People are still debating this?

Interestingly enough, both Joe Konrath and M. Louisa Locke have similar posts (apparently inspired by completely different events) basically saying, hey, self-publishing has a future.

My initial reaction was, Duh! Did you also know that the Internet's not just a fad?

I mean, obviously, you have to be ignoring an awful lot of evidence that self-publishing works. There are the successful newbies, and the traditionally-published authors who are selling their backlists themselves. There is even increasing evidence that if you want a traditional contract, the best way to get one may very well be to self-publish.

But I think a larger part of the problem is that this is all anecdotal evidence. There's no good data, and what data there is, will likely get worse as self-publishing accounts for an ever-bigger piece of the pie.

For example, Bowker, the company that issues ISBN numbers, found a sizeable uptick in paper book titles attributable to self-publishing. But it's actually a fairly major undertaking to produce a paper book--it's easier and cheaper to just do an e-book. I would guess that a fair percentage of self-published titles have never been released as paper books.

I would guess, because I have to. Why don't I know for sure? Because there's no data. What percentage of self-published books are released only as e-books? I don't know! And neither does anyone else!

Think about what that means: The number of paper titles could level off or even shrink as more and more self-published writers decide it's not worth their while. Bowker could release report after report noting the decline in paper titles. And that might mean absolutely nothing about either self-publishing or e-books.

But what about e-books? Well, I keep making fun of Barnes & Noble's claims to be controlling X percentage of the e-book market for the simple reason that no one--no one--knows how large the e-book market actually is. Amazon does not share that information. Perhaps they could be made to, but what about the new retail sites that keep cropping up? What about authors who sell books on their own Web sites?

Whenever someone says, The e-book market is exactly THIS big! It has grown precisely THIS much since THIS date! they are leaving indie authors out. What they are doing is counting only those e-books released by certain (larger) publishers.

Think about what that means: The more e-books are self-published, the fewer e-books will be counted. If Random House and Simon & Schuster lose e-book sales because all their writers have gone indie, the data will indicate that e-book sales have fallen, even if those newly-indie writers are selling e-books like gangbusters on their own.

There have been some efforts to generate decent data on self-publishing, including a survey that used some pretty questionable methodology, but they haven't been great. Some places, like Smashwords, like to share data, but plenty of places either don't (Amazon) or can't really be expected to in a meaningful way (author Web sites). I don't see this changing any time soon.

What does this mean for writers? Well, unfortunately it means that you really can't trust any data-based generalizations about the industry. Not even the ones from fancy-sounding analysts and consultants--they're all getting their data from the same source, which is the larger publishers. It's annoying, but there you have it--it's better to acknowledge that you don't know something than to swallow someone's snake oil because it has a bunch of impressive-looking numbers attached to it.

I would also try to avoid getting hung up on questions like, How many e-books are being sold? In addition to being impossible to know, it's kind of irrelevant. After all, the exciting thing about self-publishing e-books is that writers can make good money off sales that traditional publishers would consider laughably small.

Progress report

Yes! I made progress! Try not to die of shock! (I did have family obligations this weekend, so it wasn't ALL shameless procrastination.)

Anyway, I mostly revised what I had written before and figured out what's coming next, which was bothering me. So I only added 300-odd words, but I still accomplished quite a bit.

Telenovelas

This is an article in the Wall Street Journal about how streaming video is changing viewing habits. Turns out, if you make a television show more like a novel, people treat it like a novel!

The urge to sustain that inner experience leads you to press "play" on the next episode, and the one after that—the equivalent of the book you can't put down.

But that's not the only similarity--there's a lot of parallels on an industry level. As we're seeing with e-books, people are rediscovering old titles. 24, Lost, and Prison Break are all popular on Netflix, and of course they're bringing back Arrested Development.

This is a big change for television. The way you used to watch old shows was in syndicated reruns, which worked better with stand-alone shows. (Law & Order was developed specifically so that it could be broken into two 30-minute shows for syndication.) Streaming, however, turns all that on its head.

As with the company's other original series, all 10 new "Arrested Development" episodes will go up for streaming at the same time. [Show creator Mitch] Hurwitz is sure some fans will devour the entire five hours in one sitting. "It's throwing me," he says.

His solution was to build each new episode around one character. The stories in all 10 episodes unfold simultaneously, overlapping here and there. Unlike writing a traditional sitcom, Mr. Hurwitz says, "we're sort of driving into the next episode rather than wrapping things up."

It also means that people aren't necessarily watching the ads, which is seen more as a problem in the industry. But just like with e-books, the fact that television shows don't "expire" any more allows an audience to build in a powerful way.

