Brendan Halpin's Blog, page 24

The Future of Publishing: a Conversation With Seamus Cooper

I recently sat down with my alter ego Seamus Cooper for a wide-ranging conversation about our careers and the future of publishing.  Here's the transcript.

Brendan Halpin: So, Seamus. We haven't heard from you in a while.  Why'd you stop blogging?

Seamus Cooper: Nobody was reading it.  Also, once I was outed as your pseudonym, it got less fun.

BH: Ah. That was during the whole Night Shade Books debacle.  How'd that work out?

SC: Well, they issued an apology, and then, when the next royalty statement was due, they delivered one only after our agent asked for it, and it was late and inaccurate.  And they still haven't paid me.

BH: Wow. Really?  You'd think they'd make an effort to stay on top of stuff like this.  Are they evil, or just incompetent?

SC: You know, I've thought about this a lot, and I've decided that their intentions don't matter at all.  The bottom line is that, at least in their dealings with me, they do not run the money side of their business with even a modicum of professionalism.  Whether they mean to do the right thing or not is between them and their consciences.  The bottom line is that with these guys, I have to make quite a ruckus to get paid.  That whole internet firestorm of a year or so ago was about 400 bucks. No joke.  If their sales figures are accurate for this year, we're talking about a similar amount.

BH: So what now? Do you have other projects in the works?

SC: I've got three books in progress right now.  But I kind of don't know what to do with them.

BH: Why's that?

SC: Well.  It's a lot of work to find the right home for the kind of stuff I do. I'm not confident a big publisher would want it, and I'm a little gunshy about working with small publishers again.

BH: So why not just go direct to Kindle and Nook?  Isn't that the wave of the future?

SC: Maybe.  I think you can do that with speculative fiction a little more easily than you can with the stuff you write.

BH: Why?

SC: Because horror-science fiction-fantasy readers tend to be early tech adopters, they tend to evangelize for their favorite stuff, and, I think most importantly, they get together and see each other a lot.  At old school RPG games and conventions and comic book stores and stuff like this.  After all, one face-to-face recommendation is worth at least three online reviews.

BH: Where'd you get that statistic?  Through rigorous research?

SC: No. I pulled it out of my butt. Which I guess qualifies me to be a social media guru. Or the next Seth Godin.

BH: God, that guy is annoying.

SC: I know.  I have no idea why people repeat every word he says like he heard it from the lips of God himself.

BH: Do you believe in God?

SC: It's just an expression. Anyway, so I have some concerns about the direct-to-ebook model.

BH: Why?  It's the wave of the future, blah blah blah!

SC: Maybe.  But without the gatekeeper, how do you make your work stand out?  If nobody's going to see it in a bookstore, how do they hear about it?  All the sudden you have to devote a lot of time to publicity and hustling to make your book stand out.  Which is fine, if that's the way it is, but I'm not sure I currently have time to do that well.

BH: But isn't it awesome that you can reach readers directly without having a bunch of douchebags who don't pay you standing in the middle?

SC: Yes and no. Because those douchebags do things like hire editors and cover artists.

BH: Do they pay them on time?

SC: I'm not privy to that information. But my point is that with MALL OF CTHULHU, Janna Silverstein's editorial work made it a much better book.  And Scott Altmann's awesome cover made people want to pick it up.  So what do I do? Do I hire a freelance editor?  Will they be as tough on me as they should be if they're working for me rather than the publisher?  If this is the wave of the future, I'm a little concerned about some of the implications.

BH:What are you talking about?  Reach the readers directly and stuff!

SC: Good books are still going to need editors.  So if authors are investing money up front to pay editors and/or cover artists, this process automatically favors people with money.  Same deal with the publicity. If you have to make promoting yourself and your books a part-time job, that's going to favor people who are either young and have no real responsibilities, or people who have a lot of money saved.  None of which applies to you.

BH: Fair enough.

SC: Authors of necessity invest time up front. If you ask them to also invest money up front, you wind up with skewed criteria of who gets published. The person who can afford the best cover art and who has 8 spare hours a day to promote themselves might not be the person who's actually written the best book.

BH: Well, so why not crowdsource the funding with kickstarter or indiegogo or something?  Then you create evangelists and fans, and we're all funding the stuff we want to see, and it's a beautiful world where people of all faiths and ethnicities hold hands in the sunshine and sing!

SC: I think that's a Coke commercial.  Anyway, I'm not convinced about that for books.  It seems to work best for musicians or for people who already have a substantial audience.  By the way, I funded a horror comic on indiegogo that looks cool as hell, and I really hope other people kick in so it gets made.

BH: See! These are great things!  You're evangelizing for a comic book that hasn't been written yet!

