Mike Billington's Blog, page 4

Do eBooks boost print sales?

I have - rightfully - been accused of having one foot firmly planted in the 19th Century and the other in the 20th. To say that the 21st Century and I are only on vague speaking terms would be accurate.
That said, I have to admit that despite my initial reluctance to read anything that wasn't printed on paper I have become an enormous fan of eBooks.
My love affair with them started when I moved to Spain a couple of years ago and discovered that post offices are no longer as reliable as they once were. I ordered books from the States, waited up to three and four weeks for them to arrive and, sadly, some of them never did.
Very frustrating for someone like me who likes carrying at least a couple of books in my backpack whenever I leave my apartment just so I have something to read while having a coffee or relaxing on a park bench.
Because my laptop came loaded with Kindle, I decided to try eBooks as an alternative to continually re-reading the same paperbacks and hardbacks I have at home. (Don't get me wrong, I still read those old friends... it's just that I also crave new books.)
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading in this new format. So surprised that when I started writing my own novels at about the same time the idea of publishing them electronically seemed even more appealing than it had been.
Why?
Well, for one thing, eBooks are generally less expensive than paperbacks. That's important for me because I'm retired now and living on a small pension. As a result, budgeting is no longer something that happens to other people.
For another: You can order one and start reading it usually within 10 minutes. No more waiting weeks for it to arrive, if it ever does.
Finally, and maybe best of all, there is a huge variety of eBooks written by many very talented authors that the big publishing houses have chosen to - for one reason or another - ignore. Buying eBooks allows me to discover some excellent novels that you and I just aren't going to find on the shelves of our local bookstores.
But, as a devoted fan of the printed page, I started wondering if eBooks were going to kill off independent bookstores and severely hurt the paperback and hardback markets.
Apparently they do not do either.
New studies show that independent bookstores are making a real comeback and that neither paperback nor hardback sales have been crushed by the eBook revolution.
I think that might have something to do with the fact that eBooks have helped many people get back into the habit of reading. The reason: They are so darn convenient.
When I'm traveling, for example, it used to be that half my luggage was books. Now all I need is my laptop and a sort-of-reliable Internet connection. I no longer have to lug around three or four books because, in truth, I have more than 50 eBooks on my laptop and have access to literally thousands more with a few keystrokes.
What this means is that when I am, for example, in London I can browse bookshops and find a couple of paperbacks that I want to add to my library, buy them and bring them back to Spain without having to also buy another suitcase to carry home my treasures.
For many people who have gotten out of the habit of reading anything but progress reports and angry memos from their bosses, the low cost combined with the convenience of being able to quickly buy and then just as quickly start reading eBooks has allowed them to rediscover the inherent joy of following a good mystery to its conclusion or journeying to faraway places - including other planets if they are sci-fi fans. That rediscovered joy of reading has led many of them back into bookstores if my conversations with folks in airports, on trains and in bookstores is any gauge.
As I said, I'm not really fully engaged with the 21st Century but I have to admit there are some aspects of it - and being able to carry 50 or more novels with me on a trip is certainly one - that are darned appealing.

Marketing books can be exhausting

I have five books on Kindle at present and am about to add a couple more in the next few weeks (after I do a little polishing and some more proofreading.)
Once I add those two - a murder mystery entitled "Blood Debt" and an historical novel entitled "The Third Servant" - I'll take some time to start seriously marketing both my two new books and those that have already been published.
When I first started trying to market my books to the online community I had no idea what I was doing. I'm still not what you'd call adept at marketing online but I'm learning all the time thanks to help from Stacie Theis of BeachBoundBooks and Sandy Penny of SweetMysteryBooks.com, both of whom know their way around the Internet and all its social media platforms. They've taught me how to set up a Twitter account, how to use Pinterest to my best advantage and given me a dozen other tips that help increase my online presence. That, of course, doesn't guarantee more sales but it does let more people - lots more people - know that my books are available.
The marketing aspect of being an independent writer is interesting, sometimes fun but always exhausting. There are folks who make it a full-time job and I can readily understand why. For the next few weeks I'll probably spend upwards of 30 hours a week doing nothing but Tweeting, updating web pages and posting photos and teasers all aimed at letting people know that I have two new books in the marketplace. When I'm not doing that I'll be putting together press releases for newspapers and magazines, trying to set up some radio interviews (and hopefully doing a few) and trying to figure out the whole podcast thing.
And in my spare time I'm going to try to write 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event that I signed up for this year for the first time just to see if I could do it.
My dad, as I mentioned before, never considered writing a real job... Pop, wherever you are, let me say once again that it really is.
And it can be exhausting.