In a speech [Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted] Sarandos made in April to the National Association of Broadcasters, whose members worry that services like Netflix are cannibalizing the audience for ad-supported TV, he joked about looking for a trap door under his podium. He then cited the 800,000 subscribers who watched "every minute" of "Mad Men" season four on Netflix, arguing that those viewers likely flocked to the season-five premiere on AMC, whose audience grew by 21% over the year before.

AMC President Charlie Collier says, "With 'Mad Men' and 'Breaking Bad,' each year has been better [in the ratings] than the year prior, and that's not the norm in historic TV-watching trends."

In addition, weird shows are building audiences. Two notably "sticky" shows (i.e. shows where people tend to watch all the episodes) on Netflix are an Australian drama (McLeod's Daughters) and a South Korean soap opera (Shining Inheritance).

(And the fact that Netflix knows all that about viewing habits reminds me of how your e-book knows how you read it....)

You keep churning stuff out, even as I procrastinate

I'm having my habitual Trouble Getting Started; yesterday I shamelessly focused on beta tasks, today I may be reduced to cleaning the linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom.

To further heap opprobrium upon my own irresponsible head, I shall link to Kristine Rusch's excellent post on why perfectionism is a bad business strategy (because it leads you to not write books. You know, like how I'm not writing books right now).

The notion that a truly talented writer should be able to turn out a perfect book without actually working on their craft reminds me of the research on raising intelligent kids so that they will actually be successful (that's a PDF): If you tell them that school should be easy for them because they're smart, you are basically denigrating the value of hard work. As a result, when they come across something they don't understand right away, they 1. don't know what to do, and 2. are too embarrassed to apply themselves.

From the article:

Mistakes crack [these children's] self confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so.... [S]uch children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.

Rusch writes that this kind of belief, when applied to writing, is pernicious both professionally (less books = less readers) and personally. The damage on a personal level comes from believing that talent, like intelligence, is an unchanging attribute:

A talent is, by its very definition, something you’re born with. Either you have it or you don’t. As the précises for the University of Iowa states, it can’t be learned. It can only be “encouraged.”

Of course, if that were the case, then writers couldn’t improve. They would have the same ability at the beginning of their careers as at the end of their careers. Study, classrooms, research, practice, none of it has any meaning whatsoever in the face of Great Talent.

I am also going to argue that this belief is bad for literature. As I've noted before, authors tend to be judged on their highs, not their lows. Most people don't realize this, because they read, say, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, Catch-22, and Go Down, Moses.

And then they stop there. They think, "What amazing genius!" and feel very small.

Don't stop--take your favorite books and read everything by those authors. Mansfield Park. Hard Times. Anything Joseph Heller wrote that wasn't Catch-22.

Yes, even Sanctuary, but don't say I didn't warn you.

You want two-dimensional characters? Books devoid of story lines? Characters and story lines brazenly and badly recycled from other books? Novels that manage to be boring and offensive at the same time?

Do it. Knock those writers off the pedestals you've put them on in your mind. Be bored and miserable as a reader--that will help you as a writer. You'll realize there's a whole slew of legendary writers who probably wouldn't have ever amounted to much had Max Perkins not been around to lend a hand.

If you produce a less-than-perfect book, so what? You're in good company! On to the next one--hopefully it will be better!

The main problem with tinkering and retinkering with a flawed book is that it almost never helps. Most of the time the problem is fundamental to the conception of the book: You really don't have a story there that's going to work. You thought you did, but you don't. Tightening up the prose in chapter 23 is not going to make a difference.

You either have to scrap the whole thing completely, like I did with my first novel, or you "scrap" it by publishing it, which at least gives you a chance to see if maybe there's some value there. Either way, you have to get it out of your head, be done with it, and start anew.

Let's put it this way: If I had a chance to speak confidentially to the person who wrote that mismatched novel, what do you think I would tell them?

1. "You never should have published that! It's damaged your reputation forever and ever! Your career is finished!"

2. "You should go back and revise it."

3. "You're so funny; your next book should probably be about something lighter. You could even do a lighter apocalypse book--have you read Good Omens?"

Progress report

Plans to write today were scuttled after I got a call that the GeekGirlCon flyers were ready--they weren't supposed to be ready until Friday, so that was nice, and I managed to get to the post office to mail them just before it closed.

I'm definitely going to tweak the black-and-white design some more for future use, though. I printed the test copy on white paper, since that's what I have, but when you put it on colored paper, the spiral in the background is much darker. So I need to lighten that up considerably--it worked OK because I used pastel yellow paper, but it would have worked better lighter and it wouldn't have worked on any other color.

Also, note to self: If I'm going to put two flyers on a single piece of paper, I need a nice, wide margin between them, plus more consistent margins around the edges. Again, it didn't look horrible, but it could have looked better.

