books

A rose by any other name

Moriah

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the definition of a “book,” or more specifically, the proper formatting of an e-book, and the definition of a “page” and its importance in the New eWorld Order.

I’m here to tell you: Unless it’s on paper or in PDF, they ain’t no such thing as a page.

I’ll admit that it took me a while to get used to reading on my eBookWise. Between the whacked-out spacing and the left justification and the lack of paragraph indents, it looked … sloppy. Inferior. But I stuck with it and realized that each book is formatted differently; some are prettier and easier to read than others, but mostly not. I did, however, have problems even with the “prettiest” of the formatting. I was able to adjust my expectations of the presentation once I realized it was a function of the DEVICE and that the DEVICE was not a print book. The print book and the e-book simply have nothing in common except the words they contain: not headers, not footers, not design, not formatting, not … page numbers.

To use the “page” as common ground, each user must have the same edition of a paper book and/or the same edition of the PDF file, but that’s a fairly easy task to accomplish.

In any other format, however, it’s nearly impossible without each user having the same device, the same font settings (i.e., large or small), the same page view settings. Gentlemen, let’s synchronize our devices. Taking the probability of that into account, then, the concept of the “page” vanishes.

The latest argument I have seen for the need for strict pagination in e-books to approximate or duplicate that of a print book is for reference books and the uses of academia viz. for annotation and bibliography, tables of contents and indices, footnotes and end notes. What this demonstrates to me is ignorance or lack of vision or an inability to understand the vast differences in the format, and the capabilities and limitations of each.

ANNOTATION and BIBLIOGRAPHY
A set of the four Mormon/LDS scriptures (King James version of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) in one book.
a “quad”

When your bishop or your preacher or your pastor or your minister or other Protestant-type ecclesiastical leader gets up and wants everybody to flip open their Bibles, does s/he say, “Please turn to page 1436 in your Bible”? No. He says, “Romans chapter 15.” (Cause that’s where mine is. In the King James Version. What if you prefer to use a different version? No problem! Romans chapter 15 is still where it’s supposed to be, which is between Romans 14 and Romans 16.)

Cover of a refreshed version of HAMLET by William Shakespeare.When your English lit professor or your director or your acting coach directs you to a certain passage in a Shakespearean play, does he say, “Please turn to Hamlet, page 783”? No. (Well, first of all, he’s OBVIOUSLY working from an anthology if it has 783 pages to begin with.) He says, “Please turn to Act 2, Scene 2, Line 35.” So what this means is I was smart and brought my little bitty Hamlet and everybody else was stupid and brought their big fat anthologies. And it makes no difference whatsoever.

The two print books, Bible and Shakespearean anthology, have page numbers. But they aren’t referred to or necessary for annotation or bibliography. In fact, the only thing they’re used for is within the book itself to create tables of contents and indices.

So let’s talk about that.

TABLES OF CONTENTS, INDICES, and FOOT/END NOTES

There’s only one thing a table of contents and/or index is good for: To find your place in the book. Thing is, in a print book, that’s the only way you can find anything … maybe kinda sorta quickly.

In an e-book, the tables of contents and indices have completely different purposes. In fact, an index isn’t even necessary in an e-book, although I would argue that a table of contents is. However, their function and mechanism of use are entirely different from that of a print book.

  1. It’s called a hyperlink.
    • Now, don’t be scared. I’m sure you’ve seen them before here and elsewhere on the interwebz. You put your cursor over it and click and boom … you’re somewhere else on the interwebz. Cool, huh?
    • You can do that in an ebook, too.
    • A list of hyperlinks in the beginning of the e-book serves the same function as the table of contents serves in a print book. A print book has page numbers after the chapter name. An e-book has a hyperlink you touch with your stylus and boom, you’re there, same as it works on the interwebz. No page numbers? No problem! Not necessary at all.
    • But hyperlinks are good within the text, too. If a word is hyperlinked, you touch it with your stylus and it takes you to further reading. They used to be called “footnotes” and “end notes.” Don’t need those anymore, either. Oh, they’re still footnotes and end notes, but they have no precise structure because it’s not necessary. The device will take you where you need to go.
       
  2. It’s called the “find” function.
    • You can’t do this in a print book. There is no CTRL-F. There is no “Find.” You go to the table of contents and/or the index and if you’re lucky, that book had an excellent indexer. If you’re not, well, good luck to you then. I’m going out to get some Chinese while you look for that reference. Want anything?
    • Is there an e-reading device that doesn’t have a “find” function? If there is, smash it and get something else, ’cause there is no point to an e-reading device without a “find” function. Because why? Because there are no page numbers.

If the argument (with regard to reference material) is that e-reference books can’t be annotated or bibliographed or referenced, there’s a simple way around that. Organize the book in some other fashion, a la the Bible or Shakespeare. It’s been done. The system’s only been around for a few hundred years now. If it ain’t on paper, it ain’t got pages.

And if it’s inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it.

