Guess who's buying?

One thing that I've noticed since I started reading e-books is that I'm buying a lot more books rather than picking them up from my (excellent) local library. Part of this is because indie books aren't always available at the library, but a larger reason is that they're so cheap, half the time I don't even bother to check if the library has them.

And it turns out I'm not the only one buying more. E-book readers are more likely to buy their own books (via DWS). I would argue that it's the low, low price combined with the fact that e-books are harder to borrow. (Not that it's impossible to lend them, but it takes some thought--are we on the same format?--and it only takes one click of a button to buy....)

How does the future look? Well, according to the press release for the latest 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review (via PV), younger adults, who are more likely to read e-books, are now the spendiest readers. 

GenY's 2011 book expenditures rose to 30 percent -- up from 24 percent in 2010 – passing Boomers' 25 percent share. And with 43 percent of GenY's purchases going to online channels, they are adding momentum to the industry shift to digital.

A job is not a story

One thing a reporter really has to focus on (and which certainly applies to writing novels) is how to write a coherent story from the chaos that is life. Basically you have to discard 99% of reality and focus on the 1% that makes a story. For an event to be considered a story, it must be what is called newsworthy.

When people think newsworthy, they think it's the same thing as important, but there are many very important things going on that are not, in fact, news. For example, it is extremely important to life on this planet that the Sun continues to shine. But you do not see headlines every day saying, "SUN STILL SHINING," because that's what it regularly does.

I covered health care for a publication in New York City, and one of the things that happened on a fairly routine basis was that some random doctor would decide that he needed to become famous. Of course, if you want that, there are scores of extremely-reputable public-relations professionals who are more than happy to assist you by vacuuming all the money out of your wallet. These fine public-relations professionals would call me to tell me that they were representing, say, a cardiologist, and that this cardiologist SAVED LIVES EVERY DAY by providing cardiologic care to patients. He took people with sick hearts, this cardiologist did, and he made them better and SAVED LIVES EVERY DAY. Shouldn't I write a story about this cardiologist who SAVED LIVES EVERY DAY, because he SAVED LIVES EVERY DAY?

I never quite had the nerve to inform one of these outstanding public-relations professionals that they should call me once their cardiologist started RUTHLESSLY MURDERING PATIENTS, because that would be news (considering the personalities involved, they would probably have offered my words up as serious advice, and their client would have taken it). I did, however, point out that what their client was doing was not, in fact, news. Medicine is of course a noble and important profession, and I appreciate everyone out there who saves lives, no less than I appreciate the fact that the Sun continues to shine. But news? Someone doing their job is not news. It is not a story.

When I read a novel about a person learning a job and eventually coming to perform it competently, or simply performing a job competently without ever learning it, I feel toward the author some of those same warm feelings I once felt for those lovely, honest, capable public-relations professionals who made such valuable and pleasant use of my time. A person learning a job--gaining confidence and finding a place for themselves in society--is a premise and a character arc, but it is not a story. Someone consistently doing their job well is not even an arc. It does not matter if the job is a sci-fi job or a magical job or a spy job or even a cardiology job; you also need a plot. Harry Potter does not simply learn how to perform magic--he learns how to perform magic AND KILLS VOLDEMORT. That last bit is rather important.

That whole marketing-at-conventions notion...

I have to say, I'm fairly down on it at this point. I distributed 4,500 flyers, and I've seen only a handful of downloads as a result. It was impossible to track the Westercon downloads separately from the Summer/Winter Sale downloads, so I couldn't quantify results there, but I could with GeekGirlCon, and...yeah, no. I mean, you could argue that if I improved the flyers, blah, blah, blah, but I'm saying, 4,500 people each received a flyer in their hot little hand, and the VAST majority of them did not choose to take advantage of it. And advertising in a con program didn't work. All this makes me question the fundamental validity of marketing books at cons.

I already canceled the Foolscap table, just because I didn't think the group was ready for something like that at this point. If it turns out that people really, really want to do a table, I'll join in, but I'm not going to push for it. I think it's an awful lot of work for a not-very-promising shot at results.

The conventions have been fun so far. I'm still going to Foolscap and Norwescon (and you know, since I'll be there anyway I'll do flyers), but I'm mentally reclassifying them as entertainment as opposed to a meaningful marketing opportunity. I mainly seem to attract other writers, which is fine as far as it goes (I sincerely hope they find the blog worthwhile), but obviously marketing should focus on reaching actual readers.

Hey look, the Internet!

