It's Not You, It's Me

Sub-Title: That Bitch Crazy.

Autophoto supplies the image at left. 1970 Camaro. If you didn't have one, you knew someone who did.

Alternately, you were born in the wrong decade.

You grew up on 8-bit Nintendo. We didn't even have Mario let alone Super Mario. We had Frogger, Tempest, Joust, Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man. Ate quarters like - well - a parking meter, come to think of it. I might have gotten more time in Pac Man than you get for a quarter in South Bend. Ok, it sucks to be you, still.

Now, on the subject: agents.

You know that hot girl who sat in your Camaro for the last time and said "it's not you, it's me" ? Well, that crazy bitch in a split level in Tulsa was right. It fucking was her. You dodged one there.

I had the occasion to relate the little vignette above to a friend today. Rejection blues. Let's review how the business works.

1. Agent has to like it (i.e. judge it as 'sellable').
2. Agent has to have room for it in their portfolio (i.e. judge it as 'sellable').
3. Agent has to have not signed two other guys in the past six months in the same state as you - debut novelist in genre X (i.e. judge it as 'sellable').
4. Agent has to believe it will earn out book one and make selling book 2 probable (i.e. judge book 2 as 'sellable').

See the pattern?


It's business. It's dating. Is there only "the one" out there for us? Hell no. However, there is a finite set of possible matches and finding one of those can be difficult. Kiss a lot of frogs, both for the agent and for you.

It is not a reflection on talent, effort or product. It can be; but, it doesn't have to be. Put out good product. Write a fine query letter. Solicit widely. Get a pile of rejection notices. Surprise.

What can you do? Write another book. Continue to solicit. Make sure you didn't commit nitwitery (queue Miss Snark - or just read her archives: all of them!).

Apart from being spiritual adviser to the unrepresented, I met a writer friend today and had a great conversation.

It's always good to talk to another writer. You learn a great deal. My friend has tremendous characters. He's careful with them and uses an organic process to evolve conflict and plot.

It's going to pay off in a huge way. His cast of characters - wonderful. We were talking about one in particular and a great title just rolled off his tongue. That's one of the things I love about writers: the turn of a good phrase.

In this case, the bloody thing was so wonderful (in combination with the character we were discussing) that I wish I had said it. Really, quite a lovely premise, title, and character all rolled in a ball. First class.

I'm trying to get him to write more but there it is. We'd all like to write more even when we have all the time in the world for writing. Support ain't just a river in Egypt - or whatever. Sometimes phrases turn like shit, too.

Finished a tough scene this morning. Saw a bookseller I love. Met with a writer friend. Pretty damn good literary life day.

Oh, I got to use my bit about the hot chick in the Camaro, too. Not bad for a guy who drove a 1-ton GMC flatbed from the dairy whose cows he was milking. Never had the Camaro at that age.

Chicks dig 1-ton GMC flatbeds that smell not-so-vaguely of dairy barn. Oh yea. Hotness on dualies.

Ok. Not so much. I can't stand "the hot chicks." Inevitably, they open their mouth and talk. Doesn't go well for me after that at all. I'm allergic to crazy.

It's why I write.

(Stop Laughing Now).

The Industry and Springtime and You

It's springtime. The flowers are sprouting. Frogs are peeping. I have a new grill. It's a little hard to cook on so far, but; I'll get to that shortly. The nice box on top is the grill cover.

SO, spring. Where does that leave us?

Surprise, Amazon dominates the market creating a universal discount and price club warehouse. Booksellers are floundering. Ebooks might be resold without new royalties to you, and publishing houses are going to pay mid-list writers in root vegetables come winter.

Here's the clue for those getting an English Lit degree instead of taking econometrics: books don't compete against books.

Books compete against entertainment choices many of which are viewed as free. Thus, the book has significant downward price pressure.

Here's the deal. The consumer pays a fixed price for a lot of their entertainment: cable, Amaflicks, Spotdora (possibly), iTunes (credit, the purchase is transparent until the bill comes), angry walruses - the app, the internet, music videos, cat videos, blogs, and cat video blogs.

There is a Noble Prize out there floating about for the knowledge that a transaction with a fixed cost for unlimited time-based use is viewed as free ... well. It's free for non-economists. That's not quite true but you don't want the math.

So, you ace writers sell entertainment. There's a lot of other entertainment out there that is animated and presented (meaning no effort or thought required to participate) whereas your product requires considerable effort and time (Lots of Time for you Fantasy big-assed-book writers) and memory to carry all of those text developments of intrigue and plot. Your entertainment is a lot of work.

