New Weblog Topic: News

August 26, 2008 – 10:04 am

Part of my soul-searching of the past month has been to establish what, precisely, my weblog and website are for. Originally, I wrote posts as kind of a running commentary on my life and the world. Before long, that seemed to unfocused and trivial, and I started working real content (stories and articles) into the weblog, where they had once been separate pages. This put worthwhile content into the feed stream, but eventually seemed too haphazard. Last year, I re-slanted the weblog as a kind of webzine, with regular new stories, reviews, and articles about the new revolution of publishing. Before long, however, I found that format both a ton of work and rather constraining. Since then, I have posted irregular articles and news bits, but it has bothered me that I did not seem to have a cohesive plan. I did not, it seemed, know what I was trying to do.

Now, I think I do know.

I think I have decided to let my weblog simply be a record of the news of my life and such, and to specifically not include the content of new stories and articles. Stories and articles may be posted as pages on the site, or published elsewhere, and I would of course report that news. The content of the weblog (and the feed), however, would stay reasonably short, and reasonably frequent. There’s always news, especially lately.

In adopting this new framework, I would move my revolution articles under my revolution page, move some excerpts under book pages, move the reviews under the reviews page. Anomalies and Friday Flash would probably return, as pages with sub-pages.

Anyway, I haven’t quite settled on this decision yet. After all my experimenting over the past several years, however, this seems to be the best plan.

If anyone has any ideas on the matter, now would be an excellent time to post a comment.

By tftorrey | Posted in News | Tagged , | Comments (2)

I’ve Been Busy!

August 26, 2008 – 9:44 am

A few months ago, my weblog fell silent for a few weeks, and I explained the silence by saying that I had been engaged in what I figured was the Most Important Thing I had to do: developing and finalizing the production plans and details for my books. Now, my weblog has fallen silent again for a few weeks, and once again, it’s because I’ve been thoroughly wrapped up in a Most Important Thing.

This time, the task was to organize the business side of my writing enterprise. As I prepared for the launch of the print edition of The Desert King, I realized that I didn’t have a workable solution for keeping track of expenses and sales and such. In the past, I’ve made half-hearted efforts to put together a solution, but now that things are getting bigger, I needed something solid. I needed to get a handle on it before it got completely out of control, and it was almost there.

And, as has happened before, working out this problem led to a real challenge in defining exactly what it is I am trying to do. Am I trying to be a publisher? (No.) Am I trying to channel all my sales through third parties either via the internet or bookstores? Can I even do that? (No, and probably not.) What, exactly, am I trying to do? And, surprisingly, what is my website for? How does Things Worth Reading even fit into the picture?

Now, I am happy to say that I have firmly established the business side of my writing business. I actually have a written business plan, and I have a complete operations plan, encompassing the full spectrum of writing and marketing and selling books and other things worth reading. Finally, I can get back to the writing side of the writing business. It’s been a very productive August.

By tftorrey | Posted in News | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Preserving Memories

July 23, 2008 – 7:23 pm

One of the best features of the new revolution of publishing is that it makes it practical to publish things for which there is no market big enough to interest a traditional publisher. Before the revolution, things like family cookbooks, family histories, personal memoirs, and collections of personal letters would simply never have been published (unless the author was a celebrity). Such stories would either never have been put down in book form to begin with, or would have been confined to a binder or a box and tucked away in a dusty drawer or a drafty attic. Now it is possible not merely to collect these stories in books but to package them such that they are available to anyone, at any time, world-wide. Check out this heartwarming story about a project to produce memory books, in a race not simply with the long sweep of time, but against the immediate scourge of Alzheimer’s. I wish the revolution had happened in time to preserve for me the stories of my grandparents and great grandparents. Someday, maybe, treasures like these will be taken for granted.

By tftorrey | Posted in Revolution | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Five Things Big Publishers Do Well

July 14, 2008 – 12:28 pm

In these days of the new revolution of publishing, authors have more choices than ever for getting their books into print and into the hands of readers. The big publishers have a lot of flaws: they can be arrogant, they sometimes don’t treat their authors well, they go for what they think will sell instead of what is good, they feed rice to birds then laugh when they explode–you get the idea. For all their flaws, however, there are still a number of things that they actually do well.