I cut it myself because 1. I bought the paper cutter! and 2. with that many sheets, it would have been over $40 to have them cut it. However, after 90 minutes of chopping paper, I do wonder if that was the right choice....

Writing to your strengths

I finished up the most confusing novel last night. It was quite possibly the oddest mismatch of style and subject matter I have ever read.

The person who wrote it was funny--very, very funny. The book, however, was about a horrible apocalypse.

So, first there was kind of a tone mismatch--you know, joke, joke, joke, horrible death, joke. It was jarring, and not in the good way--I actually like the ha-ha-ha-ha-oh-my-God! thing, which is part of why I like Joss Whedon--but this felt more like a comedy routine that got interrupted by someone in the audience having a heart attack.

Eventually--and I think this is a testament to how good this person is at writing humor--the horrible apocalypse became funny. It was very dark humor, to be sure, but definitely effective humor. After a point, however, the horrible apocalypse became so horrible that the writer couldn't make jokes about it any more.

That's when things really started to drag. Part of it is that I simply don't find awful tales of complete horribleness all that interesting. Part of it was just the loss of the humor, which was really delightful and keenly missed. But part of it was that I honestly don't think the writer was particularly interested in writing that part of the story. The prose got muddled, so that it was a lot harder to figure out what was actually going on. The action churned to a halt.

It was frustrating, because this writer is clearly extremely talented. The book would have been so much better had it been about...gee, pretty much anything else. Any humorous and satirical topic would have worked so much better with the humorous and satirical prose style. It was like reading a novelization of 28 Days Later written by Jane Austin or Christopher Buckley or Terry Pratchett.

It's not just this one book. Lindsay Buroker talks about figuring out what your "unfair advantage" is and exploiting it. I think that's a huge challenge for writers, because let's face it, we're waaaay too close to our work.

In addition:

1. We may love a genre we just don't write very well. This author clearly loves apocalyptic movies and even name-checks a bunch of them. But you know something? Those movies tend not to be funny, and this person is really, really good at funny. I see the same thing happen when people who write well at one length keep trying to force themselves to write at another.

2. We may write something very well that conventional wisdom says people don't want to read. So many people bitch and bitch about long, descriptive passages because they were forced to read Lord of the Flies in high school and HATED it. But you take a book like Wool, and one of its great joys is the brilliantly-written long, descriptive passages. Imagine how much poorer that book would be if Hugh Howey had decided to follow the advice I've seen a million places and cut all that "crap" in order to get right to the action.

3. Our strengths can be our weaknesses. Do you know how many literate adults I know who read the first Harry Potter book, thought, Meh, and never read another? Many, many, many. I keep trying to explain to them, No, you must read the entire series because J.K. Rowling's big strength is her complex plotting across all seven novels. But of course the first book doesn't have a complex plot--it's quite simple. People who read it and stop can never understand why someone like me--an adult with a fancy-pants literature degree--is so impressed by that series.

Or take Trang. What do people compliment? The characters. What do people complain about? The fact that it takes a while to get to the "action." Except that the "action" in that book is the character arc--it's not really a book about aliens and portals; it's a character-driven story about a man who is undergoing a significant life crisis. Philippe Trang freaking out at a party on Earth is actually really important to the story--just not the story about space aliens.

So, should I not write sci-fi? Maybe not--it's hard to know. Which is kind of my point....

More links!

This is an article in the New York Times about how newspapers are really, really circling the drain. Frankly, I do find this troubling, because it seems like in a lot of cases the on-line version of something is staffed by people with far less journalistic experience. In some cases, they have none at all--they blogged or worked for a Web site in some fashion, but never worked as a journalist or dealt with the pressures. (And there are a lot: It's an industry where death threats are not uncommon.) I'm worried that the baby (stuff like ethical reviewing) is getting thrown out with the bathwater.

The very last sentence really annoyed me, though:

But as they proceed, the Newhouses should remember that cutting corners ignores a fundamental fact: great journalism, on any platform, is the one sure hedge against irrelevancy.

In the context of the rest of the article (you know, about how newspapers ARE LOSING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY), this was such a snotty little jab. You know something? Great journalism on a money-losing platform is no hedge against bankruptcy. Perhaps the Newhouses want to stay wealthy, ever think of that? Maybe they don't see the point in going down with the ship? I can't image the level of arrogance that makes a person feel like they can lecture someone else about how they ought to destroy their family's fortune in order to avoid "irrelevancy." If the choice is irrelevancy or poverty, most people are totally fine with the former.

(Cleansing breath, changing topic....)

This post by Dean Wesley Smith makes me wonder if perhaps we were separated at birth. He talks about the difference between editing and copy editing, and how you can get both without paying an arm and a leg. He even blew off copy editing his self-published stuff, and now thinks that was a bad idea! Separated at birth!