People are fat lazy consumptive squandering meat bags. That's your paying audience.

I'd bet your last book has something similar in the marketplace right now.

Oh, maybe not books. Did you have a sultry blond seduce a killer to off her husband? Great plot. Love it. I might have to watch Body Heat for free. Oh - hurt soldier home from the war caught in crime intrigue?  (Murder She Wrote, "Track of a Soldier", 1996).

You compete against every leisure activity including golf. You're going to have to do more than give me a body, a murderer and a detective. You're going to have to do more than sew the victims into a human centipede, skin them and make a suit, eat them, burn them, torture them with the the hot oil for tempura, or just even drop them in the lake.

You could have a detective who likes pie and a lady who carries a log, but that too is now free to me. (Twin Peaks).

It's not enough.

You must sell what has not been sold to make anyone want to buy your product. Oh, you can have a few devoted and unadventurous souls find your product because it was like another. That is however a small audience. You have to give me what I cannot find elsewhere.

Want that big sale? That paying career? Want that book deal that allows you to live on text ?

Give me - John Q. Public - what I cannot get elsewhere. I'll give you money for it.

Eleven foot blue aliens I'd try to take home after three martini's? I pay for that. Rather, I already have. Can't use that one again. It's in my Amaflix queue.

Take me on the emotional safari to the land I've never been. Let me know what it is to be a thirteen-year old girl from a gator-farm family stuck in a swamp with my bird-man rapist and I'll put you on the Pulitzer short-list. (Swamplandia!).

It isn't the plot, the killer, the cheater, the lover, or the disappointed wife. It is the comprehensive emotional journey on the page that pays rewards time after time. I don't get that emotion from a car chase or a PSY video or even the "dick in a box" Lonely Island SNL guys. I don't get it from the "is he in there with a gun or not?" crime scene rehash.

I sure don't get it from Deadliest Catch reruns - except where Sig reminds me of Tom Waits.

Les Fleurs du Mal

Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 67) wrote The Flowers of Evil. French majors drool all over it. I tried to drool all over some French majors with mixed results.

It seemed a good time to mention foul blooms for these at left are the first of the season for me. For scale, they're an inch high.

Snow squalls tonight. Just some "spring snow." I still have my snow stakes in and won't take them out until tax day. The fire is going. The wind is blowing. I'm contemplating a return to hibernation.

I had to write however and say I've finished an edit that has been dragging on. I now need to stitch a new beginning onto the piece before putting it back on ice. I will write no fewer than three sentences toward that effort when I finish here. I might only write the three, but I'll write something.

The flower theme is because a friend has a new book coming out. I'm very much looking forward to attending one of her signings. I don't often have people I know with new books. I know a lot of writers but there are only one or two books a year from the lot of them. It's a great deal of work.

SO, I'm asking everyone to run to the local bookseller and ask for a copy of The Begonia Bribe from Alyse Carlson ( aka watery tart over on the right hand side). You local will order it and someone will see how wonderful the premise is and then ... it becomes a staff pick. Murder surrounding a Little Miss Begonia Pageant?  Of course!

A lovely blurb is here.

We know these blooms, these flowers of evil. We love them all the more for their foul intent. We like the things most which are bad for us, like French majors.

We Are Content Mules

Small soapbox tonight.

Writers are the content mules. What we contribute first to our own careers is content. Everything else is a distant fourth place.

New writers at any gathering invariably turn to bitching about "the industry" or "those agents" or "traditional publishers not giving you a chance" or the color "blue."

The answer to whatever slight you might suffer in the future is: write a better book.

It's the only thing under your control.

Oh, sure. Dan Brown. E.L. James. Insert Any Other Name Here. They are not you. Write well enough to draw the interest of the committee for the top award in your genre (or the Pulitzer, if all else fails) and problems fade quickly.

Now, run over to Elizabeth Spann Craig (here) for a better written version of this message. She's got a great take on the subject.

Lies, Damn Lies, Marketing, and Advertising

At left, breakfast of champions.

I wouldn't have to work very hard beyond putting up a sign outside a cafe saying "American Breakfast $5.99" for you to know exactly what product I was offering. If you were hungry, you'd probably come inside and I'd have a chance to add you as a "regular" every Sunday morning.

This technique is low effort marketing. (You might have learned it as low-impact marketing which is a horrible turn of a phrase. Shoot that bastard.).