Yeah, I was out in the boonies for a bit--I'm back in civilization now. Apparently while I was away Sue Grafton admitted that she doesn't know the first thing about the publishing industry nowadays. Yeah, we knew. I mean, apparently I'm supposed to be glad she's willing to admit that she was shooting off her mouth about something she knows absolutely nothing about, thereby possibly doing serious damage to the careers of countless would-be authors who respect and admire her, but I'm more amazed by the fact that she spins "Everything I said was completely wrong" as "I need to clarify something I said." If you are hoping to one day reach the level of wealth and fame where you are surrounded at all times by fawning sycophants who will praise everything you ever do or say, please look at that and reconsider. (Seriously, how hard would it have been for her to simply decline to give advice? That's what I do when people want to know how to get their kid into Harvard.)

In less-bitchy remarks, the Wall Street Journal has a couple of interesting bits from a few days ago. There's this little piece on how even though the economy is slowly recovering, paper shipments are falling, and "the divergence between paper shipments and GDP growth began around the time the iPad was introduced." That's especially interesting given how fast tablet computers are being adopted--it's expected that 47% of Americans will have one by next year. (!!!)

All the new tablets that are coming out are pressuring Barnes & Noble to cut prices on the Nook, which the WSJ notes is an issue because the company is losing money: 

B&N has effectively used its bookstores, which are profitable, to finance the Nook. But that isn't sustainable. Financial realities suggest B&N will be unable to stay in the hardware business in the long term without help from better financed partners.... On that front, B&N will get $300 million from Microsoft if the software giant's deal for a 17.6% stake in a newly formed Nook and college businesses joint venture closes in October as expected. But it is unknown exactly how that will play out, particularly as Microsoft now is launching its own tablet.

Progress report

I only wrote 800 words today--I was feeling kind of itchy, and that took me to the beginning of a big scene, so I decided to start fresh tomorrow. I also decided to try making flyers for Foolscap, primarily to see what art-editing options I had. A little of using what came with the computer inspired me to download GIMP. We'll see how that does.

Jane said, Have you seen my wig around?

OK, fine, she didn't--but how awesome would that have been?

The panel with Jane Espenson was about her Web sitcom Husbands (they gave us an early showing of the first episode of the second season, and it was really funny), and a lot of the discussion centered around the digitization of television and how much it has changed things.

In fact, the show wouldn't have existed were it not for YouTube. One of the characters in the show is this young, kind of vapid, kind of ditzy man named Cheeks, who is played by Brad Bell. I didn't know this, but Bell created Cheeks a long time ago and has had a YouTube channel for quite some time. Espenson discovered one of his videos, and that led her to contact him and develop the series. Bell also writes and produces the show, and he is not the least bit vapid or ditzy--it was one of those cases where of course I knew that the character and the person were different, but it was a little surprising to see how very different they are.

Anyway, Espenson paid for the first season out of her own pocket (Battlestar Galactica money--Bell made fun of her, saying, "Here is a hole I can pour all my money into! I could burn it, but this is a faster way!"), and the second season they funded mostly through Kickstarter (although Espenson kicked in some of her own dosh as well). I asked if it was smaller than a normal television production, and the answer is, kind of, but it was still 40 people (many of whom were doing Espenson favors) and two Steadicams. So the barriers to producing a professional-quality Web show are lower than they used to be, but I wouldn't really describe them as low.

What Espenson really liked about going indie was (say it with me) the control (THE CONTROL!!!) and the timeliness of it--she was able to get a show done in a fraction of the time it would have taken a network, which was important to her because the show is about gay marriage, and that's a hot topic right now. "We're not being told what we can and cannot do," she said. "We're figuring out for ourselves what the audience wants, instead of being told what the audience wants." Earlier, she asked who in the audience had contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. Several people raised their hands, and she told them, "You're the network that renewed us."

Once again, the analogy to novels was made, this time specifically regarding digitization--they all think that people love scripted television because it's novelistic, and that they will follow novelistic writing wherever it goes. Espenson pointed out, "Newspapers are dead, novels are not," and Bell agreed, "They just change platforms." (Clearly, these people ignore Scott Turow and don't realize that literature! is! dying! Good for them.)

Espenson also described "a growing hunger for content" with video. Which is interesting, because the podcast people said pretty much the same thing about audio, and it's also true about books--you will never be able to produce content as quickly as the audience can consume it.

Podcasts?

I went to GeekGirlCon today--my flyers were, indeed, in the goodie bags, and some copies have already been downloaded, so yay.

I wasn't feeling very well, so I wound up just going to two panels, one on podcasts and one with Jane Espenson, which I'll cover in the next post.