Book Review: Waiting for Spring

Moriah

Cover of WAITING FOR SPRING by R.J. Keller, showing a barren tree and snowy grass.Waiting for Spring
by RJ Keller

It’s been a long time since I threw common sense to the wind and stayed up to finish a book knowing how much I had to do the next day, but not resenting it the next day because it was totally worth it.

This book has no spiffy genre classification. After some thought, I think I’d call it “literary romance.” I don’t know what “women’s fiction” is and I’m not sure I really even know what “chick lit” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those. And you know, lately, I’ve been very happy with the books that haven’t been easily classified.

Here’s the blurb:

It’s not the kind of pain she can see and smell and wrap with an ace bandage. It’s the kind she tries to numb with sex and work and cleaning-cleaning-cleaning the house. The kind that comes from enduring a lifetime of rejection. First from her mother–whom Tess knows would have aborted her had the law allowed it–then from a string of men whose names she can never remember. And finally, at age thirty-four, from her husband of ten years; the man who once promised to love her forever.

You want angst? I gotcher angst right here, pal. And this is the good stuff, the kind that jerks you around and bashes you over the head and makes you come back for more to see how it all ends. In my experience with literary fiction (one of which was an Oprah pick—sue me), there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule about writing angst, which is to understate it, to let the subtleties of the angst dawn on the reader like a sunrise behind storm clouds.

Problem with that approach is that A) I don’t ever get to know or care about the characters enough to care about their angst and B) their angst isn’t that big of a deal anyway; if the characters clearly don’t care about their angst, why should I? So I’ll read literary fiction, don’t get me wrong, but later, I’ll scratch my head and say (if asked), “Yeah, I think I read that book, but I don’t remember the name or the author.” I just remember dipping my toe in the wading pool of that world once upon a time.

The main character, Tess, has angst and she doesn’t seem to care about her angst, either. But I cared about her angst from the very first paragraph:

They say actions speak louder than words. Maybe. But words do a hell of a lot more damage. Even well-meaning words spoken by well-meaning people.

People like Sister Patricia Mary Theriault. She was my catechism teacher when I was seven years old. Until she ruined my life. [ … ]

Then she told us about the bad soil. [ … ] But the only bad soil I heard about was this:

“As the Sower was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on and–”

Path. Trampled. Bad soil. [ … ]

“Don’t let your hearts become trampled down, children. Keep them soft and fertile so you can feel God’s love inside of you.”

Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit. The kind that even Sister Patricia couldn’t do anything about.

The twin hyperbolic allegories of “until she ruined my life” and “Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit” are not, actually, hyperbolic or allegorical, but the reader doesn’t find out why or how until far, far into the book.

You might be tempted to point out that this is simply excellent fiction infrastructure, to which I would say … yeah, I know. But I don’t see that a whole lot anymore. As far as I can tell, the current writing fad is to make me, Random Reader, ask the question and then never let it linger like a good combination of spices on my tongue or let me savor the moment of enlightenment when/if it happens.

Instead, it will ask the question and proceed to answer it for me 2 pages later and sometimes, even worse, will over-explain it in case I didn’t get it fast enough or thoroughly digest all the layers of subtext. I’m very tired of being treated like an idiot in my fiction and, further, I hate that I actually have to call attention to this amazingly annoying trend.

There are quite a few laugh-out-loud lines, sharp. Wry.

When Tess, age 34, takes Brian, age 25, as a lover, they finish, talk, then begin again not long after. Tess observes,

Ready again. Twenty-five. Gotta love that.

Keller also gives the reader glimpses of the spirituality that’s woven all through the tale; they glimmer, like the gold threads in shot fabric:

The stars, he said, were actually souls; all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.

And when an 8-year-old girl about to take her first communion asks Tess if she believes in God, Tess says:

“Yes, I believe in God. I just … I don’t feel close to him in church.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

I shrugged, even though I knew exactly why. I knew because I’d felt that way since I was a little girl, sitting in my church clothes, listening to the Mass. Trying to feel His presence. Struggling to feel His love. But there was nothing there. Nothing but words I didn’t completely understand and scary status. And then, one beautiful Sunday Spring morning when I was nine years old, something occurred to me. Something I never told anyone else.

He’s not really in here. God doesn’t live inside a building, and that’s all a church is; just a building filled with lots of words. [ … ]

Because Anne [of Green Gables] said that if she really wanted to talk to God, a real true prayer, then she’d have to go outside to do it. She’s need to surround herself with God’s creation, with His beauty; drink it in and let it fill her up. And then she could look heavenward and just feel a prayer.

The narrative itself is choppy, with sentences and paragraphs written in fits and starts, which perfectly mirrors Tess’s personality and her coping mechanisms (particularly her “personality disorder”). In fact, a good portion of Tess’s internal dialog and her observations are written as wry asides to herself and she is inviting you, Random Reader, to chuckle along with her.

And I did. Even while I had tears running down my cheeks.

