All my characters will be...the same!

I was watching an anime series the other day--it was a telenovela-type show that was actually pretty entertaining. The problem was, most of the action took place on a train. On this train were no fewer than three criminal gangs. (It wasn't like the train had some valuable cargo that all the gangs were after--it was just a coincidence that the three were there.) The majority of the people on the train who weren't in one of these three criminal gangs were affiliated with the Mafia.

Making it worse, one of the gangs was a gang of...homicidal maniacs! Yes, an entire gang of homicidal maniacs, because there are just that many out there. Some of the non-gang-affiliated characters also happened to be homicidal maniacs.

By the end of it, I was VERY tired of hearing people make speeches about how much they enjoyed killing people. (Homicidal maniacs are apparently a verbose lot, who never tire of prattling on about their hobby.) That sort of thing is unsettling and effective the first time you hear it, but the twelfth time, it's just boring.

When I'm bored, I start asking logical questions like, Where are the normal people? Is pretty much every train ride like this? Who would take the train, then? The train had two conductors, one of whom was part of a criminal gang and the other of whom was a homicidal maniac--doesn't the railroad screen its employees at all?

It's not just this show or anime. I've read fantasy novels where every spot in the entire planet is plagued by evil magicks. That's swell from a putting-characters-in-peril point of view, but if the very air and soil is going to kill you wherever you go, how do people farm? Why are there cities and industries and rich people and a high level of political organization?

Regular, non-telenovela type TV series get lousy with this kind of thing. You have a plot revolving around someone secretly being a spy/mutant/alien/vampire/Mafioso/werewolf, and a few seasons later there isn't a character on the show who isn't secretly a spy/mutant/alien/vampire/Mafioso/werewolf--and every unveiling (you know, of the exact same thing that has been unveiled many times before) is presented as something shocking!! and dramatic!!!

I think even if you're writing about things going on that are unlikely and fantastical, you have ground it in some kind of realism. You need the normal people to set off the freaks. Otherwise it's like eating an entire meal made solely out of habaneros--it's tedious and unpleasant, and it just doesn't work.

"I’m an author and I’m not good about this stuff"

Passive Voice has a post on Penguin suing authors for not delivering books that they received advances for. Obviously Penguin is a troubled company, and suing is kind of an odd decisions, since unless the advance was huge, suing costs more than just writing it off as a loss.

But forcing people to feel sympathy for Penguin is...Elizabeth Wurtzel! She gave an interview with NPR that contains the hilarious line:

I think at some point they did send me a letter about this. I mean, I think it’s one of those things that I probably should have dealt with and didn’t because I’m an author and I’m not good about this stuff.

She then goes on to say that Penguin shouldn't sue her, because having a relationship with her (you know, the kind of relationship where they give her $33,000 and she give them bupkis) is worth so much more. Sooooo much more!

The whole "I'm an author and I'm not good about this stuff" bit is especially implausible because, as Peter Winkler pointed out, Wurtzel used to be a lawyer. She also graduated from Harvard, was a journalist before getting fired for plagiarism, and pretended to be a lawyer before she actually was one! A woman of many talents, it seems.

And, you know, many problems, most of which appear to stem from her having an ENORMOUS sense of entitlement. Still, that attitude that if you are an author and an artiste, then you don't have to worry about piddly little crap like, I dunno, actually writing books is one that obviously has some traction with people who aren't as pathologically self-indulgent as Wurtzel.

It's an attitude that traditional publishing has encouraged--you don't ask authors to deliver clean files because they'll think it's beneath them. You keep the authors removed from the publishing process, that process remains an intimidating mystery to them, and then they won't run out and self-publish. Everybody wins--as long as "everybody" doesn't include writers or readers.

One of the many things I like about self-publishing is that it forces authors to not be snotty little prima donnas about everything--I mean, you can be, but it's going to cost you. Explicitly. Don't feel like leaving out that junk code? Hope you feel like paying a formatter two or three times as much as you would otherwise! Don't want to think about how you're going to position your book to readers? Get ready for poor sales and angry reviews by people who feel misled! Too brilliant to worry about the "technical" details of spelling and grammar? Be prepared to have many, many readers fail to understand your genius!

Maintaining a high gloss

I like mysteries, but my sister LOVES them, so I'm always on the lookout for good ones to recommend or get for her.