The podcasting one was interesting, but I'm not really sure what to do with the information I received. The folks at the panel create what are basically radio shows, which they give away--it's a hobby and they're not trying to monetize it. So of course their focus is on keeping costs low--apparently you're better off with a decent but not really nice mike (they liked the $99 Blue Snowball), because if you get a fancy mike you also need a fancy soundproof room in order to use it.

The problem for me is that I wouldn't mind doing a free podcast of Trang, but I'd like to be able to sell an audiobook as well, and apparently the retail sites don't like home-made audiobooks. It would be really annoying if I paid for the equipment to do it myself only to have to pay again for professional production.

In addition, while it's not expensive to do a podcast yourself in terms of money, it's a BIG investment of time. They were saying that it takes about an hour to produce a minute of material--now, these people are doing dramas with multiple voices and sound effects and what have you. But even assuming it takes an hour to produce five minutes of material, that's six hours for a half-hour podcast--and I have no idea if I could even get through a chapter in a half-hour, especially if I'm trying not to mumble!

So, I don't know. Maybe if I regarded the podcast as strictly a marketing task, I could justify it, but then again, maybe that marketing time & money would be better spent on something else. It seems such a potentially huge time suck--like redoing the layouts of the first two books. Not a task to be undertaken lightly!

Creating vs. receiving

You may recollect that, when I first tried to figure out what kind of book Trang was, I failed miserably. I thought it was "fun action adventure!" which it was clearly not. And I'm not the only one who has had these problems.

I mentioned this difficulty once to my sister, specifically this notion that Trang was fun action adventure. She immediately said, "What? Oh, no. I could see why maybe it was that way to write, but to read? No."

I've been watching The IT Crowd, which is excellent. One episode, "Something Happened," really applied here: In the episode, an IT guy named Roy (who is vaguely social and is played by Bridesmaid's Chris O'Dowd) confesses to another IT guy, Moss (who totally has Asperger's and is played by Richard Ayoade), that when he got a massage, the male masseuse ended the session by smooching him on the fanny.

Roy was quite traumatized by this and is afraid to tell anyone because he is terrified that people will find it funny. Of course, the audience did and does and always will. Roy confesses all this to Moss, who stares at him, without responding, for what O'Dowd later describes as a "giant pause." The longer Moss pauses, the funnier the scene becomes, because the audience is just waiting for him to start laughing. It's completely on par with the schawarma scene in The Avengers--the longer the silence lasts, the funnier it becomes.

Buuuuuuut...if you watch the blooper reel, you discover (8:12) that the giant pause was because O'Dowd forgot that the next line was his.

So, if you're O'Dowd, that episode is "The one where I totally blew it, and they left the mistake in to keep me humble, I guess." If you're the viewer, it's "The episode where Ayoade proves, without a doubt, that he is the on the same level as Gene Wilder as a comic-pause genius!!!"

You just never know. Everyone totally loves the scenes in Trust that are told from the point of view of an alien, and yet I was very nervous about those scenes, because they're such a departure from the rest of the book. But even though I was nervous about it, I went for it. I think you have to, because what people really love about, say, The Avengers is the weird, quirky shit--the schawarma--not the fact that it's a competent action movie.

Oh, hello, wall

The writing has been going so well! It's been getting easier and more fun every day, I have a great sense of where things are going, everything's just humming along.

So of course I get kind of lost in it and forget that I'm going to have to stop. Like, today.

I can bargain, try to keep the momentum going, get in dribs and drabs while I can. Sunday and Monday I may be able to write some. Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, Friday and Saturday are completely out of the question, however. Maybe I can get a little in Sunday, but Monday the kids become my full-time responsibility until school starts.

We can pretend I'll write on the weekends, but let's face it--I'm going to be spending the time lying very quietly in a dark room. I love those kids, but God they're noisy.

After the kids go back to school, I get to spend the greater part of September babysitting an aged relative who wishes to cross things off a bucket list. I may have fun, or I may spend a great deal of time in the waiting rooms of various hospitals--we shall see. I'm trying to suspend all expectations.

In any case, I'm grateful for the progress I've made, which has been substantial. Not only have I written quite a bit, but I've largely gotten over that initial "How do I start this thing!?!" hump and am into the A plot, which is a good place to be. Not that I won't be utterly freaked out when I start writing again in late September/early October.

Coming up

I have GeekGirlCon this Saturday--should be fun! I'll be making sure my flyers are actually in the freebie bags and reporting back on any interesting artists or panels. And Jane Espenson is going to be there--her blog is actually a really good resource for writers, even though she stopped updating it two years ago and it's specifically about television. Still, there's a lot of really useful stuff there on pacing, characters, plotting, and dialogue.