Creating e-books

Moriah
Note: I cross-posted this on Publishing Renaissance on December 24, 2008.

I’ve been thinking about offering a quick’n’dirty series on how to create various ebook formats, wondering if independent publishers (or even micro- and small presses) know how to disseminate their wares effectively in electronic format. I know PDF is the fallback position and while I have a love/hate relationship with PDF (formatting, yay! reading on computer, boo! hiss!), most people who don’t have an ebook reading device pretty much are stuck with the computer.

(This is one reason I have issues with places like Lulu, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, etc. Their electronic delivery is exclusively PDF. I don’t know if the authors have the option to create other formats or even if they’re inclined to do so, but I urge those indies who choose such providers to check it out and diversify.)

Smashwords has a grinder program that allows you to upload your document and then spits out various electronic incarnations of it, but it has formatting issues, which is to say, some it ain’t pretty especially if you have a not-very-well-formatted RTF document to begin with. Oh well and get over it. They do a marvelous job with what they get and it’s a few hundred steps in the right direction—not to mention the fact that once you get it on your ebook reading device, it probably won’t make you any difference.

But in case you do want to know how it’s done (or, more properly, how we did it, properly or not), what tools we used, why—and we invite others to correct us on more efficient ways to do it (that doesn’t involve Book Designer, thanks)—here’s the first and most important thing you have to do:

Learn XHTML and CSS. Really.

O’Reilly at Tools of Change is pushing for all formats to be based on XML, but if you’re reading this post, this is probably a DIY project and XHTML is, IMO, easier to learn. You will need this for every format you might want to offer (except PDB [Palm] and as an ebook application [iApp] to be sold in the iTunes store).

After that, it’s all tweaks and about 6 different pieces of (almost free) software.

Go on now and learn XHTML and CSS. I’m not going to post tutorials on that when others have done it better than I.

The holiday TBR pile

Moriah

In order:

Cover of WAITING FOR SPRING by R.J. Keller, showing a barren tree and snowy grass.Waiting for Spring
by RJ Keller

Currently reading. Excellent, excellent work.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover of THE DUCHESS, HER MAID, THE GROOM, & THEIR LOVER by Victoria Janssen, showing a woman in an 18th-century stomacher with a three-strand pearl choker, a man lying on her stomach and hands reaching toward her.The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom, and Their Lover
by Victoria Janssen

Started. I wanted to read this book but then saw the ebook price ($11.30! for an ELECTRONIC book!!!), bitched about it, then was offered a copy if I would review it, which I will. I will admit, however, that I find myself reading it through the filter of some blogging unpleasantness elsewhere.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover of THE HOLE by Aaron Ross Powell, which depicts a bright circular light, as if standing at the bottom of a well and looking up at sunlight.The Hole (Draft)
by Aaron Ross Powell

Started. This seems more of a visual novel to me (I’m a visual reader) and I have to have some quiet time to do it. Between the DDJ (damned day job) and the Tax Deductions, finding sufficient quiet time has been difficult.

What happened to the epic novel?

Moriah

Last month, a friend of mine who is reading The Proviso said to me (paraphrase), “You know, a publishing house editor would have made you cut some of this.” Beat. “But I don’t know what it could have been.” At 283,000 words, it’s actually right on track for a novel that chronicles the romances of 3 couples. It’s 94,333 words per romance. (No, I don’t know which couple gets more air time, nor does it matter.)

A couple of days ago I blithely typed, “I want to be the Tom Wolfe of genre romance” and suddenly, the light came on for a few people, one of whom said so in that thread. I had never thought of my writing goals in that light until I actually said it, and that is true. (That’s just blindingly arrogant of me, isn’t it?)

Anyway, I had the feeling there were only 3 readers (including me) around Romancelandia longing for the long, involved, complex romance. But a Dear Author thread about the shrinking word counts of some of Harlequin’s lines (this isn’t unusual) disabused me of the notion. More readers came out of the woodwork to express their dissatisfaction with the snacks that are the single-title romances (and we won’t go into category aka Harlequin romance). We want feasts!

But alas. There are none.

Th. made the argument in a provocative post that series writing is a different skill from single-novel writing, and perhaps that’s where the epic novel went: to series. That must be read in the proper order to get the whole story.

I hate that. It’s inconvenient and, from a consumer’s point of view, extravagantly expensive. (And you thought MY book cost a lot of money!) By and large, I don’t stick with series, especially if they’re as intertwined as mine is, but give me an enormous novel that engages me all the way through and you got me and my money in one shot.

But, you know, it took me a long time to decide whether to split the romances out into 3 books and create a series, or create a long novel. It couldn’t be helped. The structure of the story arc just wouldn’t hold up under the weight of the extra bindings.

The one epic is more than the sum of its parts.

Now, would someone else PLEASE write something long and involved? And if you know of any, please let me know what they are.

To be or not to be

Moriah

Original orange cover of SHANNA by Kathleen Woodiwiss.offended.

