If you’re an FWA member, you pay good money to the association and the leadership wants to give you value back for that money. To that end, we want to open up this blog to list your releases, deals, book signings, great reviews, and other promotional activities.
It’s not the Drudge Report in terms of traffic, but we average about 1000 hits a month, which isn’t horrible. Not all of those people are FWA members and there’s a decent chance some of them might want to pay good money to buy your book. And no one wants to be that guy sitting at the table in Barnes and Noble, with a pile of books, a pen, and as many people around them as there are in the upper deck of a typical Rays game.
The process is simple: please send your information to me. Start your e-mail title with the header FWA Author. That’ll help me pick it out from the rest of the e-mail I get. To help me help you, I’m asking for the following:
- If you have a series of book signings coming up, please include all the signings in one e-mail with dates and time, and links to provide directions, if possible.
- Please include a URL of a promotional picture of you and, if you want, of your book cover.
- Include your website’s URL.
- If you got a really incredible review and it’s available online, please link to the location of the review.
- Do whatever else you can that allows me to use your content as is.
- If your work was an RPLA award winner or finalist, please include that, as well.
FWA’s motto is Writers helping writers. By including information about our members’ successes in one place, it can provide you with a little extra publicity, but it will also help us market the FWA better. If we can continue to raise our reputation as a writers resource, it will help us continue to get outstanding speakers for our meetings and faculty for our conferences.
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the perception in some that books should be free and the shouts of greed over a decision being taken by major publishers to push for more money for e-books. At the heart of the matter is a battle between two major concerns for authors: treating your readers as valued customers and getting paid.
In previous posts, I’ve written how writers have been the nicest people, and I stand by that statement. Most of the writers I’ve dealt with understand the travails of moving down the road from being a good writer who isn’t published to being a published writer. (I would assume they also understand that getting published isn’t the end of your concerns, but the birth of a new set of concerns.)
But writers are also business people. And when they give a book away to the conference as a door prize, or they sit and talk with you at a signing or other event, they’re serving their customers. And to be a valued customer, you have to have paid for something (or have the potential to pay for something in the future).
If you’re a writer, you know the opportunity cost of writing a book. It might take you four hours to read a book, but it may take 400 hours or more to write it. Then, if you don’t have representation, you have to go out and find and agent and a publisher, all while trying to get work done at your day job, interact with your family and friends, and try to squeeze in a little writing.
The result of that effort merits payment. Your time and hard work deserve payment.
So does the time and hard work of other writers. So this year, buy a book. If you can swing it, buy a hardcover. If you have a couple authors you really like, buy their books and save the library for what you read in between their books
Within a few days after Macmillan forced Amazon to capitulate to it’s request for higher e-book prices, two other publishers, HarperCollins and Hachette have followed suit, asking that their prices be increased to a ceiling of $14.99, with their prices being reduced to $5.99 as the books age.
In all three cases, 70 percent of the price of the book will go to the seller and 30 percent will go to the merchant, in this case, Amazon. Of that 70 percent ($10.50 for a $15.00 book), the money is divided according to contract with the writer getting a piece of 70 percent of the pie. Apple intends to use that model for pricing for its iPad.
Our work isn’t public domain. It’s the result of a lot of hard work, and we deserve to be paid for our efforts.
As you would expect, additional publishers are expected to follow suit.
An interesting aspect to this story is the comments listed on the Yahoo Tech version of this story. At the time I wrote this post, only four comments were listed: in one of them, a poster says he reads all his books for free and two ascribe the increased prices to greed. The fourth calls the library a wonderful institution.
If I were a published author, I would be rooting for the $15.00 pricing model because I would get more money for my work (surprise). I would submit that it isn’t greedy to expect to get paid if people partake of what I spent months sitting at a keyboard creating. I still get books from the library, but as I’ve started to talk with more published authors, I’m trying to buy their books whenever I can. If I enjoy their work and they’ve been good to me with helpful notes, nice comments, or even door prize donations for the Florida Writers Conference, I want to repay that help in some small way.
I like reading and I expect to someday have an e-reader of some sort. I like lower prices because that allows me to read more with the same amount of money. But our work isn’t public domain. It’s the result of a lot of hard work, and we deserve to be paid for our efforts.
W. Bruce Cameron’s the well-known author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter and 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter. He’s also the person of renown for the FWA Collection #3 — Let’s Talk, kicking off at this year’s Florida Writers Conference, October 22-24 at the Orlando Marriott Lake Mary. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists voted Bruce’s column–available through Creator’s Syndicate–the # 1 best humor columnist for newspapers with a circulation of over 100,000 in 2003 and again in 2006.
The FWA Collection is currently in its second iteration, a Slice of Life. Person of renown Eliot Kleinberg–a veteran journalist and author of Weird Florida–will name his ten favorite stories to be featured in the collection. The first ten articles will appear, followed by the remaining fifty, in alphabetical order by author’s last name.