In the past several months, I've come across two indie mystery books that I thought were really good. Coincidentally, each was the first book in a two-book series. In both cases, I liked the first book so much that I decided to buy a paper copy of it for my sister, and I went on to read the second book.

And, in both cases, I will not be buying a paper copy of the second book for my sister.

I think the same thing happened with both series. Two talented writers each wrote a mystery novel and spent the next, oh, five or ten years trying without success to have that novel traditionally published. Those years, while frustrating, weren't wasted--the writers, each assuming that their book wasn't quite good enough to get published, spent a lot of time gathering feedback and improving the books. The result was a pair of books that were very fine indeed--but still not published!

Enter self-publishing. Our two mystery novelists self-publish their by now EXTREMELY good books, and readers LOVE them! Reviews are ecstatic, sales are grand, and our two writers realize that their debut novels didn't get published not because they weren't good enough, but because traditional publishing is an industry in crisis.

They each say, A-ha! I am a writer of talent! And of sales! I'd better crank my follow-up novel out in a great big hurry!

So, they each crank out novel number two. Maybe they give it to a beta reader who is really more of a friend or a fan than an editor, and this person tells them that the book is awesome and they are a genuis--or maybe they don't even bother with that.

The result is a very frustrating read, because in both cases, Novel #2 is something that with a little more work could have been just as good as Novel #1. Things are bad in a way that is annoying and fixable: Lengthy and original descriptive phrases are repeated word-for-word in different places in the book; climactic events happen off-stage; sub-plots (and since these are mystery novels, there are a lot of those) are wound up in ways that are opaque and confusing. Both books need a serious edit--not a fluffy, "You're so great! I love your stuff!" kind of thing.

A good edit is always somewhat brutal. The job of an editor is to yank all your failures out and rub them in your face so you can fix them. If you're not feeling like someone could be a little kinder to you, or if you're not feeling like, Holy crap, this is going to be a lot of work, you're not getting a proper edit. There's always that moment of wounded ego and despair.

I totally understand writers not wanting to go through it--hell, I don't always want to go through it--especially after they've seen through the whole traditional-publishing lie that their book is not quite good enough to sell. If you've been in a situation where people have been stomping all over your talent for no other reason than to get you to shut up and go away, it can be hard to acknowledge that there is such a thing as legitimate criticism.

But no matter how talented you are--and these writers are both quite talented--you need to be edited. A real edit, not a love-fest, done by someone who does not care about your feelings and who is not afraid to tell you the stuff that's hard to hear.

Just a rat with a button

Anyone else get an e-mail about Amazon's Author Rank program and roll their eyes? Oh, goodie, another set of numbers to make you feel inferior! This time you're listed by name, so you're SURE to feel inadequate!

Amazon is very good at handling authors, and that has a dark side. Camille LaGuire did a recent post on how Amazon's immediate feedback is so compelling that LaGuire thought her books had stopped selling, when in fact they were selling fine at other retailers.

Writes LaGuire, "[Amazon's] whole site is optimized for you, to reward you and make it easy for you to just focus on them and forget everyone else.... [B]y giving you that little hourly reward, Amazon conditions you to watch Amazon's stats and keep doing things to make them move."

And yet, people want more. There was a recent post on FutureBooks by a Web designer complaining about how little data Amazon and the other e-book publishing platforms give you when compared to, say, a Web site. Passive Guy linked to it with the note, "PG seconds this complaint. He understands far more about the visitors to The Passive Voice than he does about the people who purchase Mrs. PG’s books."

As a practical matter, yes, I understand the issue. But, wow, I feel deeply ambivalent about all the data I can access regarding visitors to my blog (although is it hilarious at times). A big part if it is that I want writing novels to be a higher priority than writing the blog. But you know, I've been sick lately, so I've been writing blog posts rather than working on Trials. And when I do that, I gain a lot of traffic to this site.

Do you know when I lose traffic to this site? When my blog posts are all titled "Progress Report" and are all boring one-liners about how I wrote X many words today. In other words, the more productive I am with the novels, the less of a reward I get from my blog stats.

That's just something I have to inure myself to, but I know that subconsciously it's working away at me. That's part of why I occasionally go read reviews--I need a different kind of prodding, the kind that comes from readers, not other writers.