I think I’m supposed to be. I’m told I should be. My neck twitches just slightly when I know I ought to be. But I don’t think I am. Am I?

Bodice ripper.

I just can’t muster up the outrage necessary to protest the term. I mean, there are seriously a bunch more important things to do in life and better battles to fight and more important wars to wage.

A friend of mine refers to The Proviso as a “Mormon bodice ripper.” To my recollection, no bodices were harmed in the making of this book, but a pair of shorts was. So … shorts ripper? Cause, that’s where the goods are, folks, and Some People’s Hero really needed to get to Some People’s Heroine’s goods. Right then.

Okay. Anyway.

No, sorry. Can’t be outraged today. Try me tomorrow.

Judge. Book. Cover.

Moriah

Th., give thanks and be glad! You are no longer alone in your opinion on my cover. 😉

LDS Fiction has very kindly listed my book amongst the LDS fiction released in the last little while. You have to request this, along with sending its information and the cover (because the poor blog owner can’t be expected to keep track of all the LDS authors and fiction out there). If I recall correctly, I didn’t send a pic of the cover with it because, well, it has bewbies on it. It’s entirely apropos to the story thematically (on about three different levels), but unless you read the book, you aren’t going to get that. On the other hand, I know the audience there and while I didn’t think it would appreciate the cover, obviously the blog owner did what she thought consistent with her blog.

So I’ve garnered a one-star review. Oh, wait, did I say REVIEW? I meant to say, a one-star disapproval rating, based on the cover.

That’s an awful cover. I don’t think I would pick up based on the cover. I couldn’t have it in my home.

To be fair, it does say “rate this book,” not REVIEW this book, but in my world, you kinda have to read a book to rate it, so I think I can be cut some slack for assuming that a rating = review.

This kinda reminds me of the “reviews” Eugene’s book [dead link] got wherein some folks flew up into the rafters over the fact that there was a bishop’s wife and a vampire together. (Or, better, when the back blurb SAID there was a bishop’s wife and a vampire together, and the reviewers didn’t get it might not be something you’d buy from Deseret Book until they got to the sex scenes.)

I can so appreciate that someone wouldn’t want the print version in the house, so the Lord has provided you with a SOLUTION!

EBOOKS!

Give thanks and be glad.

The perfect bookstore

Moriah
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Hey, publishers and booksellers. Let me help you solve all your problems, ’kay? Behold the perfect bookstore:

A hand-drawn layout of a bookstore with no books, just title selection tables and two Espresso book-making machines in the middle.

The problems? You know exactly what they are and obviously you aren’t interested in solving them.

You booksellers have been rolling around on the back of the consignment system like it’s catnip for too long—and it’s still going to bite you in the butt.

You publishers are doing everything you can to stymie ebooks and are determined to cling to your outmoded ways. You can lay off people all you want, but you’re not actually willing to do what it takes. Never fear, though! The economy will help you with that.

Now, in a quaint little town that is a suburb of Kansas City, they have a town square surrounding the 19th-century county courthouse. In one of those slender 19th-century 2-story buildings, there is a mom’n’pop bookstore that has been there for, oh, EVER. The top floor was always for used books, the bottom floor stocked to bursting with books. Then they put in a coffee shop. Last week, we found out they were phasing out the books altogether. Now, I ask you. What is a bookstore without books? It’s not. It’s a coffee shop.

I’ve been thinking about these issues for a long time and shaking my head sadly, wondering how long it’ll take before the consignment system collapses.

Say the above drawing is the bottom floor of the aforementioned 2-story 19th-century storefront on the town square. The 2nd floor could house a coffee shop or used books or books that you wanted to order to keep in stock (and you paid for them up front on a wholesale basis) because you’re a bookseller and you love books and books are a perfectly reasonable thing to have in a bookstore.

But do you see what is going on? A way to be inventory-free, using the just-in-time inventory system that half the rest of the retail industry in the world has been using for going on 15 years now.

You, Random Reader, are a book lover. You want a book you can hold in your hands. You go to Quaint Bookstore and they do not have what you want in their meager stock. NO PROBLEM! You sit down at one of the book stations. You browse the computer catalog (probably Ingram or Baker & Taylor). You pick your book. You punch in your credit card number (tied to the store’s point-of-sale system). The order goes directly to one of the Espresso machines behind you. You wait 10 or 15 minutes (by which time you’ve probably already ordered another 3 books), and out pops your book. You are GOOD TO GO.

Or hey! Maybe you don’t want to wait the 10 to 15 minutes, so you tap into your Quaint Bookstore account from home or work or school and order the book that way. You can pick up your Espresso when you pick up your espresso on the way to or from work or school.

And say you want an e-reading device, but you don’t want to get burned. You go to Quaint Bookstore and you pick up one of their demo devices loaded up with ebooks. You sit go upstairs to get an espresso (heh) and read for a while to see if you like it. If not, go back, pick up another one, and make sure you like what you’re getting. Then you buy it and boom, healthy profit for Quaint Bookstore on an e-reading device (which will probably get the customer back to buy at least 1 print book for every 10 ebooks they read—okay, I made up that number, but still!).

