What The Heck Do They WANT?

by J.D. Rhoades

A few days ago, a tweet (or maybe it was a blog post) from the extremely cool and uber-talented paranormal suspense writer Kat Richardson pointed me at this cartoon from fantasy writer Jim C. Hines:

It was one of those observations that's been, in the words of Jimmy Buffett, "so simple it plumb evaded me."

Sometimes the discussion on book blogs can get a little, as they say, "inside baseball". Some of us talk about e-publishing and platforms, royalty rates and market shares of various formats. Some of us talk  about process and outlining and marketing,  and we make predictions and projections and pontifications about the future of publishing. It's interesting to writers, both currently published and pre-published,  because knowing about and discussing this stuff is part of our business.  It's interesting to some readers, because they like seeing how the business works (or sometimes how it doesn't work).

But I get the feeling that there is a larger mass of readers out there--Hines' "average readers"-- who couldn't really care less about why Amanda Hocking went with St. Martin's or whether Barry Eisler made the right decision to self-pub or whether Joe Konrath is the Antichrist (answer: probably not). They may not even read book blogs, and it's highly doubtful they read Publisher's Weekly or Galleycat. They're the equivalent of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority": the "real' Non-"elite" folks who  every politician of every stripe claims they  represent. 

Which leads us to the question: as authors, how do we reach these people? And what the heck do they want?

The knee-jerk response "they want a good book" is glib but empty, because no one agrees what consitutes a "good book," at least until enough people like something enough that it sells a great number of copies. In that case, however, there'll probably be a considerable number of people who'll tell you that no, that top-ten bestseller is not a good book; it is, in fact, absolute crap, while this book over here that sold less than a thousand copies is, actually, the best book ever written.

It gets even more confusing when you begin to realize that the people whose job it is to determine what that great silent-but-hungry mass of consumers wants often don't really know either. We've all heard the multitude of stories about writers rejected by dozens of publishers who went on to become bestsellers. And how many times have we seen the author that was supposed to be the Next Big Thing in publishing turn out to be the literary equivalent of the Segway? (You remember the Segway. It was supposed to be the future of personal transportation, "transforming the way you work, play and live," according to the company's website. So, do you own one?)

Even some of the things you'd think would be reliable predictors of popular success sometimes fail us. Our Alex has brilliantly explained the idea of "high concept": those ideas that have already staked out a place in our "mental real estate" so that when you see one, you go "Yes. That. Want that."

 As an example, she uses PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Because everyone knows pirates, right? They're cool.  Everyone wants to see a movie about pirates. So explain to me why POTC became a franchise while 1985's CUTTHROAT ISLAND bombed so badly that it took Carolco Studios down with it.

It even has a monkey, for Chrissakes!

Likewise, one series of  YA books about young wizards at a magical academy spawned multiple sequels and made its author one of the richest women in the world; another, earlier one...well, they're doing okay, but they didn't make Diane Duane a millionaire, more's the pity.

Yes, that "average reader" (or viewer) is an enigmatic critter. They want something just like something else, only different, and every now and then they want something really different.   The only way they speak is with their cash or plastic, and they seem to be saying something different all the time.

So, since no one really knows what's going to be big and what's going to bomb, what are we to do? Why, whatever makes us happy and gives us pleasure to write. Unless you can tell me what readers really want....

We Don't Know Jack

Traditional publishing (aka Big Publishing, Legacy Publishing, etc) is in decline, probably on its way out entirely, or at the very least, doomed to become a niche market like vinly records.   You only have to look at the success of independent e-publishers like Amanda Hocking to see that. They're dinosaurs and their business model is bad for writers. The only sane thing to do is e-publish.

Except:

Amanda Hocking, the darling of the self-publishing world, has been shopping a four-book series to major publishers, attracting bids of well over $1 million for world English rights, two publishing executives said.

People who think they're going to duplicate the sucess of outliers like Hocking and J.A. Konrath are fooling themselves.  Traditional/Big/Legacy publishing may have its problems, but it can still do things that self-publishing can't. The only sane thing to do is try to find a traditional publisher and let  them handle the whole package, including e-books.

Except:

 In a recent interview, novelist Barry Eisler said he turned down a $500,000 book deal and decided to self-publish his work.

The revelation came in a 13,000-word interview with novelist Joe Konrath. Eisler last published with Ballantine Books, but his self-publishing experiment began with “The Lost Coast,” a $2.99 short story. Konrath quipped: ‘Barry Eisler Walks Away From $500,000 Deal to Self-Pub’ is going to be one for the Twitter Hall of Fame.”

So who's crazy? The young woman who's had enormous success with electronic self-publishing who's now seeking to publish with a "Big 6" house, or the NYT bestseller who's decided to forsake the comfortable traditional route and light out for the digital frontier on his own?