I feel like having access to lots of sales data is also a two-edged sword--I mean, yes, it indicates whether or not you're reaching readers, plus of course it's money. On the other hand, it is so easy to get all wrapped up in that world. You do need to act like a publisher at times--thinking long and hard about how you want to position your book, for example--but a lot of that stuff is easier and less intimidating than writing novels, and at least for me it can become just another form of procrastination.

Book discovery nowadays

This is an interesting article (via PV) on how book discovery has changed in recent years.

Of special interest: 

Two years ago, 35% of book purchases were made because readers found out about a book in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, the single-largest site of discovery. This year, that figure has dropped to 17%, a reflection both of the closing of Borders and the rise of e-readers.

I have to stop and say WOW to that one--the percentage of books discovered via bookstores has dropped that much in only two years!? Holy crap. I mean, I know things are changing, of course, but I am constantly amazed at how fast it's happening.

Anyway, the article goes on to say:

In the same period, personal recommendations grew the most, to 22% from 14%. . . . A problem for publishers and authors of new titles is that the vast majority of personal recommendations are backlist titles. Only 6% of books recommended personally have been published in the past half year--and just 2% were published within three months

Yeah, more backlist recommendations would be a big problem for publishers, because they are rapidly losing their ability to monetize those titles. That's an unpromising confluence of trends right there.

And if you don't want to spend all your time flogging social media, that article provides you with an excellent rationalization: "[D]igital mass media, including Facebook and Twitter, rose just to 4.5% from 1.9% as a place people learned about the books they have bought." Music to my ears....

Fairness, monopsony, and other unhelpful concepts

Some people are taking great umbrage at Amazon for forcing publishers to provide them with books they can actually sell. What apparently is at issue is not the basic concept that Amazon need saleable inventory (although that is a concept that seems rather lost on the publishers themselves), but the fact that Amazon is going to punish these suppliers by not selling ANY of their goods, rather than simply not selling the goods that arrived damaged.

This, it seems, is not "fair" and is an example of Amazon using its "monopsony power."

Yeah, that's a bunch of crap. I'll start with the idea that Amazon has a "monopsony." Just like Amazon isn't a monopoly because it can't shut out competing online retailers, it is not a monopsony, because it (say it with me) can't shut out competing online retailers. You can sell your books other places.

On to "fair." "Fair" is one of those terms that kind of drives me crazy, because it doesn't really have any agreed-upon meaning when you start talking about specific situations. Is our current tax system fair? Is the percentage of tax paid by wealthy people fair? If it is unfair, is it unfair because wealthy people pay too much in taxes, or because they pay too little?

I don't (NO I REALLY DON'T) want you to actually answer those questions. Why not? Because there are people who are completely, 100% convinced that the current system is unfair because wealthy people pay too little in taxes--and they have many long, self-righteous justifications "proving" that they are right. And there are other people who are equally convinced, and have equally tedious "evidence," that the current system is unfair because wealthy people pay too much.

That's "fair" for you--it means whatever you want it to mean.

But what does "fair" get you? Not much. Say you decide (what with your long rationalizations and your many friends who agree with you) that the tax system is unfair, and that it is specifically unfair to you, because you shouldn't ever have to pay any taxes. So you don't.

You can protest the unfairness of the system until you're blue in the face (and people do), but you will still get fined and perhaps even imprisoned (and people do). That's because the government has a different idea of what's fair, and unlike you, they have cops and prisons. (I once heard a young man on the bus discussing his many drug arrests, the latest which was felony weight. He objected bitterly it being classified as a felony, because it was--you guessed it--"not fair." Oddly enough, these magic words did not have any noticeable impact on his situation.)

What is Amazon? Amazon is a major retail outlet. If you sell books on Amazon, you are a supplier to that company. To be a supplier to Amazon, you must agree to their terms: You price your book a certain way. You get a certain cut. You use certain file formats. You can't put up certain kinds of material.

If you don't agree to their terms, there are other suppliers out there. (And, since Amazon doesn't actually have a monopsony, there are also other retailers out there who might be more accommodating to you.)

Now in book publishing, suppliers actually have a relatively large amount of power--larger than in most other industries. Stephen King gets really nice contracts because he is the sole supplier of Stephen King books, and people really want those and don't want anything else. It's a stark contrast to, say, supplying Wal-Mart, whose customers are so price-conscious that they'll happily switch brands if something cheaper comes along, which really puts the suppliers in a position of weakness.