Honestly, I do not know why this has to be difficult. The technology’s there, waiting—no, begging—to be used. The consumers are there and will grow as the economy cycles back up again. With one Espresso machine, Quaint Mom’n’Pop Bookstore could get rid of its book stock, but still be a bookstore.

Did I mention there is a small liberal arts college in this town, too? Can you say “bypass the college bookstore for your textbooks”? Ka-ching.

But you know, I’m not even sure this particular Quaint Mom’n’Pop Bookstore ever heard of an Espresso and probably are afraid of ebooks, and are unwilling to look past the death of the consignment system. (I should probably ask them those questions before I assume things, eh?)

I tell you, the time is (almost) right for a new breed of independent bookseller.

Book Review: Zoe Winters’s “Kept”

Moriah

Kept
by Zoe Winters
published by IncuBooks

Cover of KEPT by Zoe Winters, which depicts a snuggling couple and a black cat.Zoe is an independent publisher I “met” by happenstance when I got soundly thrashed on Dear Author for suggesting that a multi-published author whose 3-book SERIES contract had been canceled after book 2 (leaving her fans out in the cold with characters they loved) actually self-publish the third book in the series (you know, since her rights had reverted back to her and she already has a fan base salivating for it). Good gravy, you’d’a thunk I’d said the Rapture was coming tomorrow and they’d all be left behind and have 666 burned into their foreheads bwahahahahaha burn in hell losers.

Anyhoo, as Bob Ross would say, it was a happy accident.

Kept is a free novella you can find at her site (link above) in PDF form. You can find it at Amazon in Kindle for 80¢ and you can find it on Smashwords in various formats for those of us who bitch if we don’t get it the way we want it. Somebody call me a waaaaahmbulance.

And really, “free” is my second-favorite four-letter f-word.

Here’s the blurb:

Greta is a werecat whose tribe plans to sacrifice her during the next full moon. Her only hope for survival is Dayne, a sorcerer who once massacred most of the tribe. What’s that thing they say about the enemy of your enemy?

Now, I don’t do much paranormal and I really don’t like shapeshifters, but throw the word “sorcerer” or “wizard” or “warlock” at me and I’ll take a second look. And I’m glad I did.

Beefs first:

The story was a little choppy in moments of transition, but I’ve seen that so much lately that it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to and, I’m guessing, readers are being taught to get used to it and, by extension, writers are doing it more.

Also, the story could’ve been longer with more explanation of the world. I (Random Reader who likes really really really long books) would have liked that. Let me get you some salt for that opinion.

Good stuff:

What glimpses of their world I got, I liked. I could tell it wasn’t a half-assed world half-thunk-up on the fly, and that it had depth and detail underneath. (Repeat: wanted more.)

I really enjoyed the hero’s crankiness and the fact that he was “old” (how old we’re not told, but I inferred around a century). I liked that when the hero and heroine had sex pretty nearly upfront it was because of species-specific hormone issues (i.e., cat in heat) that she usually controls with medicine, but didn’t have her medicine with her.

I laughed a lot through this book. The banter is witty and cute, seems natural to both of them, and gave the characters the depth that natural humor brings to people.

The cover’s pretty and the interior design is good. In short, it’s right up there with a lot of the novellas in the anthologies by traditional publishers that are on bookstore shelves and much better than a lot of other stuff I’ve read lately from the e-presses that I paid for. I enjoyed myself.

Coulda been longer. Did I say that?

So. If you get it from Smashwords, leave a tip, okay?

Oh, Tipper, where are you?

Moriah

Warning label as prompted by the Parents Music Resource Center. Text: “Parental advisory explicit lyrics”

So our application to get The Proviso into the iTunes store was denied. Seems it’s a tad too racy for the terms of service. Who’d’a thunk it, right?

Roger from eBook App Maker tells us that Apple is in the process of applying a ratings system to their games and he doesn’t think it’ll be too long until they start in with the ebook apps. So instead of sanitizing the book, we’ve decided to wait until Apple has a rating system.

An iPhone screenshot of a page from my novel THE PROVISO (1st Edition) with the word “fucking” highlighted.

UPDATE:

Today Richard Curtis (I love this guy, really) discusses Steve Jobs’s dismissal of ebooks as a viable revenue source a la iTunes with the comment, “People don’t read anymore.” I’ve discussed this before and it makes my head explode every time I think about it.

Fortunately, a number of determined and enterprising programmers took it upon themselves to spec – or hack – a reader application for the iPhone. And even more fortunately, Jobs did not discourage them. One hopes he realized he had spoken recklessly.

There is another way to read The Proviso on the iPhone/iTouch and that’s using Stanza and our EPUB format (included in the zip file).