Damned if I know. Right now there are an awful lot of self-proclaimed "experts" telling us with complete confidence how the publishing business is going to go and where we'll be in the next ten years. But, you know, "experts" in publishing  have been confidently predicting what the public wants for decades. Orwell's ANIMAL FARM got turned down by a publisher because "it is impossible to sell talking-animal stories in America." Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel was told his first book was  "too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling." And so on.

Meanwhile, remember John Twelve Hawks? He was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. THE TRAVELER was supposed to be the next DA VINCI CODE. Heard much about him lately? Me neither.

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote here about a panel of industry experts who'd frustrated a conference audience because, in the words of a commenter who was there, "there wasn't an ounce of new think going on." In that piece, I  quoted one of my favorite thinkers on New Media, Dr. Clay Shirky of NYU:

During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change — take a book and shrink it — was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further.

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing.

Two years down the road, and while there are any number of opinions delivered with complete assurance, I can't say that we're any closer to really knowing any of the answers. We don't know for sure what big changes are going to stall, or which small changes are going to spread. People are going every which way, and no one knows if Eisler or Hocking has made the smarter decision...or if, indeed, one can be said to be smarter than the other.

There is this to consider, though: in the end, decisions about what's going to sell are always made by the buyers, the readers, not by the so-called experts. Decisions on what works are made from the ground up,  not the top down, no matter how we may convince ourselves otherwise. 

So, 'Rati: seeing as how we're all experts, and all fools, tell us: who's crazier, Eisler or Hocking? Are they both crazy like foxes? Look into your crystal spheres, cast the bones,  and tell us: what's the future hold? Not what you want it to be...what's it going to be?

Lay some prophecy on me, brothers and sisters.

Diversify

by J.D. Rhoades

It wasn’t  exactly a huge shock when the Borders mega-bookstore chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. The company had been circling the drain for a while. Still, it was another blow to an industry that’s had at least its share, and maybe more,  of those lately.

The reasons for the Borders filing are numerous and complicated, in accordance with Rhoades’ First Law of History: everything happens for more than one reason. Those reasons are discussed in detail, by some very smart minds, here and here.

The big question on the minds of writers and readers, though,  is most likely: what does this mean in the long run? As a judge who pulled me aside at a break in court on Tuesday asked me, “do you think the printed word is dead?”

I told him I hoped not, and I meant it. Like a lot of you, I like the physical feel of a book in my hand. But we do have to face the fact: it’s a shrinking market, and not just because a lot of the physical locations to buy books are closing their doors. Not just Borders; seems like hardly a month goes by when we don't hear of  a beloved indie bookstore shutting up shop, and even the venerable Powell's is laying people off.

The immediate effect of the Borders bankruptcy will be that a lot of  people aren’t getting paid, at least not right away, such as distributors and publishers.  In fact, Borders had started “delaying” payments to publishers in January and trying to turn their outstanding obligations into loans, sort of like calling up the power company and asking if you can just turn the January heating bill into an IOU.  It worked about as well as you might expect, and caused some distributors to stop shipping to them. Now, of course, they’re not even getting the IOU; they’ll get what the bankruptcy court says they’ll get, when the court determines they’ll get it, which might be never in some cases. That can’t help but put extra strain on already stressed players in this business, particularly  small publishing houses that were on thin profit margins to begin with. As for the big publishers...well, they’ll most likely survive. But they’ll be feeling the pinch.

Unfortunately, pinched corporations become more risk-averse, not less. When you consider that offering a writer a lot of cash for his or her work always carries a substantial about of risk, that's bad news for authors who aren’t already bestsellers or who don’t have ready-made name recognition. Like, say, Snooki.

To paraphrase the classic line from PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN,  Nicole Polizzi, aka Snooki,  may be one of the worst people you’ve ever heard of, but you have heard of her. Therefore, the tiny trollop from Jersey Shore  gets a book deal, despite having only read, by her own admission, two books in her life (DEAR JOHN and TWILIGHT). They had to figure on big sales because, Lord knows,  we all love a good trainwreck, and when it comes to trainwrecks, Snooki makes the Wreck of the Old 97 look like a kid’s Lionel HO-gauge  jumping the track.

Oh, sure, I've considered  "being a professional trainwreck" as a marketing strategy. I can do drunk and disorderly, believe me. I'm just not sure I can sustain it for long enough or loud enough to get a book deal out of it before I get thrown in jail. But I digress.