SC: Well, look how much money they've raised.  And then, also, what happens when your work inevitably falls short of some people's expectations?  Will they see it as a betrayal?

BH: Wait a minute. You funded a comic book?  But that's my name on the site! 

SC: I stole your credit card.  I can't get one issued in my name.  Probably because I'm fictional.

BH: That is straight up discrimination. They issue credit cards to fictional people all the time!

SC: Whatever.  The point is, I'm not sold on crowdsourcing the funding to hire an editor and an illustrator. But I am thinking about crowdsourcing the editing.

BH: What are you talking about?

SC: Well, if you try to raise funds, you're asking people to contribute on the hope that something good will come of it.  But what if you release chapters of your work in progress on a blog and ask people to comment and tell you what's working and what's not?  That way you build an audience and you get edits, but instead of just a promise, your editors have gotten a free chapter, or, if they follow you all the way to the end, a free book in exchange for their time and energy.

BH: Interesting.  But then your whole book is out there on the internet.  You edit it yourself and sell it as an ebook? 

SC: Right.

BH: But, um, cows, free milk, etc.

SC: Well, it seems to work for some people. I know I'd pay a couple of bucks for the convenience of reading a book in one whole piece on an ereader as opposed to in pieces on a blog.   But also, I need encouragement while I'm writing something--that can come in the form of a sale, but what if it came in the form of feedback on a blog?

BH: I dunno.  I'm skeptical.  Sounds like the kind of project you might start and then never finish. 

SC: I disagree. I think the feedback would sustain me.

BH: But then we're back to the original problem.  You don't have time to go around hustling up interest in your novel. At least not in the kind of sustained way that's going to be really effective.  You've barely got time to write!

SC: And whose fault is that?

BH: Don't get petulant. I'm just saying that we're back to hustling for publicity, only now you're promoting something that doesn't even pay you.

SC:Well, not right away.  And let's face it, "Click on this link and read something" is a much easier sell than "click on this link and give me three bucks."

BH: Fair enough.  I don't know. 

SC: Nobody knows! Nobody knows anything!  So we all just get to try all kinds of crazy crap and see what works!

BH: And then if, by some fluke, your crazy crap works, you get to trot around as a self-important expert explaining why everyone should be just like you.

SC: Nice work if you can get it!

BH: So I'll see you at the next Tools of Change conference.

SC: Or maybe I'll give a TED talk about how great and smart I am!

BH:Can't wait.  So, in the meantime, should we look for any new product from you?

SC: It's on the way. And it would get here a lot sooner if you didn't have bills to pay.  So selfish!

BH: Sigh.

How to Talk to a Blended Family

For some reason, many people are confused about how to address members of a blended family.  So, as a member of a blended family, I thought I'd give you all some tips. 

Actually, it's just one tip:  talk to us like we're a family. Duh.  The fact that we are linked by choice rather than biology doesn't make us less of a family.

So, for example, if you run into a parent who's part of a blended family, don't just inquire after their biological child or children.  They are making a choice to raise other children who don't share their DNA. They've made a commitment to care for these children.  Don't assume that they only care about their biological child, and don't show them that you only care about their biological child.  This makes you look like a dick.

If you are inviting someone from a blended family to an event, you should invite everyone you'd normally invite to such a thing.  So, for example, you don't send a wedding invitation to only those members of the family you are related to by shared DNA.  This is a snub to the other members of the family.  And it makes you look like a dick.

If you knew one member of the family from a time when they were with a different partner, you still have to acknowledge both the new spouse and the new children as part of the family.  If the new family structure makes you uncomfortable, you should a)get over yourself and b)not inflict your discomfort on others.

We've been lucky. The great majority of people we know have been very loving and accepting of our family. But there's a small, though not as small as I'd like, minority of people who find small ways to snub our family, to remind us that they don't recognize as legitimate a family not based entirely on biology.

I'd like to say this: blended families should be celebrated. Forging a new family is a difficult and risky task, and when it works out, it's better for everyone.  Don't make it harder on everyone by acting like you don't take their family seriously.

Finally, this: I wrote a book with my friend Trish about two teens who are thrust into a blended family. It's called Notes From the Blender, and it comes out today.  If you're considering buying it, please do--it's funny and heartwarming and awesome. If you can't buy it, please consider asking for it at your local library.  Thanks!

 

Tweets From the Blender

My new novel, Notes From the Blender, written with my friend Trish Cook, comes out on May 24th. Assuming, you know, the apocalypse doesn't actually happen on the 21st.  Are any of those people selling their stuff for cheap?  I'll bet on the 20th you can get some great deals...