Even so, the power of book suppliers has it limits, as those art-book publishers are discovering. Amazon is having such a problem with their stock that it's willing to stop selling their books altogether, which suggests that Amazon thinks readers won't really miss those books and will be able to find suitable substitutes.

And guess what? Amazon has a perfect right to make that call. It's not the government censoring people--you have no First Amendment right to force a retailer to carry your product.

People seem to constantly want to have some kind of reciprocal emotional relationship with Amazon, which makes them lose sight of the fact that it is simply a business and a retailer. If a business partnership is unprofitable, Amazon will drop that partner. This is how business works--it's about making money, and if pairing with someone doesn't make a company money, the company will terminate that relationship.

Is that "fair"? Hell if I know. I just know that's the way the retail business works, has always worked, and will most likely work in the future.

Is that scary to you? Well, maybe it should be, because if you've put all your eggs in the Amazon basket, then you are taking a risk. Amazon's not your mom, it's not your friend, it doesn't love you, and it's under no obligation to take care of you. It's a major retailer, you are a supplier, and that's all. If they don't like what you do, they'll terminate the relationship--and if you don't like what they do, you are free to do the same.

Hey, that's a joke!

Recently I watched the "Gangnam Style" video, which has become something of a Internet sensation. Watching it was kind of an odd experience. I have a really hard time laughing at people who aren't trying to be funny. I'll do it--I'm only human--but I feel odd about it, and I don't make a habit of seeking out stuff that's really bad or unintentionally campy when I feel like having a good laugh.

So the first time I watched "Gangnam Style," it really perplexed me. Then I read the Wikipedia entry on it and twigged that, oh, it's supposed to be funny. Psy, the South Korean rapper who created the song, is making fun of people who are trying way too hard to be classy, so he runs around terrorizing the upscale Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam with his silly dance. The odd-looking and -acting men in the video are Korean comedians. They're not trying to look cool--they're trying to look like people who are trying to look cool and failing miserably.

And then I watched the video again, and I laughed and laughed. Because it was OK.

I'm not the only person who responds this way--Mel Brook's The Producers is about two guys trying to create a Broadway show that is sure to fail so they can make off with their investors' money. But they do too good a job, and everyone assumes that their awful show, Springtime for Hilter, is a hilarious parody of the Third Reich. The show becomes OK for the audience, they laugh and laugh, and the hapless producers have a monster hit on their hands.

It's also interesting to see situations where there's a joke (the histrionic "I am NOT drinking any FUCKING Merlot!") and people don't realize that it's not meant to be taken seriously (sales of Merlot fall). One of the funny things about Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is the level of effort they went to in order to ensure that the whole thing looks and sounds like a crappy low-budget '80s TV show--one of the actors even went through and re-dubbed all his lines so that they don't quite match up with the movements of his lips. But the problem, of course, is that some people didn't understand that it wasn't really a crappy '80s TV show. You also see this in some responses to Richard Ayoade's movie Submarine, which is deliberately pretentious, because it's about an adolescent, and adolescent pretension is funny, see?

I think this is where is helps to have a brand (and to also make sure a humor book is actually filed under humor and possibly has "humor" or "comedy" or "parody" or "It's OK, you can laugh at this" on the cover)--when Koreans see Noh Hong-chul doing what Wikipedia calls "his trademark 'lewd dance,'" they're expecting it and find it far less baffling and unsettling (What is that guy DOING!?!) than I did the first time I saw it. If you don't realize that Ayoade is a comedian, and one with a special interest in visual world-building, then the pretentious French New Wave-style cinematography of Submarine just seems like...pretentious French New Wave-style cinematography.

Who do publishers think pays for all this?

This just amazes me--Amazon is forcing publishers to ship expensive art and gift books in single boxes, because otherwise the books get messed up and can't be sold. (Via PV.)

Why does Amazon have to force publishers to treat their high-end products so that they can actually be sold to people? Well, God forbid the publishers produce saleable goods!

Seriously, read this and marvel: "One frustrated publisher said, 'Isn't it Amazon's problem if their customers want their gift book [sic] in each individual box? Isn't their problem [sic] to deal with?'"

Wow. If you are wondering how far publishers have removed themselves from their readers, read that again. It's Amazon's problem that they can't sell what you sold them? Because once Amazon pays the publisher the wholesale price for that book, well, hey, everything's finished. There's no additional step past the wholesale level of sales--Amazon mints money itself for no other purpose than to hand it over to publishers.