The only alteration I would make would be to substitute the word "writing buddy" for the word "friend." I'm willing to bet that, if you compared your friends with Smith's friends, his have a lot more experience in publishing. Granted, I have one friend--a roommate from college who works in education--who is a good editor and a shockingly good proofreader. But most of my friends and family are not good editors.

Why not? Because they love me! They love everything I write--they can't help it! Look, I wrote a book! They're so proud!

I really, really appreciate their love and support. I love them right back! But that's not helpful. Remember, a good editor is more concerned with improving your work than with protecting your feelings. Writing buddies who you meet through critique groups are going to think of you as a writer, not as their little baby or their auntie or their fraternity brother or whatever.

(It was actually an interesting dance with my friend who's a good editor. When I first gave her Trang, I told her at length that I really, really wanted detailed criticism--tell me where it's slow, tell me what's unclear, tell me what doesn't work for you. Don't just tell me it's great, because that's not helpful. I was very explicit about this.

And she sent me back a critique of the first few chapters with a note saying that she really, really hoped this was what I wanted, but that if I felt it was out of line, she was sorry. So even when I asked her to please be very honest, she was afraid that I would be angry with her for her criticism. It's a big hump for people to overcome.)

Yesterday's progress report

Oh, yeah, I need to start making progress reports again. Getting back into work mode!

I made the flyers for GeekGirlCon and put in the order at Staples, then I made the sign for the Foolscap table. (I looked around at the banners at Westercon, and I'm glad I did--black-on-white really seems to work best.)

I also discovered that my roof is leaking. Fab! Gotta go take a look at that today....

Working with other kinds of artists

So, like I said, the panel I went to today (after finding the Magical Land of Free Parking--I'm telling you, a lot of good things happened today, but that was the highlight) was really interesting. The panel was: David Brin, Jennifer Brozek, Miss Amber Clark, Michael Ehart, and Dara Korra'ti. All of them cross art boundaries on a regular basis: Either they collaborate regularly, or they do more than one form of art themselves, or their actual job is to get people from different fields to work together.

They all agreed that one of the main problems is that people from different disciplines use different jargon, so that even when you're trying really hard to explain to people what exactly you want in words, you're going to fail. In fact, it can lead to what Brozek called "violently agreeing"--i.e. you both actually want the same thing, but you don't realize it because you're using different terms.

The answer: DRAW. Even Brin draws! "If you can't go ahead and show it, it will be misinterpreted," said Korra'ti.

Clark noted that another area for communication difficulties is when people have a large problem with the work (the overall tone or whatever) and instead of saying that, they name particular details they don't like. So Clark goes and fixes those little details, but it doesn't take care of the larger problem, so they go through round after round of little fixes until finally she figures out what the person actually wants. So, you know, if you just don't like the whole thing, be up front about that and save everyone a lot of time!

(I'll toss in some observations of my own: Publishing in particular seems to attract a lot of hedgehogs, so sometimes you had artists who basically did not read working with editors who had nothing but contempt for anyone didn't spend their spare time leafing through Finnegan's Wake. It was a bad mix--the editors didn't understand that, no, the artists probably hadn't read their deathless prose, and when they found that out the reaction was often quite insulting. So I would keep in mind that there are different kinds of intelligences in the world, that you can't expect everyone to think exactly the same way you do, and that just because someone doesn't have the same proficiencies as you do doesn't mean that they don't have equally good if not better proficiencies of their own.

Another problem was the assumption by some writer/editor types that the only reason visual artists ever do anything is to be cool and pretentious. I even knew people who assumed the overhead lights were always off in the art room because the artists were trying to be cool and pretty much having a party while on the clock. (It's because working that way is a lot easier on the eyes, hello.) They usually do have reasons to do what they do, and if you're willing to talk to them respectfully, they'll even tell you!

Yet another source of conflict was that writers and editors of prose tend to be somewhat more linear and organized thinkers--it helps their art to keep track of storylines and maintain continuity and all that. Visual artists tend to be less linear and more intuitive and kind of random, which helps their art--if you look at something like this, there is stuff from all over the place, but it all makes a kind of sense. If you are a more-linear thinker, dealing with someone who is less-linear can be disconcerting: They're running all over the place, their office is a pigsty, they keep changing the topic of conversation, it's utter chaos!! And I sometimes see the writer/editor types trying to rein the artist types in as though they were rambunctious children. Really, as long as deadlines are being met, let it slide. It's OK, and it's part of their process--if you really try to quash that, you'll make it so they can't do their job.)