Finding an editor - a GOOD editor...

Finding a good editor is one of the hardest things that I think you'll ever do as a writer. We all need them - even Hemingway admitted that and he was notorious for berating editors and, occasionally, punching them - but finding them, that's another story.
I spent nearly 50 years in journalism and a fair share of that time editing other people's work. As a newspaperman and now as a mystery writer I have developed my own classification system for them.
A) The frustrated writer: This person wants to write, often desperately, but for some reason doesn't or can't. Be wary of this person because invariably he or she will want to rework your story and, thereby, make it their own and that is NOT a good thing.
B) The curmudgeon: This is a person who has read the great writers down through history and now thinks he/she knows exactly how a story should unfold, what words should be used, how the characters should be drawn and is quite prepared to call you a failure as a writer because you aren't Dickens or Twain or Hemingway or Dreiser. The curmudgeon lives in the past and anything written after 1955 is probably not very good, at least as far as he or she is concerned. Avoid the curmudgeon.
C) The entrepreneur: This is someone with a degree in English or related field who has figured out that with all the new writers bursting upon the scene thanks to independent publishing opportunities he or she can make a comfortable living posing as an editor. These folks are usually young, very aggressive and, sadly, not very good. For them, manuscripts are like pieces on an assembly line: The more of them that they can "edit" in a week, the more money they can make and making money - not helping an author polish a manuscript - is really what motivates them. Avoid them.
D) The seasoned pro: If you can find someone like this, latch onto him or her. These are people who know the language, whose egos are not threatened by reading the works of others and who have no agenda beyond making sure your book is coherent and free from silly typos and continuity errors. They understand that your book is the end result of a lot of soul-searching, research and the blood, sweat and tears inherent in bringing it to life. They also understand that even if you're not the new Dickens or Hammett, you may still have a very fine book and that you might just be setting some new standards with your writing.
Finding these folks isn't easy and I can say that with some degree of experience. In all my years in journalism I had fewer than a dozen good editors and I can think of only three that I would classify as being great.
That notwithstanding, if I were to suggest the best way to find a good wordsmith to help you with your manuscript I'd say look for a retired newspaper editor (not me, I'm too busy hammering out my own stuff.) Why a retired newspaper editor? Simply because over the years they will have worked with a wide variety of reporters and read an awful lot of stories - both good and bad. One of them can probably work with you as a result and will likely know what constitutes a good paragraph, chapter and novel.
Once you've discovered an editor that seems legitimate, talk with him or her at length about the editing process. Doing so allows you to get a feel for his or her professionalism and, just as importantly, it gives you a sense of their approach to editing - are they, for example, inclined to be collaborative or dictatorial? That, in turn allows you to determine whether their approach suits you or not.
Once you've done that, all that's left is to ask yourself this simple question: Am I comfortable entrusting my work to this person?
If the answer is yes, then by all means do so but if you have any doubts, my advice is to keep looking.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCABGK

Alternative history

When it comes to books I'm pretty much a literature omnivore. I have friends who only like mysteries, others that only like nonfiction and still others who won't read anything but romances.
That's not me.
I'll read anything and everything I can get my hands on. In the past month, for example, I've read Dee Harrison's sword-and-sorcery epic "The Firelord's Crown" as well as Bill Ward's "Encryption," a scary - and sexy - high-tech thriller, and a marvelous book by Karen Ingalls entitled "Outshine: An Ovarian Cancer Memoir" that reveals what it's like to be diagnosed with, and then wage war against, this terrible illness.
One of my favorite genres, however, is alternative history. I like it because it gives us a glimpse into what the world MIGHT have been like instead of how it is. It's one of the reasons that I wrote my own alternative history, a Steampunk adventure called "The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit."
Given that, it's probably no secret that I'm a fan of Christopher G. Nuttall, who has written one of the best alternative history novels I've read in a long time. It's called "The Invasion of 1950" and it puts us into a world in which Britain made peace with Germany during World War II instead of continuing to fight.
That peace is a tenuous one, however, and the Nazis are waiting for their chance to roll over the White Cliffs of Dover. In 1950 they do, at least in Christopher's novel.
What makes his book so good, in my opinion, is that he knows what he's talking about on a wide variety of subjects. The weapons are not fanciful but realistic, the political machinations are very real (and I know a little bit about that having covered the Pentagon and Congress for UPI as well as state Legislatures in New York, Florida and Delaware.) His characters are finely drawn and, well, in other words his book reads like a real history of his imaginary invasion.
That's the key, I think, to writing an effective alternative history novel: It has to read like an actual history. The events contained within it have to be rooted not in some fantasy world but in the real one with believable characters and action that fits the time and place.
Not everyone agrees with me when it comes to alternative history novels. I know lots of folks who won't read them because, while they are perfectly happy to go to Mars with John Carter, they are, for some reason, uncomfortable reading about a world in which a key battle was lost allowing the Nazis to win the Second World War.
I like them, though, and if you've a mind to at least give one alternative history book a try, get hold of "The Invasion of 1950" and see how well it can be done.

Being a writer often means being lonely

Writing a novel is work.
Hard work.
It is also a special kind of work, one that many of us cannot do unless we are alone.
It's that way for me, at least.
That seems like an odd thing for someone like me to say. I was, after all, a reporter for many years, nearly a half century to be exact, and in that time I seldom wrote alone. Usually, there were dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of people around me. Some were also writing news stories, others were arguing with editors while others were chatting, flirting, complaining and doing all those other things that people in large groups do during the work day.
Writing a news story under the pressure of unforgiving deadlines while being surrounded by other people - noisy people - was something you either got used to early in your career or you stopped being a journalist and went somewhere else to make a lot more money.
I got used to it and had a very satisfying - if low paid - career as a result.
In fact, I learned not only to tolerate all that noise and activity but to use it to my advantage. I honestly think that the constant noise and the energy of the city room helped me write sometimes as many as four stories in a day on subjects that could range from a shooting in a downtown bar to the fate of a bill in the state Legislature. As a reporter I fed off that energy as I pounded first typewriter and - later - computer keys while simultaneously searching for just the right words, the right phrases to make my stories not only accurate but also entertaining.
That's not possible for me when I sit down to work on a novel, however, and I'm not alone in this if what other writers tell me is true. I need to be alone to write about a detective, for example, who is trying to solve a murder or a woman trying to rescue a colleague whose life has collapsed around him.
I'm not sure why that is and, consequently, I have a hard time convincing other people that I need hours and hours of solitude to actually write my novels. I think the difficulty I have in convincing them that I need to be alone lies in the fact that most of the people I know are not writers. As a result they really don't understand just how hard writing is. They have jobs - or did - and even if they are no longer working full time they are surrounded by people for a large part of the day and most of them think that's a good thing.
For them it probably is, but not for me.
Because of that, one of the things I dread most is an unexpected visit. Since I'd rather not hurt people's feelings by being rude, I often keep my need for solitude to myself and end up asking these uninvited guests in for coffee or a beer. On the rare occasions when I don't do that, and actually tell them that I need to be alone to write, they get offended and I find that I then cannot write - sometimes for hours at a time - because that encounter has left a very sour taste in my mouth.
Frankly, my need to be alone to write is one of the reasons I moved to a small city in Spain where I know virtually no one. Rarely does someone drop in on me here and because of that I get to write for hours at a time without interruption.
For me, that truly is heaven on earth.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCABGK

The cool thing about independent publishing...