The cover of my novel THE PROVISO (1st Edition) as screenshot from an iPhone. The image is a woman's nude torso, her hands covering her breasts, and a male hand covering her belly.
As seen on the iPhone.

But he also talks about Fictionwise:

Aside from the satisfaction of seeing Steve Jobs proven wrong, it’s also inspiring to see Fictionwise taking this initiative. We at E-Reads are big fans of Fictionwise. It is our principal e-book distributor and a major reason why this industry is beginning to thrive.

Now, I like Fictionwise, I do. But we can’t get on Fictionwise, either, because they require a publisher have 25 different titles by 5 different authors and although B10 Mediaworx does have titles in the works by people other than I, it’ll be a long time before we see that goal realized.

Make it easy on the customer

Moriah

There’s a book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in e-format 2 ways: Serialized on the author’s blog (i.e., on the computer—no thanks) and via Kindle (no thanks). Now, I’m getting ready to email him and ask him if it’s available any other way, so we shall see.

There’s another book I really really really want to read [dead link]. However, it’s only available in 4 formats (actually, 3 because 2 formats are identical in nature), none of which I can read on my ebook reader. The format I want is MS Reader (LIT). Why? Because I can break the DRM and put it on my ebook reader. Which, come to think of it, is probably why it’s not offered in that format.

Really, there’s enough good stuff out there in more accessible formats to waste time having to read on the computer. After having had my eBookWise for a mere 7 months, I’ve gotten to where I will forgo a title (no matter how badly I want to read it) if I can’t get it in a format that is accessible to me. Otherwise, I’ll just go to the library, where it likely won’t be.

We’re really trying to put The Proviso in as many places as possible in as many formats as we can. It’s not just in the B10 Mediaworx bookstore (8 DRM-LESS formats bundled together in a zip), but at Amazon in both trade paperback and Kindle, at Barnes & Noble, at Books-A-Million, at Powell’s, and now at ebooksjustpublished [out of print] (which takes you back to the B10 Mediaworx bookstore, but hey, it’s exposure).

Some time next week, The Proviso will be in the iTunes store as an iApp for iTouch/iPhone. Although we’ve formatted it into EPUB for those who’ve downloaded Stanza on their iTouch/iPhones, we really want to present as many options as possible to make it easy for every customer to read it the way they prefer to read it.

Because not being able to read a book I want to read the way I want to read it is beginning to weary me.

Moratorium on manuscript buying

Moriah

From Publisher’s Weekly:

It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books. […] Another agent who had also heard about the no-acquisitions policy at HMH called the move “very scary” and said it’s indicative of an industry climate worse than any he’s ever seen.

Predictions:

  1. Expect this to keep happening for a while at other major publishers.
  2. More independent publishers will spring up, particularly in the ebook arena.
  3. Major publishers will start mining their backlists for ebooks. Oh, wait, they already have. Credit for innovation coming right up!
  4. Revisions in the advance/royalty system. E-presses blazed this trail, but Harper Studios has taken up the cause (and may end up reaping the credit for that, too).
  5. This may be the death knell for the consignment system of selling books. One can hope, anyway.

Yeah, it’s depressing, but A) everybody’s having a hard time, so boo hoo at you too, publishing and B) everything is cyclical.

Quite frankly, the economic downturn and the rise of the ebook couldn’t be timed better. You build up the low-cost or free alternative in the downswing (coupled with instant gratification), something people can afford and are open to, then you see it explode once the upswing begins.

Dead tree books will NOT be a thing of the past (knock on wood), but the smart publishers and booksellers will find cheaper alternatives to bring those to market too. If you want to survive after an economic downturn, you must start thinking in the long-term instead of the short-term; you sure as heck aren’t making any money now, so figure out how to make money when everybody has some again.

Pssst, publishers and booksellers:

It’s called the Espresso.

In kiosks.

At Wal-Mart, Target, and smack DAB in the middle of your chain or independent bookstore.

Ah, homogeneity!

Moriah

So I saw this in Publisher’s Weekly online yesterday and bookmarked it to blog about, but then Janet Reid beat me to the punch.

Recently, funny things have been happening in my slush pile. I find myself receiving well-written, correctly formatted, professional-looking query letters from bad writers. Imagine my chagrin: one minute I’m intrigued by a smoothly crafted query letter, the next I’m staring down at a crackpot writing sample.

Vintage Hardee's logoI wondered how long this would take.

I will always and forever remember a story my dad told about Hardee’s barbecue sauce and a taste-tester he met. The point wasn’t to make a standout barbecue sauce. The point was to make the barbecue sauce as inoffensive as possible to the largest number of people.

So I’ll call it the Hardee’s BBQ Sauce Query.

One comment on Janet Reid’s blog summed up my thoughts quite nicely:

Post Summary: In the 21st Century, people can Google query on how to do something and find carefully composed instructions. Thus, the prior vetting process is no long efficient for the Literary Agent.

My 2 Cents: Awesome. Adjust or die.