Anyway, Trish and I are very proud of this book--it's funny, touching, and slightly raunchy--and we'd really appreciate your help in spreading the word.  

We're gonna make it really easy.  Every weekday from now till release date, we'll be sending out some of our favorite lines from the book, with the hashtag #tweetsfromtheblender.  One per day from me and one per day from Trish, so we're not going to be twitter spamming anyone. If you can find it in your heart to do so, please consider retweeting some or all of these. Or if you're one of the lucky ones who've read the book already, add your own with the #tweetsfromtheblender hashtag.

No one in this book is paranormal, and it's not a romance. Getting it into the chains, therefore, took some doing.  It's great that the book is getting out there, but if it just sits there and no one has heard of it, that's pretty much as good as not being there at all.

So I humbly ask for your help making a dent in the book buying world's consciousness by getting the title and some of the humor in front of people.

And if you're not on twitter, we welcome your participation through facebook, blog, morse code, or whatever social network you happen to use. 

I've said this before, but, with great respect to all the hardworking folks at Egmont, readers are our best and most important publicists.  Thanks so much for your help and support!

Bad Criticism

So I have been reading some reviews of the Thor movie, though, let's be honest, I'm gonna see it no matter what.  

But most of the reviews I've seen take great pains to deride the superhero genre before launching into their criticism of the movie.

This, my friends, is bad criticism. "I don't like the kind of thing that this is" is a dumb and lazy way to review anything.

This is why I never trust regular movie reviewers on the topic of horror movies.  Most critics seem to have a visceral hatred for the entire genre, and so their reviews often boil down to "This is a horror movie."  Well, yeah.  For my horror movie reviews, I listen to The Caustic Critics on Rue Morgue Radio (They're usually in the last 15 minutes, but I love the entire podcast) and read Cinema Knife Fight. Because at least you know these are people who will evaluate a horror movie on its own terms rather than dismissing it because it's a horror movie.

I'm sure there are similar places to go for superhero movie reviews, but I don't know what they are.  

I usually avoid reading or watching, or listening to the kind of things I don't like, but if you are somehow forced to review something in a genre you don't like and you can't pass off the assignment to someone else, I think it's probably best to just keep it brief and say, "I don't care for this kind of thing."

Note: like most things I complain about, I am guilty of this. Probably in many cases, but I'm thinking specifically of a review I wrote of a book called Matrimony.  I hated the book, but most of my review amounted to "this is a self-conscious literary novel, and therefore bad." I probably should have passed the assignment on to someone else so that the book could get a fair shake.  But I needed the money, and, as in so many things, in this, money trumps convictions.

Tom Petty, Hipster Colossus

A while back, I wrote about how the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters had both put out shameless ripoffs of Tom Petty songs.  Well, no. "Dani California" and "Wheels" are not really ripoffs--The Strokes rip off the "American Girl" intro in "Last Nite," but then go on to construct a song that sounds nothing like "American Girl." (Perhaps because they built it around the "Lust for Life" beat. But I digress.). No, "Dani California" and "Wheels" are essentially rewrites of Tom Petty songs.  

At the time, I theorized that Petty exorted some kind of mythic pull on middle-aged alterna-rockers, but now the young hipsters are ripping him off too.

Noah and the Whale (insufferable name that really belongs on the Book or Hipster Band quiz, which by the way is a lot of fun. I got an 8 out of 10.) have a new single that is basically "Don't Come Around Here No More" with different words.  Get how the guy even does a Tom Petty vocal imitation in the bridge!  

 

 

Even further back, I wrote about whether the Feelies or Gang of Four were going to be the most ripped-off band, but I was talking about people ripping off a style and a sound.  In terms of having songs completely appropriated by other artists, I think Petty's got everyone beat.

I wonder why? In high school, one of my friends explained his love for Tom Petty by citing his everyman appeal:  he's not good-looking, he's an incredibly limited singer, and he's utterly lacking in charisma onstage. (Cue up his somnambulent Super Bowl halftime show if you don't believe me.  It's kind of sad watching Mike Campbell trying to carry the rock star-ness for the whole band.) My friend felt that he would have actually had a realistic shot at being Tom Petty, and that's why he liked him.  (Petty is, as we've seen from his imitators, a very good songwriter, but his persona is definitely everyman. Well, it used to be. Now days it's "creepy old guy who probably should have had his last dance with Mary Jane back when he wrote that song so he'd have the energy to move.")

I'd love to hear alternate theories, but maybe this is why Tom Petty is the most ripped-off artist around these days.  If you feel a lot of reverence for an artist, you may feel that ripping them off so blatantly is an act of disrespect, or at least requires more chutzpah than you are currently in posession of.  Whereas ripping off Tom Petty is like ripping off your old stoner uncle.  It's not like he's the Rolling Stones, and anyway, he's probably too baked to notice.

