’s the best food to accompany wine tasting? I’ll do some research and bring a snack that works well.

(See how annoying it can be to go too far?)

Try going overboard with one of your own adjectives. Either write a paragraph or two on a current project or use the following prompt: Write an email to friends about a gathering on Saturday.

Having tried the extreme, consider how far you usually go on this spectrum. Does your writing show up displaying the voice you want? Too much or too little of it?

Try on another character

Pick a favorite fictional character—one you know well and that you can inhabit easily.

Choose characters with distinct voices. For example, if you love reading mysteries, pick your favorite sleuth or detective: Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade. Consider any of the Harry Potter characters. Or, try on a movie character.

Put them to work writing for you. How would Snape write that email? How would Yoda begin your blog post?

For example, I tried asking Poirot to describe my favorite hike, and he just complained about his shoes and the lack of a tisane.

Bookshop • Amazon

If you don’t have a writing project in mind, use this prompt:

Write about a specific place you love from the perspective of your chosen character, who may or may not love it.

Pay attention to what you learn from writing in another voice.

Was it fun to write in an unfamiliar voice?Did writing as another character shift your perspective? For example, if you used the prompt, did it make you consider the place again through a new lens?Are there elements of that character’s voice you might call on in the future?

How AI-Generated Books Could Hurt Self-Publishing Authors

Just two days after the Maui wildfires began, on Aug. 10, a new book was self-published, Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change by “Dr. Miles Stones” (no such person seems to exist). I learned about the book from this Forbes article, but by then, Amazon had removed the book from sale. Amazon had no comment for Forbes on the situation.

Curious about how far the book might have spread, I did a Google search for the book’s ISBN number (9798856899343). To my surprise, I saw the book was also for sale at Bookshop and Barnes & Noble. I tweeted about the situation, noting that IngramSpark, a division of Ingram, must be distributing these books to the broader retail market. My assumption was that retailers, in particular Bookshop, would not accept self-published books coming out of Amazon’s KDP. (Amazon KDP authors can choose to enable Amazon’s Expanded Distribution at no cost, to reach retail markets outside of Amazon.)

It turns out my assumption was wrong. Bookshop does accept self-published books distributed by Amazon, and here things get a little convoluted. Amazon Expanded Distribution uses Ingram to distribute; Ingram is the biggest book distributor and there isn’t really any other service to use for distribution as far as the US/UK.

However, Bookshop’s policy is not to sell AI-generated books unless they are clearly labeled as such, so Fire and Fury was removed from sale after they were alerted to its presence. Bookshop’s founder Andy Hunter tweeted: “We will pull them from @Bookshop_Org when we find them, but it’s always going to be a challenge to support self-published authors while trying to NOT support AI fakes.”

And now we come to why self-publishing authors have reason to be seriously concerned about the rising tide of AI-generated books.

Amazon KDP is unlikely to ever prohibit AI-generated content. Even if it did create such a policy, there are no surefire detection methods for AI-generated material today.Amazon KDP authors can easily enable expanded distribution to the broader retail market at no cost to them. It’s basically a checkbox.Amazon uses Ingram to distribute, and Ingram reaches everyone who matters—bookstores, libraries, and all kinds of retailers. Ingram does have a policy, however, that they may not accept “books created using artificial intelligence or automated processes.”Based on what happened with Fire and Fury, Amazon’s expanded distribution can make a book available for sale at Barnes & Noble and Bookshop in a matter of days.

If the rising tide of AI-generated material keeps producing such questionable books—along with embarrassing and unwanted publicity—one has to ask if Barnes & Noble and Bookshop might decide to stop accepting self-published books altogether from Ingram or otherwise limit their acceptance. Obviously not good news for self-published authors, or Ingram either.