Some time ago I was searching for an agent for my mystery "Corpus Delectable" and I wound up talking to a woman based in New York City who, upon learning that I had been a reporter for nearly 50 years, sniffed that while I'd been paid to write for nearly a half century "you aren't really a writer, not an author, I mean."
I continued my search for an agent and found another candidate who read my manuscript, said she liked it but then said, with a touch of sadness, "I'd like to represent you but the publishing business is tough. If you'd only won a Pulitzer or something like that we might be able to get you a contract. The thing is, publishers aren't really into the idea of taking risks on unknowns."
That's when I discovered the world of independent, e-book publishing and I have to tell you that - as a writer - it's a wonderful place to live and work. There's no one telling you, for example, to "spice up the sex scenes" in your book, no one telling you to make changes in your story so they'll appeal to some cranky editor stuck in a back room someplace regardless of whether or not those suggestions make any sense.
Independent publishing allows you to let your imagination run free, to experiment with words and concepts, with characters and plots. Sometimes these experiments don't work and you end up with a pile of unconnected thoughts but sometimes they work brilliantly.
As a reader as well as a writer I find that independent publishing also allows me to wander through a garden of endless literary delights where I can discover new authors that are working with words, not simply replicating other people's works in hopes of making a few bucks.
Lita Burke - who wrote "Forever Boy" - and C.N. Lesley - who wrote "Shadow Over Avalon" - come immediately to mind. Lita's short novel is meant to be the first in a series of adventures featuring a wizard, his assistant, and a shape shifter who can be either a small boy or a small dog. She takes us to a world where islands can float, mechanical beings fly ships above the earth and demons live. Likewise, C.N.Lesley gives us entry into a world that has been invaded by beings from another planet. It's not exactly a magical world although there are people in her book that can levitate, read minds, and fight like demons with the aid of some pretty sophisticated mechanical implants. Better yet, some of these humans have gills and live under the sea while others struggle on lands that are fraught with dangers that include some pretty nightmarish beasts.
Both authors have given their imagination full rein and I've really enjoyed reading their books. Would I have been able to say that were it not for the fact they can publish what they want, when they want and how they want to as independent writers and publishers?
Maybe, but the fact that they didn't have to rely on button-down corporate types to get their books out means I've been able to spend a few hours enjoying their creativity and, for that, I'm thankful.