Rich People and Education Reform, Again.

Finally, someone's written something sensible about education reform.  And in the New York Times, no less. 

Everyone who's ever worked in a school knows that students' lives outside of school affect how they do in school. Research backs this up too.  But the "education reform" movement would have you believe that students only fail because their teachers don't care enough.

I have only one quibble with this article, and here it is:

"Demonizing teachers for the failures of poor students, and pretending that reforming the schools is all that is needed, as the reformers tend to do, is both misguided and counterproductive."

Joe Nocera is being too charitable to the business-backed "reformers" here.  They actually have to disingenuously insist that the problem is teachers rather than poverty because to admit otherwise would be to unravel the myth that we live in a meritocracy.

Of course how your life progresses has a lot to do with who your parents are and who they know. Of course being born into poverty screws your chances (butnot completely, if you're extraordinarily lucky) of achieving a middle class lifestyle as an adult. This, of course, flies in the face of our national mythology that anyone can make it if only they're willing to work hard enough. (Check out this incisive takedown of the incredibly annoying Gwyneth Paltrow for a succinct explanation of how privilege works and how it trumps hard work.)

But maintaining this mythology is incredibly important to the rich and powerful in this country.  As long as we continue to believe we can one day be one of them, we won't insist that they be held accountable for their behavior or that they pay their fair share to maintain a civil society.  And as long as this myth persists, we can blame the poor for their plight. 

So it's really no surprise that the corporate lackeys who call themselves education reformers are doing their best to deny that problems of poverty place some students at an incredible disadvantage.  It's not, as Joe Nocera suggests, an oversight. It's absolutely the heart of the agenda, and it's shameful.

Amanda Palmer: Neither is the audience yours

This morning, I saw this blog entry by Amanda Palmer. It was promoted by her husband, Neil Gaiman.

I am not a fan of Ms. Palmer's music and don't really care at all about the project she and her pals are doing down the street from me this evening.  (I mean, not really down the street. About 3 miles from my house, actually.)

But here's what struck me about Ms. Palmer's overlong post.  She seems deeply, personally offended that she is doing a project that someone else thinks is a dumb idea.

She expands her husband's famous proclamation about George R.R. Martin to remind us that no artist is our bitch.

Fair enough.  But, it should be said to Amanda Palmer and all artists of any kind, neither is the audience yours.  You are of course free to do whatever the hell you want with whoever you want however you want. Please post pictures, especially if you look like Amanda Palmer. 

But your audience has no responsibility to you to love every project you undertake, and they have a right to say if they think you're doing something ill-conceived.  You don't have to listen or agree with them, but trying to make them feel guilty for criticizing you because you're creating rather than eating thai food is just sort of silly. (And sounds awfully pretentious to boot, but I guess that's a pretty common artistic pitfall.)

Indeed, Ms. Palmer's overlong blog post makes her seem thin-skinned and needy. Does she need approval from the public so much that she has to launch a thousand-word screed every time a music blog dares to criticize her?  Also, by linking to the original post (which did criticize the project, but in a more general and less personal way than Ms. Palmer seems to be taking it), she got me to read criticism of her and her work that I would otherwise have never known anything about.

Folks, there's just no good way to respond to criticism, except over beers with your friends. Don't respond to bad reviews, as a wise man once said.

Joey Ramone, Still Dead

This post reminded me that Joey's been dead for ten years.  I typically mock people who get all sad about celebrity deaths, because Jesus, people, don't you have enough deaths of people who actually knew your name to be sad about?, but this one still gets me.

I said this a while back on twitter, but I think the reason I, and, judging from what I see on the internet, most Ramones fans, mourn Joey's death more than that of any other dead Ramone is that really, alone among people who were actually in the band, Joey loved The Ramones as much as we did.

Ten years later, Joey's still dead, and I'm still sad about it.  

Here's the song Joey was listening to when he died:

 

 

And here's Amy Rigby's "Dancing With Joey Ramone," the rare non-maudlin tribute song: 

 

 

Soccer, Unity, and Racism

For a long while now, I've been meaning to write a post about how much I've come to love soccer.  I've spent so many hours at soccer games over the last few years that I pretty much had to develop a love for the game.

One of the things that I like most about soccer is its international nature.  Playing and watching soccer just connects you with the rest of the world in a way no other sport can.  My son has played on teams with kids from Russia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Montserrat, Cape Verde, El Salvador-- well, you get the idea.  There aren't that many places where a kid from another country can come to the US and instantly fit in, but a soccer team is one of them.  And there aren't that many places where kids get to meet and interact with people from so many different backgrounds in the same place.  Certainly I was in college before I got exposed to that much diversity.