• Little advertising money expended. 
• Little barrier for customer education as there is high product identification already.

 Location and price are the two major inputs on our initial chance to win you over. Yes, we have to deliver a quality product that conforms or exceeds your ideals of the product we portray.

This is the business proposition most of us think about when we think of selling our novels:

• It's good. 
• It's affordable (Dog knows, readers are rich compared to writers).
• You know what a novel is, anyway. This is a novel - what's not to like?

We'll put it in front of you and hope you are a voracious eater ...er, reader.

Of course, the large difference between the low effort marketing for the cafe and the low effort marketing of our books is that we know breakfast. We've met him before. We know his name. We know that besides being hot and devoid of pooling grease, it's hard to miss the target of customer expectations.

Novels are different. Novels have very high barriers to sale because of of poor product identification. Frankly, your hoped-for reader probably doesn't know you. She probably doesn't trust your content.

One book is not very much like another despite the blurbs and dust cover lies we tell. I have six books in my library now identified by the publisher or other author blurbs as "reminding me of Douglas Adams and his madcap universe of exceptional events." None - not a single one - has a damn thing in common with Douglas Adams except for the "inadvertent" theft of a line or two that probably was innocent in the end. If you read the guy, his stuff sticks in you a bit.

How to over come this barrier?

If you are customarily addressed as His Excellency, you can devote some income to advertising ... print, online, broadcast mass market, and direct mailing. No? No provinces in the old country named after your late uncle?

What do you have in trade? Content.

You have content.

It appears to me that a successful way to build readership is to get your craft product in front of influence readers who do tend to be voracious,  who do talk a great deal with friends about what they read, who are consulted for book recommendations, and who buy periodicals and anthologies which publish stories in your genre. We'll leave reader based reviews out of this.

Crowd-sourcing is for lemmings. You know what happens to lemmings.

I advocate the short-story route for building readership that can help with your novel's marketing as legitimate sale efforts.

I know short fiction is not an income proposition in itself. I know no advances come from short-fiction efforts. I know your agent might try and have you bumped off for janitor's insurance if she finds out you're working on short stories instead of the next novel she can sell. Here is a hint: don't tell her until it works.

What? You can't deceive your agent?  You told your mom how your prom date with Jimmy Football-Guy went? I didn't think so. [ Oh, you sign your taxes every year, too. I'm talking to you. Triple moca latte is NOT an unreimbursed business expense.]

I do know that getting advertising dollars from your publisher is determined by an internal formula based partly on your sales and on your advance. Get a $1M advance and you better bet there is some house money going into press ads for your work. Get a $5K advance and you might get house money to pay for a press release written by the internal contractor. Sorry.

How to up your advance ? Readers. Exposure. A change in visibility since your last deal.

I'm suggesting that getting your name in the eyes of readers by working at short fiction in conjunction with your novel work can pay dividends far beyond the smug look of satisfaction when you have one of your stories in something on the rack in the powder room.

It can attract influence readers (sales) you've not been in front of before and it can give your agent something material to say to the publishing house about why you're worth more THIS deal than the last. You become an "up trender."

You only have content to trade. Your blog and your tweets and your loving network of writers already know and love you. They'll buy your book. They re NOT an "up trend."

You need new readers. Short fiction can help.

I read a story this week by Samantha Hunt in the No. 55 Tin House  ("All Hands"). I don't know what new work she has in the pipe but I know she has a novel The Invention of Everything Else that I will buy this week. Yep, I loved the short story. I'll buy her novel.

Bonus - the novel is about Tesla, the best toaster-fixing physicist the world has ever seen. That's another post.

Never heard of her before. My loss. It will not be this way in the future. [ BTW - she's the 2010 Bard Fiction Prize winner].

I'm not saying you can get in Tin House or The Paris Review; but, you might. You know your genre periodical hierarchy - or should. [ Hint - subscription price is a decent ballpark estimate for status]. Never fear starting in the middle. You can always go either way with future submission depending on your state of mind.

You generate content. How can you get it in front of a reader? Get it in stuff influence readers buy. That's how professionals do it. ( Look at the adds in this weekend _WSJ_ magazine supplement. Those brands do not advertise in Redbook because the influence buyers don't have eyeballs there).

In the end, it is all you have beyond using the market building techniques of the life insurance business as applied through a social media lens.

You don't actually believe joining more civic breakfast clubs is going to catapult you on the NYT bestseller list, do you?