Korra'ti is a musician (among other things) and noted that the digital revolution hit musicians first and "writers are next in queue." Some similarities: Nowadays literally anybody can release a song, and the challenge for listeners is to find something they like. How that filtering works in music nowadays is by having, say, fellow very secret member of the Illuminati Jay-Z work with you on your song--no more Prince making his name by doing one-man albums!

Korra'ti is also doing something very cool: She's working on what she calls a soundtrack for a book that combines reading of its highlights with songs. This idea really appeals to me--you could actually create something from the ground up that integrates song and story. Basically a musical in audiobook form!

Fantasy & science fiction artists

Like most sci-fi cons, Westercon had an art show. So I decided to link to some of the artists there who were producing art that I thought would work on a book cover (at least, I linked to those who have Web sites--have Web sites, artists!). Some are well-known and fancy, some are obscure, but all push the sci-fi/fantasy themes. And again, Frank Wu, who has won four freakin' Hugo Awards, says he'll gladly inexpensively license an existing piece of art for a cover, so that's always worth asking about.

Frank Wu

Jeff Sturgeon

Theresa Mather

Sara Twitty

David Lee Pancake

John E. Kaufman

Sarah Clemens

Margaret Organ-Kean

Mary Hanson Roberts

Durlyn Alexander

In the dealer room I found:

Northern Star Art

Purple Top Hat

And a ton of fancy custom-made objects d'art--a lot of them were very steampunky--plus fabrics. The people who make those might be willing to let you take a photo to put on a book cover as well.

Yesterday, Wu and Sturgeon said that publishers used to just go to sci-fi cons, walk through the art shows, and pick out work they liked for cover. So if you're the publisher now....

So, today...

I went back to Westercon--that panel just sounded too interesting to miss, and indeed it was very interesting, so I'm going to give it its own post. (And I found The Secret and Magical Home of Free, Legal Parking near SeaTac. Shhh!)

I'm going to move the list of artists into its own post, too, both because that's probably more useful and because I realized that I had jotted down only the artists whose subject matter match my own planned titles--not so helpful to people who aren't me. I went back and took down the name of anyone who I thought was making stuff that would work on a book cover, and I'll look up their Web sites and add them if they appear to be actually selling art.

I got the final OK from GeekGirlCon and bought myself a paper trimmer.

And...dun-dun-duuuunh...I became organizer for the Seattle/Everett E-Publishing & Book Promotion Group, replacing Lindsay Buroker, who has moved out of state! Boy! It's like something out of The Secret: You muse about writers' cooperatives and groups, and you get one of your very own! Hopefully this won't drive me insane or consume all my time....

Cons, cons, cons, flyers, flyers, flyers, cons!

I changed my mind again and decided not to go to Westercon tomorrow--I'd like to start with the friggin' writing already, and I think this is going to be one of the less-well-attended cons for them. Not their fault: The weather here is really dreary and gray and extremely dark until July 4th rolls around, at which point it immediately becomes sunny and fabulous (seriously, it's like someone threw a switch). If you are running any kind of indoor activity, you're screwed, because everyone is far too desperate for light exposure to go inside.

In other words, I wasn't seeing much of anyone there today who wasn't there Thursday and Friday. I understand, however, that the outdoor Seattle International Beerfest (yes, that's a real thing) was jampacked!

Not shockingly, quite a number of flyers were taken Thursday...and that's pretty much when the flyer-taking came to an end. I left what should be enough for tomorrow and stopped by the Seattle Central Library on the way home--the nice librarian couldn't figure out if they'll actually put them out on their flyer table, but it never hurts to ask. In case they don't, I kept some, which I will try to get into some of the geekier coffeehouses before the coupon expires.

So, yeah, 250 flyers were too many for what I'm guessing was a 400-500 person con. Hopefully the people who took them were the taste-making type--like I said earlier, I certainly met a lot of very knowledgable and entertaining people.

(In fact, today I went to the panel with Greg Bear, who obviously has been thinking about e-books for a very long time. He said that a lot of the NYC publishing people he knows are now working for Amazon..... And now I'm looking at the program for tomorrow, and there's going to be some really interesting-sounding panels with David Brin...oy, now I'm torn.)

I think you have to find that aspect of it worthwhile, because even if you're local, cons are surprisingly pricey--this one's by the airport, which means I have to drive, and down there it's $10 just to park your car!

Anyway, the flyer business made me that much more determined to switch to black & white. Not only is it significantly cheaper, but if it turns out that I don't have enough, I can just run down to Kinko's and make more. If I have too many, I can use them as notepaper or print on the backside, because they're not coated paper. Also, I ordered the flyers through VistaPrint, and the colors on my computer screen weren't quite the same as the colors of the finished product (this has also been an issue with covers)--they don't pop as much, which was disappointing.

OMG!!! OK, something just happened...

