Tales of a De-Published Author (Part 1)

If you follow me or if you follow the publishing industry, you have probably heard that Booktrope has decided to close their doors and call it quits, pulling all their titles from the shelves.

If you'e not familiar with Booktrope, it utilized a new model they called team publishing. They created a community of authors, editors, cover designers, and publicists, who would come together and publish a book. It was hybrid publishing with many of the DIY aspects of self-publishing, but it was a system where the author didn't have to pay upfront for their own editorial and design services and where they had a company backing them with expertise and protecting them with their legal team. The idea was that everyone worked on the projects for free in exchange for the percentage of the profits.

Booktrope hasn't announced what precisely led to their decision to close. Although its easy to speculate that they were not getting the market share they needed to survive in the highly competitive publishing world. I could also further speculate that, they were a victim of their own model. They grew a very large community and produced a large volume of titles each year (several hundred in the past year alone). It is easy to see that this wasn't be something that could be easily scaled back, like a small indie publisher might be able to. And it wasn't a company that could be "restructured" like a big publishing house, which had room for streamlining.

The news of their closure came as an extremely disappointing shock to me. As readers of this blog know, I had a lot of regrets about things I wish I had done differently with Mr. 8, but that didn't mean I wasn't proud of it. I was proud of the accomplishment and I was proud to be able to say I had a published book for sale. To find out that this was no longer the case was a biter pill. Not to mention, in the world of a writer, having a book published is the only point you can truly put it behind you. It's done Sure, the marketing never ends. But you'll never have to think about changing those words again. To learn it was being handed back to me felt like a huge step backward.

But the truth is compared to many of Booktrope's writers, I am very lucky. There are writers with many books published through the company, sometimes entire series, many of them profitable. Their books generated an income and they were given just one month's notice that all of those books were being de-listed. Then there are the editors and cover artists, who may have been signing onto a book a month or more, with he expectation their work would be paid for in the future. Now they might not see another cent for their labor, depending on how things shake out.

So what is next for them? For me?

Right now, all that is known for certain is that ll of Booktrope's titles with the possible exception of those listed in Amazon Encore are being pulled form the stores on May 31st. On June 1, the copyrights go back to the authors and each team member retains ownership of their own work.

That last detail makes things very unclear. And makes the way forward (from an author's perspective) murky. In the initial announcement there was some hint that authors could just put up the books as self-published. But there is an overload of questions that surround what that process would look like. And this question of ownership is not the least of them. I hardly want to be playing payroll, dividing up royalties among five different parties spread over three countries. Not that they don't deserve payment for the good wok they've done. But it a hard enough challenge finding spare time to write, never mind figuring out exchange rates.

For the time being, we are all waiting to hear more. There are a lot of blogs who write about the experience of getting published. If you're interested, stay tune and I'll tell you all about my saga of being de-published.

Three Lessons from the King

I'm currently about halfway through Stephen King's Revival. In my younger days, I read a lot—let me repeat:a lot—of King. And then one day I didn't. Part of it was my tastes changed, or rather broadened. I was no longer focused so tightly on horror. And part of it was, because I had read and reread his books so much, they felt like well covered ground.

Now that I'm writing myself and in a similar genre to the great man, I felt the need to revisit him. It didn't take many pages before I realized I had been cheating myself. Stephen King is undeniably a master storyteller. And I haven't just been enjoying this book, I have been dissecting it and trying to learn as much as I can.

These are three lessons I've picked up on so far. In terms of creating an engaging story, they are incredibly obvious, but they fact these techniques aren't more widely used shows how ingenious they really are.

Once more with feeling

It's no secret that emotions are important, but it is easy to get caught up in the mechanics of writing and maneuvering the characters through the plot points—I know I do. Yes, the character is happy or sad but it becomes secondary to getting her from point A to point B. One of the first things that jumped out at me was how Stephen King relates it all back to the main character's emotion. Or to put it another way:

It's not about stuff happening. It's about how characters feel about what happens.

It can be about big emotions like sorrow or anger but it can also be about wonder, curiosity, nostalgia. In the end, it isn't simply about how the main character perceives the events but the inner response to them and this gives the plot an immediacy and makes them personal.

The breadcrumb trail

Foreshadowing is a key to any novel, but (good Lord!) Stephen King foreshadows everything. Every single plot element is telegraphed ahead of time.There is more teasing going on than in a burlesque dance. These hints at future events provide a breadcrumb trail for the reader to follow. It stirs curiosity and also makes the reveals that much more gratifying.

It can be such a simple thing. At one point, while relating an incident, he drops: "This was while my mother was still alive." Suddenly as the reader we know the narrator's mother will die. And then a few chapters later he gives us the scene in the hospital and there's this eager anticipation. An "aha" moment as the reader realizes that the full story is coming.