Slice of Life stories feature life’s changing moments. They don’t necessarily have a beginning, middle, and end, but can emphasize mood and character to build to an emotional climax.
You can submit stories of up to 1500 words (but don’t feel the need to use all 1500). Stories can be poignant, funny, tragic, or anything else that fits the description.
Deadline for submissions is May 16, 2010. For more information, click here. For the submission e-mail address, click here and scroll down.
Brett Favre threw the last pass of his career last week, an ill-advised interception that sealed his team’s fate and lost the game. That sentence was as applicable this week as it was two years ago. Depending on your view of things, Brett Favre is either the closest thing the NFL has ever had to a gunslinger, or an attention-seeking, manipulative publicity hound who should have retired two years ago.
As the previous photo displays, the idea of pro quarterback as mythic hero isn’t a new one. On the left, you see Favre from last week’s game. On the right, you see former 49ers and Giants quarterback YA Tittle, kneeling and bloody after a game in 1964 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. In both pictures, you see mythic heroes, men whose efforts on other days on different fields were the stuff legend is made of.
Favre has been an imperfect hero. Early in his career, he developed a dependency on Vicodin that resulted in the NFL basically forcing him into rehabilitation. (If he didn’t go, he’d have been fined a huge amount.) In addition to his dependency on Vicodan, Favre is also a reformed alcoholic.
But when he’s on the field, in his element, he towers above most in his ability to make magic. The day after his father died in 2003, Favre took the field against the Oakland Raiders and threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns. After suffering a concussion, he rallied the Packers past the Giants on a play he doesn’t remember. He has a slew of NFL records, including most consecutive games played by a position player and a quarterback.
After the 2007 season, Favre held a tear-filled press conference at which he announced his retirement. By July, he had reversed his decision to retire and was looking to return to the Packers training camp. To avoid problems with Favre’s replacement, Aaron Rodgers, the Packers traded him to the New York Jets. Favre had wanted to go to the Vikings, but the terms of his contract effectively prevented that from happening.
After early-season success with the Jets, his play deteriorated and the Jets missed the playoffs. Favre retired again, only to unretire again and go to the Minnesota Vikings. T0 Jets fans, his stint with the Jets appeared to be a move to get him free from the terms of his Packers contract to go to Minnesota.
Favre is a complex and interesting character. His performance on a football field has included incredible highs, and crushing defeats, sometime resulting from his forcing a pass that shouldn’t have been thrown. His personal tragedies, including the death of his father, his wife’s battle with breast cancer, and the death of his brother-in-law in an ATV accident on his property, have made him seem more human and taken the edge of some of the ill-advised moves.
When you write a hero, Brett Favre isn’t a bad model to look after. His successes and failures have been extreme. He’s been idolized for his toughness and ability, and condemned for playing when he shouldn’t have and holding on too long. And yet, even in the most devastating and deserved struggles, he’s maintained a dignity. He’s never crawled or given in. Instead, he’s survived, often not gracefully, to fight another day.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Jets fan. In my opinion Favre used the Jets to get to Minnesota, and that’s tarnished him in my eyes. If he’d done the same thing to the Dolphins, he’d really be a hero.
I used to work with a guy named Steve. He was remarkable. The worse things got, the calmer he got. When the walls seemed to be tumbling down around us and the end seemed near, he would take on an almost corpse-like calm. When it was time to panic, he considered his options, quietly assessing the situation and possible resolutions. Then he would calmly propose a solution and work with the rest of the team to make sure it happened.
When I asked him how he did such an inhuman thing, he shrugged, frowned, and interlaced his fingers in an almost prayer-like motion. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just do it.”
Just do it. Originally an irritating marketing campaign. It’s more irritating when you ask someone how they did something because it might help you.
Just do it.
Thanks, Steve. I can probably get that done by this afternoon.
I think I hinted that his parents never married.
In the writers workshop I’m taking, we write to a prompt, then read and comment from everyone’s work. So every time you go, you get the chance to get your work in front of other people. Though it’s only a few pages, it’s still a great opportunity. Except I’m good enough now that I know what I’ve done well and what needs work. The problem came when someone asked how I came to do something they liked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just kind of did it.” Just do it. My parents were married. Whatever faults I have, they’re my own fault.
Like a good hitter, I can read where the baseball’s going and adjust and a lot of the time I can hit it to a place where no one on the other team is standing. I know what I do, but it’s just something that happens. I don’t try force it. It just comes.
The greatest benefit after three weeks of attending is watching other people dissect the things I do naturally. I’ve always thought myself to be a good critiquer. In my critique group, I was always the one to say “When this character did that, it really didn’t work for me because over here you did this other thing.”
After three short sessions, I’m seeing things I took for granted, the little things that work, but that happens so easily you don’t notice them unless you’re looking for them. In one of the pieces we reviewed last night, the writer was foreshadowing the eventual union of two characters. One of the characters had silvery blonde hair as she walked across the beach. The other paddled his kayak in the distance, directly behind him, wearing a yellow flotation device.