A must read for those facing cancer and the people who love them

I'd been home from Vietnam less than a year when I started experiencing sharp pains in my groin.
The pain was so sharp that it sometimes forced me to my knees. That was remarkable in and of itself because in those days I was still young, in shape and could endure a fair amount of pain. My right arm had been shattered when I was wounded on patrol in the Mekong Delta, for example, and despite that I was able to scramble aboard a medevac chopper under my own power so, yeah, pain was something I knew about and could usually handle.
Not this pain, however. Concerned (oh hell, who am I kidding, I was scared half to death) I went to see a doctor.
He told me there was nothing to worry about.
Unconvinced, I went to see another doctor. He told me the pain, which was centered in my left testicle, meant that I wasn't getting enough sex. He literally told me to go out and get laid.
The third doctor I went to see said he was more concerned about what he thought was a sloppy job of stitching the Army docs had done on my right arm than he was with the pain in my groin.
I was about ready to believe those quacks (yeah, I said it and I meant it) but the pain persisted so I drove nearly 40 miles to see a fourth doctor. He referred me to an oncologist within 20 minutes of seeing me. When I showed up at the oncologist's office he examined me and then sat down, looked me square in the eye and said "I'm sorry but I'm pretty certain that you have testicular cancer."
I asked him what that meant and he said, essentially, that I could either have surgery to remove the walnut-sized tumor on my left testicle - and my left testicle - or die.
He then told me he wanted to do a biopsy the next day to confirm his diagnosis and after I agreed he took a few minutes to chastise me for waiting so long to see a doctor. I was going to tell him I'd been to three other doctors before I finally saw the fourth but I didn't. At that point I really didn't see the point.
Two days after my biopsy I had radical surgery followed by months of treatment - both chemotherapy and cobalt radiation.
I should have written about my experience when it was all over but I didn't.
I could have. I was, after all, a journalist and I could have easily gotten my story into print, but I didn't.
Fear and ego were the reasons I didn't. Had I written about it I'd have had to admit - in print for all the world to see - how frightened I was that I was going to die and about how worried I was that even if I lived I might never have sex again. I'd have had to admit that after some of my post-operative treatments I couldn't remember how I'd driven nearly 80 miles from Cleveland to my apartment in Ashtabula or how there were times when I was so sick dying would almost have been preferable to vomiting for hours at a time.
I'd have had to write, too, just how damned unfair it seemed to me that I had somehow become the only person in my family to be diagnosed with cancer. Not my mother, who smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, or any of my brothers, who were known to partake of some illegal substances on occasion. It seemed horribly unfair to me that I had survived not one but two tours in Vietnam as an infantryman only to come home and be diagnosed with testicular cancer.
But to write those things would have been to openly admit that I - a veteran with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and two decorations from the Vietnamese government - was afraid. I'd have had to publicly acknowledge my bitterness as well and, frankly, I didn't have the moral courage to do either in those days.
That's why Karen Ingalls is, in my opinion, one of the bravest people on the planet. Karen was diagnosed a few years ago with a particularly rare and extremely aggressive form of ovarian cancer. She survived - no mean feat in itself - and then she had the courage to write about her psychological struggles with the diagnosis, her surgery and the treatments that followed it, her faith, the impact her cancer had on her friends and family and those times that she broke down and simply cried because she was all but overwhelmed by what she was going through.
Her book, "Outshine: An Ovarian Cancer Memoir," is not very long but that doesn't mean it's not powerful because it certainly is. In clear, unadulterated language she writes about what it's like to be a woman of a certain age who had been looking forward to a long and productive retirement when she was diagnosed. She pulls no punches and, along the way, she even takes time to educate us about ovarian cancer, which is often fatal especially if it isn't detected very early. Hers had progressed to Stage II by the time she realized there was something not quite right about what was happening to her body so her diagnosis was particularly devastating. Fortunately for her, she had a primary care physician who actually took the time to listen to her and the ego strength to refer Karen to a specialist.
If you have been diagnosed with cancer, or you know someone who has been, I'd urge you to read this book because it is forthright, honest and inspirational.

Dystopian novels

I grew up in a trailer as my brothers and I were dragged around the countryside following my engineer dad from job site to job site. I had bad skin as a teenager. I went to elementary schools where teachers told us that, in the event of a nuclear attack - something we expected to occur on a regular basis - we were supposed to crawl under our desks and wait for the shock wave to pass us by. Toward the end of my sophomore year in high school the U.S. started sending large numbers of troops to Vietnam and I knew then, as did every other boy in my class, that the chances were better than average that we were going to wind up in the military.
Why is this relevant?
Because growing up when I did, as I did, made it difficult to believe in a Utopian future.
Much easier to believe that the future would be Dystopian.
It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that I've become a fan of Dystopian novels. That said, I recently ran across Ann Rasico's "When the Chips are Down." It's not a long book but it's one that's more than a little scary, especially in light of the Patriot Act and the apparent willingness of so many Americans to surrender their basic freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety.
Ann's novel focuses on some college friends who discover an awful secret about microchips that have been implanted in about 99 percent of all Americans over the age of 18. How they try to get that information to people who need to know about it - yeah, that would be about 99 percent of the 99 percent who have the chips - is a hair-raising tale that I enjoyed very much. The book has some flaws - all books do - but the questions it raises are so powerful that those flaws are not worth noting.
Ever read any Dystopian literature?
If you have you might enjoy "When the Chips are Down."
If you haven't, well, maybe you should.