There's certainly no reader involved in this, no consumer who shells out $150 for a beautiful-looking art book only to receive one that looks like it got jumped after school for its lunch money. Seriously, have these idiots ever purchased anything on the high end? Have they seen how expensive purses get treated so that they have no nicks or scratches? When people shell out for luxury goods--especially a gift or something to ornament a living room--they want something that doesn't look like it got run over by a truck.

(I mean, come on. Why did I stop shopping at The World's Worst Barnes & Noble? Because the books were damaged. It astonished and infuriated me that they would sell damaged good for full price. I wondered if any of them had ever actually bought anything before, ever. You don't walk into a clothing store and see a bunch of shredded clothes on the rack, do you?)

Of course it is, in fact, Amazon's problem that it can't sell these goods, which is why Amazon is going to kick these particular publishers in the crotch until they give Amazon a product that it can actually get paid for. And how publishers respond? By calling up a reporter and whining about how much their balls hurt! Because that's how business partners resolve a business dispute, especially when the dispute arises from the fact that you are making it so your partner can't turn a profit.

Honestly, who are these clowns? Are they 12 years old? Have they never gone shopping? Is this their first foray into business? Capitalism? I cannot--I mean, my mouth is literally hanging open as I struggle in vain to understand what they hell they are thinking.

And these are the experts who will save you from the pit of self-publishing....

Ugh, ugh, ugh

So, the sinus infection has been clearing up--I didn't take any medication last night or today, which made me very happy because medication always makes me groggy and tired.

Except that I was EVEN MORE groggy and tired today than yesterday!

You can imagine the length of time it took me in my present mental state to sort this out, but: This all started right after I got a flu shot. So I am actually in Flu-Like Symptoms Land, which is a part of the larger Kingdom of Your Immune System Is Trying To Kill You. Hopefully it won't last as long as the flu. It's certainly not as severe as the flu, but of course that's not saying much, since "more severe than the flu" for me would mean, "The person who found me dialed 911, and I went straight into the ICU."

Oh my God, Google

I'm trying to pull Trang down from Google Books--could they set that site up to be any LESS user-friendly? Obviously, the book never went up in their store, but I want the excerpts down from their free site, too. The problem is that I canceled out my account there, and now there is literally NO WAY their system will either let me take down my own book, or God forbid, actually contact a human being so that they can do it. Everything is scripted, and since my situation doesn't really fit the script options, I can't tell them what's going on. Instead, I was forced to re-sign up and act like someone else put my book up--crazy. And I have no idea if that's going to work or if I'm going to have to file a DMCA complaint against myself. Beyond stupid. I regret ever having engaged with these fuckwits in the first place.

Just because it's unpleasant doesn't mean it's not true

(A note: I do seem to be getting better from that stupid sinus infection, but I'm still a little under the weather. Hopefully soon I'll be doing actual novel writing again instead of just blathering on here.)

Last night as I was lying in bed, blowing my nose, I started thinking again about the whole kerfuffle over Amazon's KDP Select exclusivity program. Some thoughts occurred to me, and I resolved to write a blog post about them in the morning. Then morning came, and Passive Guy also had some thoughts on the kerfuffle, so at least I'm not alone in thinking this topic could benefit from a little probing (which will hopefully not degenerate into the beating of a dead horse).

As I mentioned in my earlier post, one of the things that struck me about the comments were how upset people were that Kris Rusch challenged KDP Select (and challenged it mildly--she has books enrolled in KDP Select, so it's not like she's rabidly against it). And she notes, "The 'spirited discussion' . . . happens every time I write something even passingly negative about Kindle or Select."

Passive Guy touches on this in his post, where he notes that some of the comments on his site got "a bit heated," which he argues is "typical." The reason, he writes (emphasis added):

The certitude of small sample sizes leads authors to question or discount others who report much different sales experiences. If someone comments that 78.23% of their ebook sales happen on Nook, that person must be an outlier. Because, of course, I’m not an outlier. What happens to me must be what is happening to most authors.

And if I’m the outlier, I must be doing something wrong and I don’t like to think about that.

People don't like to think about the possibility that they might be doing something wrong. And they ESPECIALLY don't like to think about the possibility that they might be doing something risky.