In another piece, the protagonist was irritated at what Don Henley called “bubble-headed bleach blondes” reading tragic news. They don’t have the gravitas required for such a task. That ought to be done by reporters who’d been places and seen things. Then she shifted to talk about God’s relationship to tragedies. The protagonist thought God had gotten behind on his quota and giant disasters were his way of catching up. As she got older, her understanding of God changed, but her feelings about his failure to prevent tragedies never did.
Except that part of the piece wasn’t about the bubble-headed bleach blondes, or God’s missing a quota. It was about how the protagonist was struggling to come to terms with tragedy, shown beautifully, instead of told.
I can do all those things, but if I deconstruct them and study them I can identify them when I do them. Then I can use the tools more effectively in my writing.
I was part of a conversation once about how writers need to also be readers–voracious readers–if they want to succeed at the craft. When I mentioned that I didn’t read as much as I used to, but I listened to a lot of books on CDs, a few of the people scoffed That doesn’t count–they said–only reading is reading.
Today, I beg to differ. In fact, I’ll go beyond that. Not only does listening to books on CD count as reading, it can help you in ways that reading can’t.
My latest iteration of my work-in-progress is to the point where it needs revisions. One of the things I’ve done this time is read it out loud as I edited it. My editing has been far more effective this way. I’ve recognized patterns I haven’t seen before and found things I’ve loved and other things I was ecstatic to remove from my manuscript.
I’ve also learned from other peoples’ writing I’ve listened to. Most writers will tell you that in dialog, the most appropriate verb tag is said. If you use said rather than exclaimed, cried, or sneered, the reader skips over that word and they can concentrate more fully on the actual dialog. That works, unless you say said so often that it becomes distracting.
For instance, if you listen to the late Robert B. Parker’s work on CD, you’ll quickly understand how often he uses said as a conversation tag. After hearing that, I made an effort to not use that tag as often.
Mark your calendar for Sunday, April 11, for Do It Write!, a one-day mini-conference, hosted by the Florida Writers Conference. This conference promises to be a winner, with a solid platform of speakers and presenters, including:
- Jerry D. Simmons, who will speak about the three-step process for successful publishing — prepare, market, publish.
- Molli Nickel, who will talk about the truths of getting published, and some things that aren’t so true.
- Claire Eddy, who’ll discuss what acquisitions editors are looking for
- Linda Neckel White, who’ll help you make your poetry sing.
- Linn Random, who’ll discuss driving books sales and writing mysteries.
To see more about the conference and the people speaking there, go to the conference web site. Seating is limited, so you’ll want to sign up as soon as you can. Online registration is now available. The cost is $46 for FWA members, $66 for non-members, and $35 for students.
You can also book interviews with publisher Jerry D. Simmons or acquisitions editor Claire Eddy for an additional $25.
The conference will take place at the New Port Richey Public Library, 5939 Main Street, New Port Richey, from 8:30 am to 5 pm.
Since Erich Segal died on January 17, the literary world has suffered a string of losses. Robert B. Parker died the next day at his desk, presumably writing. Historian Howard Zinn and author JD Salinger both died on the 27th. And Ralph McInerny, author of the Father Dowling mysteries, died on January 29.
Segal is known for the iconic novel Love Story and the film of the same name. Love means never having to say your sorry. So does nearly 40 years of residuals. Parker yanked the hard-boiled detective genre into the post-Vietnam era by creating Spenser, a private investigator who could be tough and literate, and who managed to see beyond women as dames and plot devices and found a place for the genre in a world that contained Simone de Beauvoir, homosexuality, and Howard Stern.
Zinn is a giant among liberal circles for his work A People’s History of the United States. And Salinger’s Holden Caulfield is still a touchstone with disillusioned teens, as his The Catcher in the Rye still sells about a quarter million copies a year.
McInerny is the least known of these authors, but may be the most interesting. If not for the Tom Bosley TV show, I wouldn’t know about the Father Dowling mysteries. Aside from his literary pursuits, McInerny was a professor of philosophy and literary history at Notre Dame. McInerny was 52 when his first Fr. Dowling novel (Her Death of Cold) was publishing in 1977. He published 28 more Father Dowling books, 10 Sister Mary Theresa books, and more than three dozen other novels.
In addition, he published 19 non-fiction books, including two on writing and five on St. Thomas Aquinas. He worked with Catholic theologian Michael Novak to create Crisis, a journal of lay Catholic opinion, and he often appeared on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line.
To look at the contrast between McInerny and Zinn, you’d see two polar opposites. McInerny was a conservative Catholic and Zinn was a liberal activist. But you’d also see two men who used their talent to write to make what they considered was a difference.
Someone needs to step up and fill the void.
Why not you?
According to this post on an Amazon forum, Amazon is giving in to Macmillan concerning the price it charges for MacMillan’s e-books, including those by Janet Evanovich and FWA member Julie Compton. (Thanks, Julie, for the heads up.)