Like all writers, I read...

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got in my life was from Alta Reigert, my first editor. She told me that to be a good writer I had to be a good reader. She then added that if I was serious about being a good writer I should spend at least 30 minutes every day reading something that has absolutely nothing to do with my job.
It was good advice and I took it to heart. Even in Vietnam I usually found time to spend at least 30 minutes at some point during the day to read something. I might have been the only guy in my rifle platoon with a couple of paperbacks in my rucksack when we were slogging through the rice paddies in the Mekong Delta.
It's because I really enjoy reading that I've been able to discover not only the NY Times best-selling authors that everyone knows but also an army of independent storytellers who are publishing their works as ebooks.
Recently, for example, I discovered Bill Ward, an Englishman of a certain age who has crafted a scary book entitled "Encryption." The plot is basically this: Super nerd invents an algorithm that can keep Internet traffic (emails and such) secret from those government agencies that routinely snoop through it. The new algorithm will be worth billions when it's fully developed and released to the marketplace, something that government spy agencies want to prevent. In the process of trying to prevent that some innocent people die, some people who should be enemies turn out to be allies and... well, I won't spoil it for you but if you like sexy, action-packed spy thrillers then you'll probably like "Encryption" as much as I did. If you'd like to take a gander at it, you can find it in Amazon's Kindle book store.

A little about me...

I do not come from a long line of writers. My mother was a Protestant minister, my dad an engineer who always wondered when I was going to get a real job.
(I never did... at least in his mind.)
I always knew that I wanted to be a writer but it wasn't until the seventh grade that I knew I wanted to be a journalist. That was the year the mother of one of my friends - a librarian - gave me a copy of Ernie Pyle's "Here is Your War." Reading it convinced me that what I really wanted to do was tell the stories of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. I got my first paid writing job for the Madison Press in Madison, Ohio when I was 15. (Famous place Madison... in "Travels With Charley" John Steinbeck called it the unfriendliest town he'd visited.) At the Press I was paid $10 a week to carry lead pigs to the Linotype operator and allowed to write a story a week.
My writing career took a small hiatus after high school when I enlisted in the Army and spent a couple of tours in Vietnam. I managed to survive both tours but not without some bumps, bruises and assorted other injuries. I left the Army in October 1969 with a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, the Combat Infantryman's Badge and two Vietnamese decorations and went right to work for a small daily in Geneva, Ohio. I enrolled in Kent State University the following January, just in time to have the Ohio National Guard show up on the main campus and shoot four students to death in May.
After surviving college and Vietnam I began my career in earnest working at newspapers in Ohio, New York State, Florida and Delaware. During nearly 50 years as a reporter I covered a variety of stories that allowed me to do what I started out to do - write about ordinary people caught up in earth-shaking events. Those assignments included the Love Canal environmental disaster, several hurricanes (including Andrew, Katrina, Hugo and Rita), the invasion of Panama, Operation Desert Storm and the Rwandan civil war. I also covered years of unrest in Haiti, immigration issues in Mexico, drug trafficking in Florida and more murders than I care to remember. I investigated rogue cops in Florida and wrote a long series of articles about infant mortality in Delaware that forced state officials to start prenatal care programs for low-income pregnant women.
I won a bunch of awards along the way including the Southern Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting and the Brotherhood Medal of the National Conference of Christians and Jews for an undercover investigation of Neo-Nazi, white-power extremists. The awards were nice, of course, but the real satisfaction came from seeing the stories I'd written get into print.
Throughout my career I kept a lot of notebooks filled with characters, quotes, story ideas and observations because I thought that, at some point, they might be useful. When my health forced me to retire a few years earlier than I had planned, I began writing fiction and, yeah, those notebooks have come in handy.
Currently, I live in Spain where I spend several hours a day writing and a few hours a week pretending to be a painter.
I have five novels on Kindle at present - four mysteries and one Steampunk adventure. I have two more novels almost ready for release. You can check them out at amazon.com/author/billington
Until next time...