High-quality covers
Some may look better than others, but there is no denying that the covers of books produced by large publishers look very good. The large houses have an edge in this area, because they can afford to retain top-notch talent in-house, or use their size and volume to get good rates with top-notch studios.
Ultimate distribution
It’s easy, almost trivial, for small and independent publishers to get their books carried by mainstream distributors. Unless your book is with a large publisher, however, you can pretty much forget about seeing it in mass-market paperback outlets, airport bookstores, or places like that. The big, long-established companies have the best hooks into distribution by far. In fact, just getting your book into mainstream bookstores will be a challenge without a major publisher.
Projecting competence
Despite their confessed habit of publishing celebrity trash and recycling television talk show drivel, mainstream publishers actually have a reputation for being a “filter” for published material, screening content so that only the best gets through. People still tend to assume that if it comes from a major publisher, it has merit, and that if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Ancillary rights sales
As with distribution, the large publishing houses have all the best hooks into ancillary rights sales. Though you may see your book translated and sold overseas or tapped for the big screen no matter what your venue, your chances are still much better with a large publishing house without. For one thing, books published through large publishers are seen as more competent. For another, the large publishing houses are part of media conglomerates, which usually have affiliates in overseas publishing units and film units and so on.
Opening doors
An author trying to get on a television show or into a bookstore for a signing stands a much better chance if he or she is published by one of the large publishing houses. Television producers think the products of the big houses are more exciting because they’re better known and, well, bigger. Bookstore owners know that they need the big houses more than they need the small publishers or independents. It isn’t about quality; it’s about sales.

Authors should be aware of these things, because those who choose not to go with one of the big publishers will have to work harder to get good results in these areas.

By tftorrey | Posted in Revolution | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The Washington Post Smells A Revolution

July 12, 2008 – 9:12 pm

The Washington Post has an excellent article by Jonathan Karp, a publishing industry insider with a perspective on the publishing industry that readers of this weblog will find familiar. In his article, Turning the Page on The Disposable Book, he writes:

Visit your neighborhood superstore, and you will be overwhelmed with ephemera: self-aggrandizing memoirs by recovering addicts; poignant portraits of heroic pets; hyperbolic ideological tracts by insufferable cable TV pundits; guides to staying wrinkle- and toxin-free; odes to Warren Buffett and Jesus Christ; manifestos for fixing America in 12 easy steps; manly accounts of the best athlete/season/team ever; and glittery novels about British royalty, love-starved shoppers, mournful cops and ingenious serial killers. (There are more novels about serial killers than there are actual serial killers.)

The whole article is interesting and good, and the author basically summarizes in two pages everything I’ve been saying about the new revolution of publishing. He cites several problem with the current system (these are my paraphrases):

  • Publishers focus on celebrity garbage and other trash because they think it will sell.
  • Publishers are less willing to take chances on unknown authors or styles because they’re afraid it won’t sell and they want predictable income.
  • Publishers pressure authors to write more books, more quickly, for less money.

None of this is news, but it’s rare to hear an industry insider admit that it’s part of the business plan. He goes on to point out these things about the impact of current trends of technology (again, I’m paraphrasing):

  • Reference nonfiction is already replaced by web resources.
  • Timely nonfiction is transitioning to web resources.
  • Independents are eroding the rest of the book business from the bottom.

He has this to say about the last point:

The barriers to entry in the book business get lower each year. There are thousands of independent publishers and even more self-publishers. These players will soon have the same access to readers as major publishers do, once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream. When that happens, publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively. Those who publish generic books for expedient purposes will face new competitors. Like the music companies, some of those publishers may shrink or die.

Can you say revolution? What does all this mean for the lowly fiction writers?

The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.

Sounds to me like you’ll be okay as long as you write things like reading.

That’s the revolution in a nutshell.

By tftorrey | Posted in Revolution | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Lie vs Lay vs Me

July 12, 2008 – 5:24 am

One of the last things I did while finalizing the new manuscripts for First Lies, Winter Kills, and The Desert King was to check my usage of the various forms of “to lie” and “to lay”. A smart person had recently pointed out that mis-use of these words bothered her, and that got me wondering about my own work. Like many people, I was never clear on the finer points of their usage, but I had always had confidence (for no good reason) that I was using them correctly when it counted.

To my horror, I discovered that I was not, not always, anyway. Then, it took me an embarrassingly long time to establish that to lie is to recine and to lay is to place, and that “lay” is the past tense of “lie” but everything else is (pretty much) as it seems it should be. How could I go all these years without knowing that? or worse, “knowing” it wrong? What a buffoon! Is my red neck showing or what?!

This makes me wonder: What would people think if they saw incorrect usage like this in a book? How many people would even notice? Is it really as bad as I think it is?

By tftorrey | Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

The Desert King Now At Amazon

July 7, 2008 – 2:53 am

At long last, The Desert King is now available in a beautiful trade paperback edition at Amazon. This day has been a long time coming, and I am very happy. Wake the kids and phone the neighbors, and, you know, buy a copy. Please. This is a happy day.

By tftorrey | Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (3)

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