So you wind up with lovely little logic tangles, like the comment on Rusch's post, "My short-term goal was to get to a place where I could reliably support myself and my family with my books."

Guess what? RELIABLY supporting yourself and your family is NOT a short-term goal, because you can't support your family really well for six months and then stop. That person made a gamble on KDP Select, it paid off, and now she's...wait for it...diversifying out of KDP Select (because she's not actually stupid).

Another wrote, "there is an objective way to measure the success of various approaches to self-publishing: revenue."

HOLY FUCK NO!!! God! That's like saying the "objective" way to measure the success of investing is by the percentage return on your stock. So if you have every last dime tied up in a stock with a P/E ratio of 2,000, you're in great shape because that stock has gone up 500% over the past three weeks! No problems there!

Remember--your time frame matters. A lot. Are you making lots of revenue now, but it's going to evaporate the next time Amazon changes its algorithms? (Sorry, kids, hope you ate your fill over the past six months!) Are you setting yourself up to have a broader, more stable audience, or are you setting yourself up to make a big SPLAT and wind up the centerpiece of a Wall Street Journal pity piece?

The question you need to ask yourself is, What happens if the plug is pulled on KDP Select? What if Amazon isn't available to me? What do I do then?

This isn't some cold-medication-inspired gloom-and-dooming. It's reality. Amazon will block books on the suspicion that there might be something funny with them--what do you do if that happens to you? Rusell Blake wrote about how, by simply altering its algorithm, Amazon dramatically reduced his sales: "Whereas I would see 150-200 books a day sold following a free promo in March or April, my May promos bumped sales to maybe 20-30 per day."

That's several hundred sales--gone! Poof! Hopefully Blake has other marketing strategies in the works and can make up those sales. Hopefully he wasn't expecting that revenue to "reliably support myself and my family."

Like I've said before, this is simply how life is when you own your own business. Depending entirely on a single source of income is always a huge risk. You may decide to take the gamble, but know that you are taking a gamble--if it pays off, your gamble paid off. That's all. Don't look back on it after the fact and say, "What I did was perfectly safe! Anyone who says it was a risky move shall taste my wrath!"

What I think people really don't want to think about when it comes to self-publishing is that it is largely dominated by a single player: Amazon. Like many if not most writers, I get almost all of my book sales through Amazon, despite not having made any kind of push there. (Of course, almost all of my income comes from the Illuminati, a proud example of a well-diversified secret society!) If Amazon stops selling self-published books, a lot of writers are going to be totally screwed. This whole little industry will experience some massive dislocation.

It's a very scary fact--it's the elephant in the room as far as risk is concerned. People really, really want to pretend it isn't there. When someone like Rusch points at it, even in passing, people freak out.

But it's there. It is there, and it is real. Ignoring this risk won't make it go away. Writing nasty notes to or about Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith won't make it go away. Pretending that it's not really a risk because Amazon is so cute and user-friendly won't make it go away. The risk will still be there.

What can you do about it? You can take some of those lovely KDP Select revenues and start (say it with me) diversifying the hell out of Amazon. At the very least, diversify your marketing so that the next algorithm change doesn't gut your sales and bankrupt you. Diversify into non-e-book sales channels. Make serious, long-term efforts to build audience in other retail outlets. Don't act like Amazon is the be-all and end-all in publishing, and for you, it won't be.

DRM and the visually impaired

This (via PV) is an aggravating article by a fellow who is losing his sight about how using DRM really screws him. It's something to think about before you check that little DRM box on Amazon (hint: I don't). DRM is something that tech-savvy people (including actual pirates) can break in about a minute, so it really serves no purpose except to punish granny for her macular degeneration. E-books have the potential to be a huge boon to the visually impaired, so please don't do things like add DRM (or set your fonts so they can't be changed) that make life even more difficult for people.

Science unravels the Internet fuckwad!

This is pretty much off-topic for this blog, but you know, if you feel like jumping into an online fight, think twice--it's probably not going to bring out the best in you. (This is specifically about Facebook, but I think it can apply just as well to having a blog.)

Most of us present an enhanced image of ourselves on Facebook. This positive image—and the encouragement we get, in the form of "likes"—boosts our self-esteem. And when we have an inflated sense of self, we tend to exhibit poor self-control.