So all of that is cool. And yet, the ugliness that runs around in the rest of our society doesn't suddenly take a break on the soccer field. Or on the sidelines. 

A while back my son's team played a team from a predominately white suburb of Boston (named Acton--not omitting names to protect the guilty). Upon seeing our team, which had three black starters, one kid on the Acton team said, "I thought we were playing Jamaica Plain, not Jamaica!"

And yesterday, sitting in front of a supporter of this club, I heard this from him, referring to one of our players, a good friend of my son's who's from Montserrat, black, and unusually tall for his age:  'No way that kid's only fourteen.  You know, they don't keep track of ages over there, and then they come here."  Later he referred to the kid in question as "Manute."  (As in Bol.  Because he's tall and black!  Get it?)

I didn't say anything to the guy in question for a couple of reasons. One is that I didn't want to get into a big thing in the stands which would not cure this guy of his idiocy anyway. Another is that he then said my son was the best player on the field, which doesn't excuse the racism but does make it more difficult to start a confrontation for a spineless weasel like me. And, finally, our boys gave his team a 7-0 thrashing, which semed like a decent punishment.  Normally I feel kind of bad about such a lopsided score, but since the racist comments came when we were up 5-0, those last two goals felt especially sweet.

I guess it's not that surprising that this international game can provoke such an ugly incident--find me a sport that doesn't have idiots in the stands--but it does seem kind of weird. Despite its global nature, soccer is still tied to provincial idiocy not just in the suburbs of Boston, but all over.  About 25 years ago I found myself on a train in Glasgow packed with drunken Celtic supporters and was really realy glad I wasn't wearing anything that could have been mistaken for Rangers blue, as it would surely have occasioned a merciless beating.(Those teams have benefitted from inflaming sectarian tensions since pretty much forever.)  (And may I add, yes, there are still people with the energy to hate each other over what kind of Christians they are.  Way to go, guys! Jesus would be really proud!). 

So is soccer the most divisive sport, or the most unifying?  Well, yeah.  Both, I guess.  

 

On Heroism

Perhaps it's my Celtic blood (true fact: Celtic blood is actually 1/3 beer!), but the kind of heroism that really moves me is fighting bravely for an apparently hopeless or lost cause.  This describes the overwhelming majority of Celtic military and athletic encounters, but it extends to other areas as well.  I get all choked up when Frodo agrees to take the ring.  Little Frodo who's going to march right up to Mount Doom with only his (probably) hetero life partner Samwise Gamgee to accompany him in a pathetic last-ditch effort to save the world. It's a crazy, probably doomed effort that will ruin Frodo one way or another, and he does it anyway.  

I occasionally see this kind of heroism in a kids' soccer game, too--the goalie who goes all out, diving into the mud to try to stop a ball when their team is already down by 7 goals and what the hell difference would it make anyway, for example.

But today I want to talk about another hero: John Turturro.

 

Sure, Turturro has given great performances in many great movies.  But I'm not here to talk about that. I mean, giving a good performance in a Coen brothers movie isn't all that remarkable--given the quality of the cast, the quality of the script (usually), and the knowledge that the guys in charge are serious about at least trying to make an excellent movie, I have to think it would be hard not to give it your all on a Coen brothers shoot.

No, what's heroic is giving your all in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.  

Unbelievably, they're making a Transformers 3, though the second one was a great steaming turd of a movie. In the 1970's, you might have been able to build a movie around the idea of Megan Fox running in slow motion (after all, they built a hell of a tv series around the idea of Lynda Carter running in slow motion). But in the information age, pervy boys who want to watch a woman run in slow motion do not need to venture out to the multiplex and sit through two and a half hours of pure excrement in order to see such a thing.

And the only thing that doesn't suck in this awful, awful movie (parts of which were filmed at my alma mater, which only fills me with shame) is John Tuturro's performance.  He's like the band playing on the deck of the Titanic in this movie.  The whole thing is sinking around him, and he bravely gives his all and turns in a very entertaining comedic performance.  

So don't talk to me about Tuturro's great comedic performance in The Big Lebowski.  You get on a set with Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore and try not to bring your A game. Hell, even Tara Reid is competent in that movie.  

On the other hand, get in a movie where some of your stars can't act, the rest are phoning it in, and the director just wants to blow stuff up and try to give it your all.  That, my friend, takes dedication and determination.  Sizing up the mess you're in and deciding to give your all anyway?  That, my friends, is heroic.