What are some potential remedies?Ingram is an important waypoint here. They’ve put stronger quality control measures in place before. Perhaps they can be strengthened to prevent the worst material from reaching the market outside of Amazon.Amazon’s Expanded Distribution requires that authors use Amazon’s free ISBNs. Would it be possible for retailers to block any title with an Amazon ISBN? (ISBNs identify the publisher or where the material originated from.) While that may be unfair to honest people who prefer to use Amazon’s Expanded Distribution, such authors/publishers would still have the option of setting up their own IngramSpark account. IngramSpark has no upfront fees and also provides free ISBNs.Maybe IngramSpark or other retailers put a delay on making Amazon’s Expanded Distribution titles available for sale. Amazon already states it can take up to eight weeks for the book to go on sale. So why not make such titles wait?Free ISBNs unfortunately contribute to this problem

ISBNs are a basic requirement to sell a print book through retail channels today. In the US, it is expensive to purchase ISBNs—it’s nearly $300 for ten. Amazon KDP does not require authors to purchase ISBNs and will give you ISBNs for free all day if you need them. Over time, others like IngramSpark and Draft2Digital have also made ISBNs free to make it easier for self-publishing authors to distribute their work.

While it’s admirable to lower the barriers for authors who have limited funds, free ISBNs are supercharging the distribution of AI-generated materials to the wider retail market. An immediate way to stem this tide of garbage in the US market? Stop giving out free ISBNs. Make authors purchase their own.

There’s a huge advantage to making authors purchase their own ISBNs: it creates an identifiable publisher of record with Bowker (the ISBN-issuing agency in the United States). The publisher of record would be listed at retailers. Currently, fraudsters using Amazon KDP are able to hide behind Amazon-owned ISBNs; their books are simply listed as “independently published.” It would be marvelous to take away that fig leaf. Sure, fraudsters could create sham entities that mean nothing and are unfindable in the end, but at least you could connect the dots on all the titles they’re releasing—plus Bowker would see who’s doing the purchasing and possibly put their own guardrails in place. My hope is these entities would choose not to buy ISBNs at all and this activity would become limited to the backwaters of Amazon.

Professional self-publishing authors who distribute widely outside of Amazon are buying their own ISBNs already. Those who aren’t? I would consider it, because if nothing changes about the current situation, we may be entering a period where a book without an identifiable publisher (or author) is immediately considered suspect. And that’s another problem for self-publishing authors.

As of this writing, Barnes & Noble still has Fire and Fury listed, with a sales rank of #24. But it is “temporarily out of stock,” which makes sense if Amazon is the distributor and it took down the book. How long will the ghost of it linger?

Mining Your Memories: 3 Forms of Memory Every Memoirist Must Know

Photo by Nicolette Attree

Today’s post is by writer, speaker and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison. Join her for the three-part webinar series The Psychology of Memoir, beginning August 23.

Does Shaggy from Scooby Doo have an Adam’s apple? Answer quickly. Then survey three friends. Got a partner? Quiz them too.

While this might seem like a strange exercise, it has a direct impact on your memoir.

I recently asked my husband this question. His response: definitely. That’s what I said too!  Apparently, millions of people share this memory. Except we’re all wrong. This collective misremembering is called the Mandela Effect. It’s why people swear there was once a cornucopia on the Fruit of the Loom logo or that Curious George had a tail.

This exercise reveals just how fickle, and at times inaccurate, our memories can be. Yet many memoirists begin with a goal of writing and owning their truth. A portion of these writers have been told what they observed, felt, or experienced wasn’t real. After a lifetime of gaslighting, they want to own their version of reality. If that’s you, let me be clear: if you’ve been hurt by others, your feelings are real. I’m certain you vividly remember both what happened and how you felt. Getting all that down is a start, but there’s more to do.

Memoir is a story not just of what you remember, but the sense you make from it. Understanding how your memories work, and what to do with the less reliable ones, will help you with the meaning-making process.

Memories begin as sensory input the brain flags as important.

This data is first stored in working memory so we can use it to complete daily tasks like keeping track of the time while cooking. If this data proves useful beyond the task or situation, it gets bumped to short-term memory for overnight processing where it will either be turned into long-term memories or scrapped. From the brain’s perspective, useful equals important to survival. That means threats, your first kiss, best orgasm, or greatest high will get priority over who shot Abe Lincoln. Events associated with strong emotions and things we rehearse throughout the day also take precedence. Much of the rest ends up in your brain’s circular file. Even long-term memories are periodically pruned to make room for new information.