"Think of it as a licensing effect: You feel good about yourself so you feel a sense of entitlement," says Keith Wilcox, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School and co-author of the study. "And you want to protect that enhanced view, which might be why people are lashing out so strongly at others who don't share their opinions." These types of behavior—poor self control, inflated sense of self—"are often displayed by people impaired by alcohol," he adds.

The poor self-control spills over to other areas of life: People who spend lots of time with uncritical friends on Facebook are more likey to go on eating binges and to have more credit-card debt. The article goes on to say (emphasis added):

We're less inhibited online because we don't have to see the reaction of the person we're addressing, says Sherry Turkle, psychologist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of the social studies of science and technology. Because it's harder to see and focus on what we have in common, we tend to dehumanize each other, she says.

Astoundingly, Dr. Turkle says, many people still forget that they're speaking out loud when they communicate online. Especially when posting from a smartphone, "you are publishing but you don't feel like you are," she says. "So what if you say 'I hate you' on this tiny little thing? It's like a toy. It doesn't feel consequential."

Arguments, arguments, arguments!

Well, that post of Rusch's that I linked to earlier has led to an enormous spate on on-line debates about the merits and shortcomings of Amazon's KDP Select exclusivity program. (Am I overly cheery? It's just that my immediate gut reaction to that post was "happy dance!" and other people's reaction was...NOT happy dance. Maybe it's just evidence that you'll be happier if you don't take everything personally.)

Passive Guy noted the discussion on his link to the post, so he made a special post for it. Worth a read if you want proof positive that EVERY BOOK IS DIFFERENT. Yeah, sorry about that--this is why stuff like this can be argued forever and ever. Some people make big sales on other retail sites, so exclusivity with Amazon would be a fiasco, while others do marvelously well with KDP Select. And just to complicate matters, still others have some books of theirs that do really well on other retailers and other books of theirs that do really well on KDP Select, or they had no sales on other retailers for a long time, but now all of a sudden, they're seeing sales. It's insane.

It's also something to keep very much in mind whenever someone offers up an easy-peasy one-size-fits-all process for marketing your book.

Anyway, the Rusch post did generate a lot of thought-provoking comments, as well as some of the other kind. (I'll just say that one of my least-favorite Internet fight tactics is to bluntly insult someone, and then to insist later that you never insulted anyone and that anyone who interprets your blunt insult as an insult is crazy and stupid, but somehow calling such people crazy and stupid isn't an insult, either. All of the troll tactics are low, but trying to gaslight people is really low.)

One comment that's a bit off the topic but still worth talking about was this one by someone worried about their financial situation. Rusch and some others have some really good, realistic advice--I mean, it does all kind of boil down to "get a job," but they are not the least bit douchey about it. I liked Camille LaGuire's metaphor about writing not being a financial life raft--that's what I mean when I talk about protecting your core income and diversifying your sources of income. Writing is great, freelancing is great, running your own small business is great, but secure and predictable? Oh, no, it is not that.

Nobody wants to watch you flagellate yourself

(OK, fine, I lived in NYC, I realize that there are people who DO want to watch you flagellate yourself. But there aren't very many of them, and do you really want to encourage that sort of thing?)

There is a comedic television show I recently discovered, and I liked it so much that I got the DVDs, in no small part because I wanted to watch the commentary and get some insight into how such a delightful show was created. And I thought that the show would likely have decent commentary because it was created, written, and directed all by the same guy, who was also the guy doing the commentary. Sounds promising, right?

But, no. Nooooo. Nonononono. Turns out that this guy is one of these self-flagellating writers, the sort who has decided that the best way to head off any criticism about his work is to hate every last aspect of it with a virulent passion himself. And apparently I am a stupid asshole with absolutely no discernment whatsoever, because if I had any, I would never have liked the show--in fact, the fire of my loathing for that show would have immolated the very Earth itself.

Seriously, do you think that sort of thing is pleasant to listen to? Not only did I come out of it feeling like my taste had been repeatedly insulted, but I felt really horrible for anyone who has to work with this guy. There's one scene containing this priceless bit of physical comedy, and he shuts up to watch it for about a second, and then he screams because (brace yourself) there's a poster on the wall in a funny place.

Given that kind of supportive workplace atmosphere, I'm amazed the entire cast and crew didn't commit suicide.