Absent that strategy, though, how do we get our work out to readers in a world where a writer as talented and experienced as veteran SF author Kristine Kathryn Rusch can have an experience like this with her book DAVY MOSS:

The book has made the rounds of traditional publishing (and then some!) and it garnered some of the best rejections of my career. Editors loved this book, but the sales force at Big Publishing hated the very concept.  Books about music don’t sell, they said, and then they’d force the editor to pass.

(Boy, did THAT sound familiar!)

As readers, how do you find a wide diversity of content in a world where a nearly illiterate reality show star  pulls down seven figures and Kristine Kathryn Rusch gets the old, "wow, we love this, but we pass"?

If you're rolling your eyes and thinking "Oh lord, here comes the bit about e-books..." Well, you're partially right. Because the world where Rusch gets turned down on a book that even the people doing the turning down admit is good is also a world where fantasy writer Amanda Hocking, online,   sells 99,000 e-books, at 2.99 apiece,  in December alone.

I have to admit that figure staggered me, especially when you consider that writers make more of a percentage on self-published e-books than they do on traditionally published paper books. I've never read Hocking. She may be dreadful, she may be the second coming of Hemingway. But as a purely business proposition, it seems to me that, as writers,  we'd be  fools to turn our backs on a market with that kind of hunger. And say, for the sake of argument, that Hocking really is a dreadul writer. Well, I still think I'm pretty good...so how much better could I do?

As noted above, Borders went toes up for a variety of reasons, but we can't discount the importance of this one: while Borders tried to diversify by expanding things like CD and movie sales, they were diversifying into formats that were already being threatened by cheap, convenient, and quick downloads. While there are a lot of people, including myself, who love the experience of browsing  through books or CDs, we all have to face the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there who want to be able to get a book without having to get out of their jammies, jump in the car and drive down to the store. If that book also happens to be low in price, they'll be more likely to buy, and read.

Some may call people like that "couch potatoes" and "cheap bastards." I  call them potential readers. Here's Rusch, again:

I personally want readers and I want as many readers as possible.  More readers equal more money—of course—but more readers also equal a long-term career.  If my book is in print from a Big Publisher, then theoretically the book is attracting readers.  If my book is in print from my self-publishing arm or an indie publisher, then theoretically the book is attracting readers. And that, my friends, is really what matters.

So, I'm not turning my back entirely on traditional publishing. I'll keep submitting, and I'll never stop browsing the bookstores (or trying to get my work into them). 

But in the meantime, I'm diversifying. I've repackaged my e-pubbed novel STORM SURGE with a snazzy new cover, by new Zealand artist Jeroen ten Berge,

and my new one, LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY, goes live on Amazon and Smashwords  today.

After this, the backlist will be going up, starting with the book that began it all, THE DEVIL'S RIGHT HAND.

Hey, if that fails, I can always go the Snooki route.

In Which I Get You Guys to Do All the Work

Monday night I typed those glorious words “The End” on the first draft of my WIP. Now, I’ll admit,  this is a true first draft, meaning that, as it stands now, my new opus blows like a tranny hooker  during Fleet Week. But I can already see ways to make  it better. I can even see ways that it might even achieve awesomeness, if I can pull it off.

For the moment, however, I’m taking Our Alex’s advice to put it aside for at least a week, after which  I’m going to print out her blog post on re-writing, tape it up above my desk, and get back to work. 

In the meantime I see that  it’s my Wednesday to blog here at Murderati. Only problem is, my brain is burned. All the bearings on the magnificent machine that is my mind are  smoking and squealing like the  brakes on an 18 wheeler headed down out of the Rockies. I’ve also been so buried in this book, not to mention life and the  day job, that once I surfaced, I felt like I’d been asleep for the last month or so. I’m having  a hard time even figuring out  what’s been happening, much less commenting on it. So  I’m asking our loyal readership to fill me in on what’s going on, discuss it, and, not to put too fine a point on it,  write this post for me.

Ready? Let’s begin:  

• Why are people mad at Jonathan Franzen this time? 
• Apparently, the Wylie Agency and Random House have  “struck a truce”.  I didn’t even know they were at war. Can someone fill me in on this? Who should I have been  pulling for? 
• So, this new Kindle. Why is it only 139 bucks? Is it because you can only download stuff if you’re in a WiFi hotspot? This wouldn’t really be a problem for me, even living in the sticks like I do, but is there some other feature that you give up for that price that I need to know about? In your opinion, is 139 dollars the tipping point that will make the Kindle 3 as ubiquitous as the Mp3 player? 
• A six year old got a multi-book contract? WTF? 

Lay some wisdom on me, cats n’ kittens.

Bonus question: Was the movie version of WINTER’S BONE freakin’ awesome, or what? I mean, if Jennifer Stewart and John Hawke don’t get Oscar nominations, there is something seriously wrong with the process, am I right?