Your age, mood, physical health, and whether you have a trauma history will impact which events you encode as memories, which details are retained, and which moments you recall. For example, if you’re sad, you’re more likely to remember other negative events, whereas if you’re in a great mood, the past you recall is likely to be peachy.

There are three types of long-term memories memoirists will need to mine: semantic, episodic, and procedural.

Semantic memory encompasses your general knowledge, including concepts, facts not associated with your life, vocabulary, and important dates, to name a few. It’s where you filed your answer about Shaggy’s Adam’s apple.

Episodic memories include specific events and experiences that make up your life, like your first visit to the ocean or all the rainy afternoons when you watched Scooby Doo. A portion of these memories will be flashbulb moments. According to Very Well Mind, flashbulb memories are “vivid memories about emotionally significant events.” They’re more likely to form when there’s a widespread crisis or public event, and they differ from trauma memories or flashbacks because, while they’re upsetting in the short term, recalling them years later will not make you anxious. Common flashbulb memories include where you were on 9/11 or when JFK was assassinated, or what you were doing when you learned of the first COVID-19 lockdown.

Procedural memory involves the skills you’ve learned. It’s sometimes called your muscle memory because the things stored there are so ingrained, they’re automatic, like driving a car or speaking your native language.

Memoirists often begin with episodic memories, so knowing how to evoke them is essential. But you’ll need the other two as you write and revise, so don’t discount them. Because memories are associative, the more you work to remember, the more you’ll uncover. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Episodic memory: Engage your senses. Look at photographs, advertisements, magazine articles, and movies from the period you’re writing about. Eat foods associated with that era. Create a memoir soundtrack. If possible, visit locations where your memoir takes place, and don’t just look around, inhale the scent of the air. Run your hands along the walls and door frames. Listen to the hum of the furnace. Make a list of the memories these activities conjure. Semantic memory: List the general facts you remember from your memoir’s timeline, including popular games, toys, car models, clothing styles and slang; key world events; cultural zeitgeists and movements. Next, do a newspaper search and jot down headlines of interest. What memories do they trigger about the world? Do the same with any period documentaries. At this point, don’t worry about accuracy. Just see what you can remember.Procedural memory: While procedural memories might seem unimportant, it’s likely your actions mirror another character’s. Mindfulness can be a huge ally here, because it can help you turn the automatic into the conscious. To access your procedural memories, pay attention to how you walk, eat, drive, or sit. Doing these things slowly will help. Then record what you notice, and more importantly, where you may have learned it. For example, while driving, do you always put your hands on ten and two, or do you steer with one finger just like your father?

In your first draft, all you need to do is record what you remember about your most important moments. In later drafts, you’ll do research to clear up any inaccuracies and deepen the context around what matters. But what do you do when you encounter something you SWEAR happened one way, but didn’t? For example, are you forced to denounce your strongly held memory of Shaggy’s Adam’s apple?

Sometimes what you misremember is the story and your job is to call attention to it. But here’s what you can do if that’s not the case.

In his interview with Melanie Brooks for Writing Hard Stories, Andre Dubus III says, “‘We can’t make shit up.” But when it comes to inconsequential items, like the weather or the description of a cartoon character, he says, “We are allowed a small degree of poetic license.” He goes on to describe a pivotal scene from his memoir where “he’s standing staring at his fourteen-year-old self in the mirror after watching his younger brother get beat up, and he vows to never walk away from a fight again.” As he recalls the memory, he says, “I still see every bit of that afternoon, and I see it in a gray, April light.” While he admits he could verify this memory by Googling the weather on that day, he chooses not to and, instead, quotes Tobias Wolff: “Memory has its own story to tell.” Your job is to “trust your memory.” And in your earliest drafts, see where those memories take you.

Note from Jane: if you enjoyed this post, joins us for the three-part webinar series The Psychology of Memoir, beginning August 23.