The book as art

Moriah

I said something in my little rant the other day that’s stuck with me: The book is the art.

To me, Harry Potter’s fabulous because it’s a whole experience. The cover art and the story work together. It’s got color, movement, focus, texture. You’re sitting there in your reading chair on a cold day (possibly snowing), drinking hot chocolate, bundled up with this heavy hardback book in your hands.

Your head’s in the story. Your eyes are seeing the specialized fonts in the header and the brilliant colors of the edge of the binding. Every once in a while, your eyes get a treat in the form of a graphic buried in the text denoting handwritten notes that give you a sense of intimacy with the events that you don’t get with typesetting. Your arms feel the weight of good storytelling. Your fingertips brush the dust jacket and feel the texture of the thick mottled matte paper, they pinch heavy paper between them and turn the pages.

I have a leatherbound edition of Alice in Wonderland. It, too, is an experience, with a little bit of the feel of age. Deckle edges are the best.

I can tell you all the usual reasons I decided to publish independently, and give you another half dozen reasons why Dude enthusiastically encouraged me to do so (the biggest being that he has faith in my work). But after my little temper tantrum, it occurred to me that there was one other reason I really hadn’t thought about much:

The whole book is the art. I had a vision for my book, the series. Even when I was sending out queries galore, I had a vision and I’ll tell you, I was vaguely depressed to think that even if I got The Call, someone else was going to take my vision and put his own spin on it—and he may or may not give a fat rat’s ass what I want or what I see. That’s not to say a graphic artist wouldn’t have done better than I could have and surpassed my vision by light years. It’s simply that I would have no control over it, a little input that might or might not be taken into account, and perhaps no veto power, especially if he was up against a deadline. This is not a client-vendor relationship between the author and the artist.

Interior design is a relative static: You design so as to make the reader unaware of your design. You don’t give him a headache, you don’t wear his eyeballs out. In short, as Zoe put it, you don’t piss him off.

I can give no advice with regard to other indies and how they handle cover design. All I’m saying is that I’m a very visual person and for me, the story is not the art.

It’s the book.

Misckellaneous

Moriah

cartoon thought bubbleI’ve had a lot on my mind lately that I haven’t been able to untangle, much less unpack on an issue-by-issue basis. What are they?

  1. The election
  2. Prop 8 in California
  3. “Black October” in publishing
  4. Independent publishing
  5. Agents and editors (the “Gatekeepers”)
  6. Mormon writers/Mormon literature

But a couple of posts on Nathan Bransford’s blog yesterday sorted at least one issue out for me, which is my firm belief that whether or not independent publishing becomes as accepted independent filmmaking and independent music making, it was the right choice for me. And I’m going to come back to that Espresso Book Machine thing because it’s tres important.

Which leads me to a post Mike Cane made recently about self-pubbing and an author’s inability to do it all, yet tries because he wants to save money. He’s right overall, but I learned long ago that creative types in one discipline are drawn to other disciplines and have the ability to do those well, too. What they are, though … that I can’t say. So that’s going to be my jumping off point for today’s Jack Handey.

Meh.

Moriah

I’ve had something rolling around in my head for a while since Dear Author asked, “What’s wrong with a C Review?” More recently, a discussion at Racy Romance Reviews involving a book I must get expanded on the conversation at Dear Author (I have a sneaking suspicion RfP and I are on the same wavelength with regard to this).

To clarify: C means neither good nor bad, but average.

To me, an average book = meh = forgettable. In my opinion, if a book is forgettable, it didn’t finish the job it started. What I haven’t figured out yet is if a book is so bad it’s not possible to forget, did it do its job?

I’m trying to distill this out for myself, but I’m reading a lot of books lately that are meh. In fact, they are so meh I forget I was reading them the minute I turn my ebook reader off to tend to other things. As I said on the Dear Author thread, I found a dozen books by bestselling authors that I didn’t remember buying and, worse, that I didn’t remember reading until I scanned the blurbs. Mind you, these are books that got high marks at Dear Author and Smart Bitches (I know, ’cause I went back and looked).

Now we have DocTurtle reading a Harlequin Blaze as a challenge by Smart Bitches to read a “real romance” and see how wonderful it is. Turns out he’s having fun, but not of the type everyone expected. He seems to read in fits and starts, so obviously it’s not keeping his eyeballs glued to the pages, unless that’s the type of reader he is, which I don’t know.

So what is this meh? Where’s it coming from? One of the last non-meh books I read was Ann’s because it was so damned different. What made it different?

I’ll tell you what made it different. She broke all the “rules.” Somewhere, somehow, with the evolution of RWA and its sister organizations and their writing workshops, easier access to agents and editors, more stringent-yet-vague criteria on how to write a query letter, and more propagation of some writing “rules” (the ones that would get you a D in any college creative writing course–ask me how I know), there’s been some weird homogenization. (And I started noticing this really begin to gather steam in the early ’90s.) Yeah, you can have unique plot devices or tried-and-true plot devices done differently, but essentially, the voice has become the same: same meter, same literalness (thanks, RfP) to supposedly make for clarity, and same explanation of things that I (Random Reader with a modicum of intelligence) don’t have to be told and would have rather inferred or been left wondering.