Music and Lyrics and Permissions, Oh My!

by J.D. Rhoades

It should come as no surprise to readers of my books or of this blog that music has a huge influence on me. The titles of the first three books, THE DEVIL'S RIGHT HAND, GOOD DAY IN HELL, and SAFE AND SOUND, come from songs by Steve Earle, The Eagles, and Sheryl Crow, respectively. Favorite tunes are often a springboard for plot points or for whole books, even if the books themselves end up bearing no relation to what actually happens in the song.

Sometimes,  I like to use music directly  in a scene to emphasize or comment on what's going on.  It's a cinematic-type effect and a by-product of my own creative process, which often involves seeing the story as a movie playing in my head. Some of my favorite movies use music playing over a scene, or playing or being played by the characters.  Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, for example, would be a lesser movie if it didn't have that awesome soundtrack serving as a sort of Greek chorus to the action on the screen.

As an author, though, you have to be careful when using music on the page. It can get a little too cutesy if you overuse it, for one thing. But there's a more practical concern, namely that getting the permission to use a song  lyric can be a major pain in the ass.

One of the many things that surprised me when I got into the business is that it's the author, not the publisher, who's responsible for obtaining (and if necessary paying for) the proper permissions. The first question is, when do you need permission do use bits of a song (or quotes from someone else's poetry or prose)?  While the US Copyright Office insists that "there is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission," I'd always heard that two lines was pretty safe. More than that, however, and your  publisher may start to get nervous. There's a concept called "Fair Use" that might save you, but it's murky and convoluted even by the standards of copyright law, so just assume you're going to need permission.

So how do you go about getting the permission you need?  First you have to find the song's publisher. Note that this is  not the record company, at least not much these days. A savvy songwriter will set up his or her own publishing company, which is the actual owner of the rights to the song, and thus the entity entitled to the money from performances and other uses.

There are a couple of ways to find out who the publisher is. One is to look on the album itself. There's usually  some fine print, somewhere around where you find the list of tracks on the album. It'll say something like "All songs copyright Insert Name Here Music." The other, easier way is to do a search on the websites of the two big music licensing services, ASCAP or BMI.  Let's try to find who owns, say, John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith In Me." 

We go to the ASCAP site, navigate to the ACE title search page, and plug in the title.

Your title search for ""HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME"" returned 0 results.

Damn. Okay, let's try BMI.

Whoa. 9 hits.

	1.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	531566
	2.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	531550
	3.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	4945526
	4.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	531548
	5.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	531554
	6.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	531560
	7.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	3737905
	8.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	3907859
	9.	HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME	6794630

Fortunately, the first one gives us:

Songwriter/Composer	Current Affiliation	CAE/IPI #
HIATT JOHN R	BMI	61573778
Publishers
UNIVERSAL MUSIC CAREERS	BMI	539732230

Clicking through the publisher's name gives us:

CAE/IPI #: 539732230

Phone:	(310) 235-4700
Fax:	(310) 235-4907
Contact:	UNIVERSAL MUSIC MGB NA LLC DBA UNIVERSAL MUSIC CAREERS 2440 SEPULVEDA BLVD STE 100 LOS ANGELES, CA 90064-1712 http://www.umusic.com

So then you can call, write, or e-mail, tell them you'd like to use a lyric from one of their artists in a book, and ask to be directed to the proper person. They'll take it from there.

Steve Earle's people were great to work with, and let me use a few lines from "The Devil's Right Hand" for a pittance.  My experience with "Good Day In Hell" was a little different. It was my screw up, actually: I'd put off tracking down the publishers until the book was already being typeset. I found that, since the song was co-written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley of the Eagles, there were actually two publishers that had the rights: Cass County Music and Red Cloud Music. An e-mail to one, however, got me in touch with a very nice lady who let me know she could handle both. However, she said "The guys almost never give anyone permission to do this." I began quietly freaking out at this point. After a couple of days, she got back with me and said they wanted to see the passage where the lyric would be used. Heart in throat, I sent her an excerpt, along with a note that contained some of my best groveling.  Within a day she'd e-mailed and said "I caught up with them in two separate airports. They say okay, and all they want you to do is make a small donation to each of their favorite charities." Which I promptly and gratefully did. Mr. Henley, Mr Frey: thank you from the bottom of my heart. In a profession full of jerks and prima donnas, you guys showed real class.

You may decide after reading this that using someone else's lyrics is just too much damn trouble. Certainly, after the "Good Day In Hell" scare,  I went back and rewrote the scene in SAFE AND SOUND that contained the Sheryl Crow lyrics, because no way was I going through that kind of fear again if I didn't have to. But if you think the story just won't be the same without it, start early.

 And, as always, be nice.