I've seen this sort of thing before--people being unrelentingly negative about their work--and it's always extremely unpleasant. There's no point to it: If I like the work, it's insulting and depressing, and if I don't like the work, it doesn't help to listen to someone beat themselves up about it. (For example, I didn't care for that fellow's commentary, but when he started whinging on at the end about how awful his commentary was, shockingly enough that didn't change my opinion about it.)

Of course I go through periods of feeling like I can't produce anything good--in fact, that happens reliably whenever I'm about to release a work. But I know what that is, so I don't wallow in it. And I especially don't wallow in it in public.

Why not? Well, for one thing, I obviously don't like reading or listening to that sort of thing, so I'm not going to impose it on others. But the other thing is that I have sense of purpose about this blog--this blog is to help writers.

To my way of thinking, it's helpful to say, "Yes, I made a mistake and am learning from it, or I'm unhappy with this part of the book and have to fix it, or I'm nervous and it's affecting my judgement," because everyone deals with that--and I think it's important for writers to realize that it's normal to do things like make mistakes or suddenly doubt the worth of your entire output. These things happen, you deal with them, and then you move forward.

Acting like it's the end of the world--"This is imperfect!!! AIIIIGGGGGHHHH!!! MY ENTIRE LIFE'S WORK IS RUINED!!!!! RUINED!!!!!!!!! MY DREAMS ARE DESTROYED!!!!!!!!!"--is supremely unhelpful, both to me personally and to anyone reading this blog who might be influenced by it. And you do have to think about how your words will affect others: I never want to do to anyone what William Shawn did to Jospeh Mitchell. Writers are dramatic and perfectionistic enough without my adding fuel to the fire....

Writers are not consumers!

So, PV has a story about the recent dismissal of a class-action suit brought by writers against Publish America.

Given how notorious Publish America is, why was the lawsuit dismissed? Because it was brought under a consumer-protection law. And as Publish America noted in its brief, "Plaintiffs are not consumers; they have entered into a commercial enterprise with PA."

The court, of course, agreed--wholeheartedly! Remember: Consumer-protection laws do not apply to writers entering into contracts with publishers. When you sign with a publisher, you are regarded by law as a business entity entering into a commercial enterprise with another business entity. The law provides you with no special protections. It assumes you and your publisher are equals--which means you'd damned well better have a lawyer, because you can be sure your publisher does.

Short term v. long term

Edward Robertson has a thought-provoking post on whether or not relying on Amazon's KDP Select is a viable long-term strategy.

It will probably not surprise you to know that I think that it's not, for many reasons, but of course I also think it's a totally reasonable short-term strategy. I'm a fan of experimentation, as long as people stay nimble and don't lock themselves in (and one of the nice things about KDP Select is that it is a short-term agreement--three months instead of the life of the copyright or something like that).

Diversifying is always difficult, which is why even in the realm of personal finance, there are people who think you shouldn't do it. When you diversify, you are almost always forgoing easy money now in favor of security later.

For example, when that long-suffering encyclopedia editor wanted me to work for him all the time, that encyclopedia was paying better than my other clients. I didn't have to prove myself to him or spend a lot of time sending out pitch letters for people to ignore--he was happy to give me more work than I could possibly do.

And yet, none of that changed the fact that that project was very suddenly shut down (another case of "we don't want to pay to print this"). Had I been solely dependent on it for income, I would have made a lot of money in the short term--and been deeply screwed, with no contacts and no clients, in the long term. The problem wouldn't have been simply one of income--it would have been the fact that I hadn't kept in touch with my other clients, who sensibly enough, would have found other freelancers to do their work.

In the world of finance, it's really easy to make a decision look good or bad by fiddling with the timeline: If you bought your house in 2004, by 2007 you looked like a genius, but by 2009, you looked like an asshole. It's the same thing with diversifying: For the first--oh, I can't remember, 12 months maybe?--I looked like an idiot for spending time on other, less lucrative projects. But two months later, I looked a whole lot smarter.

My point is that KDP Select is a tool that seems to work pretty well for some people. But it's not a perfect tool, and it doesn't work for every writer or for every project (and has never, even before the changes to Amazon's algorithms). Most important, there are other tools out there, especially when it comes to marketing, and many of these tools (garnering reviews, advertising campaigns, pushing paper books to stores) can be explored while a book is on KDP Select--it's not always a case of either/or.

If one day your KDP Select tool suddenly vanishes, you'll be happy you went to the trouble of figuring out what other tools work for you.