Tired, y’all. I’m tired of reading the same stuff over and over again. Even the stuff I’m getting mad at and simply not finishing–one reason is because the voice is tired on top of other problems. Everybody’s taking voice lessons from the same singing teacher out of the same songbook. The only reason I remember any of these books is to say, “Oh. That.” And off it goes to be archived on CD or in the box to take to the used bookstore–without finishing. One book I’ve been looking forward to reading and bought on its release date (because I had it on my calendar as a reminder) was a real let-down.

This “write from the heart and you’ll get sold if you try hard enough” cheerleading? Bullshit. Don’t write from the heart; write from the rules. Write what the gatekeepers tell you to write and, more importantly, how they tell you to write it. Obviously, lots of people love it, and I am the High Priestess of Capitalism, so I’m not arguing with an established market.

But…if everyone’s following the rules, how do you know the reading public wouldn’t like what you wrote from the heart? I know how you know. The gatekeepers won’t buy it because why mess with the homogeneity of voice? People like it; people buy it. [Insert philosophical plug for doing things independently, but that’s not what this post is about.]

Nothing, but nothing, makes me realize how homogenized the romance voice has become until I read something different. Kristan Higgins’s books were different and I enjoyed them muchly (although I heard some whisperings they weren’t romance so much as women’s fiction/chick lit and honestly I don’t know what the hell difference it makes). Ann’s, of course. Laura Kinsale, always.  Eva Gale, who came here as a poster (never heard of her before that), whose voice (albeit short pieces) just pushes all my right buttons (not talking about the erotic aspect, either).

Remember, I’m not talking about archetypes, plots, and themes. I’m talking about rhythm, word choice (e.g., the obsessing over avoiding “be” verbs and adverbs that spawns ridiculously tedious prose), dialog tags, over-explanation, and, yes, punctuation, which is one of the biggest tools in keeping your rhythm and singing in your own voice.

RfP said it best over at Racy Romance Reviews:

My most frequent complaint lately is that genre romance has no voice: it’s overly literal and can over-explain mundane detail to the detriment of style. Some of my favorite novels include more impressionistic passages in which I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but they’re wonderfully referential and evocative.

I mean, come on. If I’ve noticed it and other people have noticed it enough to remark upon it and complain about it (and we’re only a fraction of a percent of the reading public), maybe there are a lot more people tired of it than the gatekeepers think.

Not feeling the love

Moriah

You know, I like good m/f/m menage erotica as much as the next girl, but could you please give me some emotional basis for it first? I mean, really. When I go to an erotic romance site to buy a book, I expect some romance.

If you want to shag from page 58 [in my ebook reader, which is roughly page 24 in print], please give me a reason other than some esoteric werewolf rule thing, which must have been explained elsewhere, but the book is not marked as part of a series that Must Be Read In Order. I usually don’t even read werewolf/paranormal anything. I just thought the blurb was funny.

Now I’m feeling a bit bitter about spending what little leisure time I have right now trying to plow through a dozen names I think I should know from previous books, trying to figure out who’s what to whom, trying to figure out this world’s rules, and having absolutely no reason to enjoy a girl sandwich, and trying to get past “slow-eyed.” (Pssst: It’s sloe-eyed, as in sloe gin fizz.)

And I’m peeved I spent money for it.

Doing my part to save a species

Moriah

DISCLAIMER TO CLEAR UP SOME CONFUSION:
This is NOT about my book.
This is about SOMEONE ELSE’S book.

The Mysterious They say that contemporary romance (you know, without vampires, shapeshifters, werebeasts, ghosts, phantoms, and mimes) is dead. Yeah, I know. ’Swhy I wrote one. Sorta.

I have a very low tolerance for romantic suspense, paranormal romance makes me roll my eyes, and m/m doesn’t float my boat (although I can tolerate it in menage). Give me alternate reality or steampunk or post-apocalyptic or anything that could happen, and I’m good to go. Better yet, give me contemporary.

Okay, so in doing my part to save the whales–uh, er, straight heterosexual contemporary romance (because “straight contemporary” is taking on a whole new connotation these days), I’m going to plug the competition: Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy, as reviewed on Dear Author.

Obviously, I haven’t read this puppy, but I plan to when it comes out and so I’m going to plug it in advance. Why?

I’m dying for a straight contemporary that’s more than 150 pages long (i.e., category length). That’s a snack (and besides, I stocked up on early ’80s Carole Mortimer Harlequin Presents at the thrift store Saturday). Okay, it’s 304 pages, not exactly a feast, but it’ll do in a pinch. I want to support straight heterosexual contemporary the way I want to support independent publishing.

Plus, the heroine is a cougar (not the werecat kind) and we could all use a few more cougars in romance.