...earlier today I went poking around for places to leave the excess flyers, and I came upon the Web page of GeekGirlCon, which I'd heard about, but seriously, there are SO many cons around here that there is just no way to keep track of them all.

Anyway, they say on their Web site that they're looking for swag in the swag bags. So I e-mailed them and said, A coupon for a free e-book would be swag, yah? And they just e-mailed me back right now and said, We think so!

So, awesome, it looks like I'll be generating flyers for...deep breath...4,500 swag bags. (!!!) OK. Black and white, definitely, and half-page flyers--I was checking this out on the Staples Web site earlier, and I can get this done for not much more than it cost me to do 250 four-color full-page ones. I'll also have to simplify the design and text so it works with the smaller page size, and noodle with the description to make Shanti more prominent. (What is she if not the ultimate Sporty Geek Girl?) This will work....

...back to the normal ruminations--the other thing I'm curious about is whether doing a table is worth it, or if it's really no better than putting flyers out on the flyer rack. I guess Foolscap will help me with that math. And maybe I'm looking for silver linings here, but the fact that not a lot of locals came to Westercon means that that population is largely untapped for me--I was a little worried that pretty much the same people come to all the cons.

You know what the problem with real life is?

It's not that things don't end neatly, or that good people are not always rewarded for virtue. It's not that it puts a lot of demands on your time so that you can't write.

It's that it makes you look unimaginative.

Case in point: I started Trang a year or two after the September 11th attacks, and a lot of the choices made in that book were in response to what, to me, were some pretty stupid decisions being made in the aftermath of the attacks. For example, Trang's first name is Philippe, and he is part French, because at the time the Bush administration was encouraging people to demonstrate their patriotism by going to French restaurants and being rude to the wait staff. (I'm sure that one had Osama bin Laden quaking in his boots.) In the book, nuclear weapons, which had long been banned, are utilized again in response to the perceived alien threat. This was a reflection of my surprise and disappointment that people would resort to World War I-era methods, like renaming food, to further demonize a particular ethnicity (sauerkraut/"liberty cabbage"; French fries/"freedom fries").

But one thing in the book that wasn't in response to the Bush administration's policies was having people be tortured at Guantánamo. At the time, it didn't even occur to me that the United States would actually go ahead and adopt a policy of torture. It did, however occur to me that things like torture tend to happen places where no one is really in charge, and Guantánamo was a place where normal laws did not apply (and would really not apply if the U.S. lost interest in keeping a base there).

Where I saw a base of action for a fictional villain, George W. Bush saw opportunity.

Of course, by the time Trang came out, everyone knew that people were being tortured in Guantánamo, so now I look like I crib all my ideas from the nightly news.

More recently, I came up with an explanation of something in my book that is based on the Standard Model of physics. So of course, they promptly discover the Higgs boson! And it's splashed over every news site!

Ugh--there are going to be dozens, if not hundreds, of science-fiction novels that revolve around bosons released in the next few years, aren't there? It's going to be the new singularity.

Thanks a lot, real life!

Order that proof!

Oh, and yesterday Gallowglas told me that he once got a proof back from CreateSpace that was gibberish! The file was fine, but they somehow managed to put it through the blender before getting it back to him.

You don't have to get a paper proof from them--in fact, it's cheaper if you don't (but not a lot cheaper--less than $20). I've always opted for the paper proof because 1. I am compulsive, 2. sometimes things that look fine on flat sheets don't look fine in a bound book with a gutter. But I was wondering if the printing process was still as fraught with peril as it used to be. And the answer apparently is: Oh, yes.

And lots of good things happened at Westercon

I'm halfway through Westercon--I'm was thinking about not going Sunday, but I hear that's a really heavy day for attendance, and I want to develop some idea if 250 flyers are too many or too few for that size con (which is supposed to be roughly 500-1,000 people--I'm guessing 250 is too many, but we'll see).

Anyway, obviously it wasn't all ignorant douchebaggery. As a matter of fact, I've met quite a number of really interesting and helpful people--despite the fact that I was having trouble not tipping over today and had to leave early.

One fellow was a writer named M. Todd Gallowglas (who said that self-publishing can be "like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub," hee). He was on a panel on POD books, so I brought a copy of Trust (you know, just in case), and he looked at it and had a really good suggestion for the layout: I have large paragraph indents, and if I shrink them (and I could shrink them a lot without having it look funny; once he pointed their size out I was immediately like, Yeah, that is large), it would make the layout shorter and the book cheaper.

Am I going to run off and lay out Trust and Trang again? Oh, God no. I'd have to really be hurting for a beta project before I'd start another freakin' layout. But it's definitely something to keep in mind with Trials and Tribulations. I assume they are so big because Word (curse you, Word!) gives you an indent appropriate for an 8 1/2" X 11" sheet of paper and doesn't shrink that when you set the page to a smaller size.