By dropping these small teases, mini-mysteries are created in the reader's mind.

I do admit that the structure of Revival favors this approach, as the narrator is relating events that he has already lived through. I'm still trying to work out how to achieve it when events are unfolding in present rather than retrospect, but this is just too good of a technique not to put the effort into figuring it out.

The Contract

Stephen King makes you want to know what's on the last page. This is so basic. How did I not know this? Of course, you want the reader to be anxious to get to the end, right from the start. As writers, we need to find a way to get the reader to commit to the story.

It's all about getting your reader to want to find out what's on the last page.

Part of this is related to the second lesson. It's about teasing the reader enough for them to want to know more. But it's also more than that. It's a promise—a contract. Somewhere on those pages, there is a silent promise that the ending will knock your socks off. Will it? I don't know yet. At the halfway mark, I'm only beginning to grasp the direction of the story. But I only needed to read the first couple of chapters to know that I needed to find out what happens in the last one. 

This promise comes from the confidence in his narration, between the words it says: this story is going to be worth your time and there is something amazing, thrilling, surprising waiting for you at the end.

How does he do it? I still haven't worked that out, but my main question right now is, how can I do it?

Conclusion

What I believe is so beautiful about these lessons are that they should be obvious but they aren't. I don't see these things done that often, certainly not to the extent that it is in this book.

I started to read Stephen King again out of the curiosity of re-familiarizing myself with an old favorite author I hadn't read in while. I didn't expect to learn so much, but I did. I will be pushing myself to use these lessons in my own books.

The Gift of Sound and Vision

The world awoke this morning to the tragic news of David Bowie's death. In his sixty-nine years on this planet, David Bowie influenced countless musician, artists, writers, and filmmakers. Inexplicably, he constantly seemed perfectly of his time and ahead of it. 

For myself, I look back and see many pivotal points in my life where Bowie's music shines out: lying in bed listing to FM radio and Modern Love coming on to introduce me to his magic for the first time; long, energetic talks with my first, big crush about the genius of the man's music, conversations that are more clear in my memory now than any other part of that relationship; going to the Glass Spider tour the night before I started college. But then there are the other less distinct moments, numbering too high to count, where his music inspired me or put a smile on my face or a dance in my step. And there are all those times when I came across his influence in the works of others, sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly. Each time calling to the part of my soul that his music and words helped shape.

David Bowie contributed to the soundtrack of not just my life but to our entire culture. His presence is intertwined with our collective dream, and even though he left us a parting gift with the new album Blackstar, the future is poorer knowing we won't have him to help shape it any longer.

I have read many tributes today and  have seen many people quote his amazing lyrics. This was part of his magic: I could fill an entire blog with lyrics that would be appropriate to this moment, just as I could fill volumes with my favorite lines from his songs (or my favorite songs for that matter). But the most appropriate quote that came my way was: "Planet Earth is blue..."

David Robert Jones 1947-2016 

The Launch Day

Everything in this blog series has been leading up to the book launch. To get the most out of it takes a lot of planning and preparation. Your book launch will likely be the most important moment of its publication. not just because it’s your book’s big day, but because the sales on this day will likely set the tone for the entire run.  Get it wrong and you may be struggling for every sale afterward. 

And yes, I got it wrong. But I've learned a lot since then.

Getting Through NaNoWriMo

Today starts off the second half of National Novel WritingMonth. If you’re like me, you are probably thinking a lot about how to make your goals a reality in the next two weeks.

My challenge is writing the volume of words I need to and staying on track with the story. At the moment, I’m about two days behind schedule in terms of word count, but I’m actually much further along in my plot than I should be. But I know for many of you, the concern is with getting to the end.

Last night, I appeared on the YouTube series The CornerBooth to discuss self-doubt and how to overcome it and push past it to complete NaNoWriMo. There were a few things I had hoped to share but due to time and the direction of the conversation I didn’t get the chance so I’m putting them down in this blog.

M.A.D Syndrome

-by guest blogger, author Isabella Redwood

M.A.D – Marketing. Argh. Dread.

When I began my self-publishing journey, marketing was one aspect that I gave little thought to. I was too busy preparing my novel, getting cover design sorted and having it edited. Once that was complete, I concentrated on formatting and proofreading until my eyes turned red. Marketing was the furthest thing from my mind and now I am paying for it.

After setting my book up on Amazon with KDP Select, my numbers were steady and the only marketing I had to do, if you can even call it that, was during promotional times. Amazon was sending me emails trying to sell me my book, and I assumed they were doing the same to others. I was doing better than I had hoped for from a sales point of view.

The problem started when I left KDP after my 90-day period had finished. I had been amazon exclusive and now what was I going to do?

I had no plan and no ideas.