Another panel on art in books was really interesting, because it was basically a bunch of artists discussing how they do what they do. Artists often aren't really good at explaining themselves in words, but they had to explain things to each other (because it's a new world for them, too), and there weren't any props.

Except that Frank Wu (who is marvelously entertaining, by the way) had a couple of prints. I knew about the importance of rays or lines, which he mentioned, but he also talked about how you can think of cover art as a bunch of shapes that fit together.

He showed us a couple as examples (pointing out that you couldn't take something with a vertical orientation and easily make it a square, since you'd have to chop up your shapes), and looking at them, I made a couple of quick sketches just getting the shapes down.

Of course, I can't find the originals to link to online, but rest assured that they are MUCH more artistic, beautiful, and detailed than what I'm going to show here. All I was trying to capture and to think about was the basic, underlying shapes, and the way they fit together.

So here's the first one:

Now, this was a story about a dragon. So the curvy line was the dragon, standing up on two legs menacingly, facing left. The pointy wedge was...light? I think? Like someone had opened a door to a dragon's lair and the dragon was not too thrilled about it. The beginning of the title actually kind of curved down to fit over the curvy dragon. (Yes, I am that limited as an artist--even my crude block-shape rendition manages to be a less-than-fully-acceptable crude block-shape rendition.)

This was a city of dragons. So you have both sides of an alley with two walkways spanning it (and tiny dragons on them). Down at the bottom you have a larger dragon poking his head up.

I had never really thought of cover art in this way before, but it makes a ton of sense--it draws the eye in, and it also likely helps when you have to scale a full-size cover down into a teeny little thumbnail.

Oh, and Wu loves to license existing art for book covers. It's free money!

(Other things to remember from the panels: If your cover artist uses stock photos, models, or even pictures of some locations (!), you need to be sure you have permission from those sources as well. A fascinating and unique cover can be made by taking a fascinating and unique item--like a hobo nickel bought off eBay or a jack o' lantern doused in lighter fluid and set aflame--and taking a photo of it. And bookstore owners get really cranky when people go e-book only, because they can sell books--just give them a chance, damn it!)

I spotted a booth for the Northwest Independent Writers Association, and I got all excited! An indie writers' group in the Pacific Northwest! But then they told me that they're in the Portland area, not the Seattle area...le sigh. But it's something to look at and someplace to get ideas....

New stereotype!

OK, I've been at Westercon two days now, and I'm cranky. Why? Because my old-person stomach kept me up all night, and then my middle-aged-lady cats woke me up at the crack of dawn. (The sun was up, so why wasn't I?) And then, since Westercon is a con, today people kept assuming I was yawning and sleepy because I was up all night yiffing or something.

Anyway, last night as I was glamorously grabbing my stomach and wishing I was dead (because I am young! sexy! and exciting!), I realized that something was really bothering me about Jaye Manus' excellent post on not putting a bunch of weird formatting into your files. (To keep this from being a complete gripe fest--which, trust me, it's going to be--Manus also posted an invitation to send your source files to someone who is trying to develop software to automatically strip out the weird crap.)

What was bothering me was this: Why were people including all this weird crap in the first place? It's literally been decades since publishers set things in type--layout is all done on computers and has been for a very long time. Screwy codes mess up Quark just as badly as they mess up e-book conversions.

And then, of course, I remembered--it was always someone's job to yank out all the weird coding. A file would come in from a writer, and it would be all jacked up, and the very first thing that had to happen to it was that someone (usually a lowly assistant) would have to spent their day de-jacking it.

I would sometimes suggest that, hey, shouldn't we tell the writers that they're fucking everything up and making someone's life difficult by putting two spaces after every period or putting in a million tab characters and hard returns. Then maybe they wouldn't do it! Efficiency!

The answer, of course, was oh, no. Do not attempt to educate writers about publishing. The average writer is too dumb and too much of a prima donna to make minor changes in their habits that would save hours and hours of somebody else's time.

And there are writers who really embrace this concept, you know? These are the people who can't for the life of them produce a clean text file, even though it's probably easier to produce a clean one than a screwed-up one. This is how they wrote papers in college back in 1972, and they'll be damned if they're going to bother educating themselves or changing their ways, because they are writers, and their only job is to write.

Today, as I was groggily watching an ignorant and insensitive traditionally-published author act like a fool and an asshole, I realized that here is a new stereotype: The traditionally-published fool and asshole.

In the interest of not demonizing, I will note that I don't think all or even most traditionally-published writers are fools or assholes. But those who are seem to follow a particular pattern.

1. They are exceptionally ignorant. Exceptionally. This person opened the panel, which was about a fairly basic aspect of book production, by noting that they know absolutely nothing on the subject. They went on to state that they would probably be able to tell us only what their editor and agent say.

2. They spend 99% of their time bitching about how their agent and editor treat them. Their input is not welcome. They have no control. Bad decisions are made that have the potential to harm their book, and they are not allowed to stop or fix them. Their agent puts their editor before them. They are treated like a mildly retarded small child, and they resent it. If only some alternative business model existed, which allowed a writer complete control over their work. Too bad it doesn't!

3. They are convinced that self-published work must be crap. Oh, yeah. (And yes, I pushed back on that one. I was even fairly polite about it.) But apparently The Way of Self-Publishing is to half-ass it, because no self-published writer gives a shit about quality. At least, that what this author hears. You know: From their editor and agent and all the other good people at their publishing company. Who have no vested interest in this whatsoever.

Jesus Christ, I'm watching people beat themselves to death over quality, and this ignorant idiot has to blather on like they have the least fucking clue about anything--like they haven't put themselves in a position where they are at a very low risk of ever getting the least fucking clue about anything, because their agent and editor control all the information.

Ass.

And I'm so very sure Hugh Howey cries himself to sleep at night over the quality of his work.

Selling to bookstores

This is a good post by David Gaughran on selling to indie bookstores. Just remember--you're selling, and not just your book. You're selling yourself and your professionalism and reliability as a supplier. Don't just mail them crap 'cuz you're shy--nobody wants a supplier who can't freaking interact with people if there's a problem.

I am so happy

Somebody found this blog by Googling "who are proposed members of the Illuminati." Not proposed, baby, not proposed.

Remember: Nine out of ten people seeking to join a secret society choose the Illuminati! Classic for a reason!

Black & white flyer

I made a black and white version of that flyer. It looks like this now:

I'm not sure if that will xerox OK, or if I need to simplify it further, à la 11th Hour. Of course, if I start simplifying the book covers, they won't look like book covers any more, so....

Random things from around the Interwebs

These are a few things that have been rattling around my skull:

1. Jim Self posted his surprise at how easy it is to produce an e-book. It is! It's easy! Easier than Angry Birds! Don't pay $3,000 for it!

At least, it's easy if you haven't made it hard. Jaye Manus has a great post on how NOT to screw up your file so that it's difficult to clean. From what I've read by him and other people who charge money to create e-books, the really screwy files come from two sources: 1. authors who put in a lot of weird formatting (so, you know, don't), and 2. authors who pass the file around to a bunch of other people, all of whom make their own inputs, many times using different software.

Honest to God, why would you ever do #2? You do realize that you are the author, yes? You have the final say? I guess this touches my discomfort with having someone line edit your novel--I just can't imagine handing my work over to someone else and saying, Here, do what you want with it, I trust your judgment more than my own. At that point you might as well just plunk down six figures for a ghostwriter.

2. Lindsay Buroker has a post on negative reviews. I of course tossed in my observation that a negative review can provide you with important marketing information.

But my other observation was a little less rosy, and may be something you have to deal with: The very first reviews of Trang were from a reviewer who hated the book. They were a 1-star review on Goodreads and a 2-star review on Amazon. And if you compare the average number of stars on Goodreads and Amazon versus LibraryThing and Smashwords, you'll see that Trang averages a star lower on the first two sites than on the latter two.

Now, obviously, this could just be because of the different audiences, but I think this is an example of the power of what economists call anchoring, which is where people decide the worth of something based on a figure tossed out by someone else.

Let's say you read a first-contact social sci-fi book about a troubled diplomat. You like it fine. You could give it three stars, you could give it four...and you go over to a review site. There you see that, on average, people are giving it four stars. Guess what you do? Guess what you do if there's only one review, and it has two stars?

I don't really see this as something you can fix, at least not unless you're willing to pull down the book and republish under a different title. But I do wonder if that's something that contributed to people's willingness to buy it on Amazon after looking at it on Smashwords. I mean, the Amazon people think it's just OK, but the first group you saw were the Smashwords people, and they loved it, so it's probably worth buying!

3. Kris Rusch has two really good posts on perfectionism and how damaging it can be. Just keep in mind that the only thing you can as a writer absolutely guarantee is failure, and the best way to guarantee failure is to stop writing. Just stop producing.

Writing is technically a manufacturing job--did you know that? That's how economists classify writing. And that's how you should think of it--if you aren't putting anything out, you aren't getting anything done. Your little manufacturing operation has ground to a halt, and the workers are either sitting idle around the plant (and probably getting hammered), or they are polishing and re-polishing and re-re-polishing and re-re-re-polishing items that you never seem to get out of the damned door. Getting up the nerve to finish is tough, but you have to do it--otherwise you might as well never start.