Way to screw up, guys

M. Louisa Locke has a devastating post on how freaking impossible it is to get visibility on Barnes & Noble or Kobo. Anyone running or launching an e-book retail site needs to take that post and have it printed everywhere, including their own skin.

It's been said many times, but the devil is in the details: You can't just compete with Amazon by having a "me-too" site up; if you want your retail site to rack up Amazon-style numbers of indie book sales, you need to compete on author service. No one seems to be doing that.

Trolls, drama queens, and your time

April Hamilton had a recent post about getting into a fight on-line and feeling like she was finally being herself! And it turns out that crazy Ewan Morrison (brace yourself--this is a shocker) likes to fight people on Twitter! And they like to fight him back!

Le sigh.

I know some writers are fairly new to on-line socializing (or on-line socializing outside their real-life social circles), which means that they are new to on-line fights. I was an early Browncoat; back in the Days of Yore when Firefly was just a show that had been cancelled after half a season and had no geek cred whatsoever, we were actively and repeatedly targeted for on-line harassment by variety of groups (fans of other shows, random assholes who thought we should just shut up and go home, etc.). So I know quite a bit about on-line fights.

I'll tell you something about on-line fights: They are almost never undertaken in good faith.

What do I mean by that? Well, let's say I honestly think X and you honestly think Y, and we disagree. We could debate why I think X is right and why you think Y is right. Maybe one of us would change the other's mind, maybe that wouldn't happen, but that would be the end of it.

But that's boring!!! Neither of us is going to be an Internet fuckwad if we stick to a civilized discussion of the issues!

What usually happens is more like this: You honestly think Y. I don't actually care (the vast majority of Firefly trolls back then had never seen the show and had absolutely no opinion about it), but I feel like having a fight--maybe my boss treated me badly earlier today, maybe I'm 12, maybe I'm an undiagnosed and unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. So I say, "Y? What kind of fuckwit likes Y!?! X is the only way to go!!!!! Anyone who doesn't like X should be shot and their body used as a latrine!"

Now, that's much more exciting! We could go for hours...days...even (and I've seen this happen) YEARS!!!! You could get a posse together, I could get a posse together, and we could avoid the painful business growing up and moving forward with our lives indefinitely!

And we could even brand ourselves this way, which is what Morrison is in all likelihood doing. Joe Konrath gleefully cops to being combative for his own purposes. It works for political pundits: Every time I read someone who writes "I can't believe what Rush Limbaugh/Ted Rall just said!!!" I roll my eyes--being an outrageous asshole is their job.

If it's not your job, and if you're not really getting anything out of it (and I mean really getting something out of it, not just an adrenaline surge), you're better off just moving on. You have better things to do with your time--or at least I hope you do.

I'm not saying that you can't be yourself or that you shouldn't stand up for yourself or that you should condone harassment (most sites have "report abuse" buttons, and you should use them). But the best way to do these things is usually not by engaging in endless rounds of argument with someone who will say quite literally anything to keep the fight going. (This is called "feeding trolls"--they just get more obnoxious because you're giving them what they want.) I thnk that's what people new to on-line socializing don't understand: Ninety-nine percent of the time, the fight itself is the point for these people--they don't want it ever to end, and they certainly are NEVER going to say, "Gee, yeah! Come to think of it, you're right!"

More on B&N's retail setup; making semi-decent advice suck

Edward Robertson is looking at Barnes & Noble now and deciding that it's going to be really hard to build an audience there because it's set up so that people who aren't already looking for your book are unlikely to come across it. Yup. Not that I've had huge sales anywhere, but I've had some sales everywhere except B&N.

And Passive Voice linked to an interview with Sue Grafton, in which she takes a kernel of semi-decent advice (don't publish before something is ready, which--hm, I could debate that one, actually, since as much as I love polish I think that as a practical matter you're better off erring on the side of getting it out there) and buries it in a truckload of horseshit about how self-publishing is lazy and stupid, and how you're better off spending six years being told that your stuff is great but they can't publish it anyway, because that is the sort of useful, high-quality, craft-honing feedback you can only get from traditional publishing.

If you're wondering why writing professionals need to stay on top of their industry, this is why--so you can give advice to young writers that won't harm them. Grafton's advice reminds me of when I was graduating from college and wondering how to start a career, and my mother suggested that I should move back home (to a place with truly epic rates of unemployment) and do charity work (until I got married, of course, at which point all of my problems would be magically solved forever). She gave me this advice in 1992, not 1962, if you're wondering. Anyway, it wasn't just quaint and old-fashioned--it was truly terrible career advice, and had I followed it, I simply would have never had a professional career. Grafton's advice is equally out of date and equally pernicious.

Uf!

Another day lost to the new computer--it will be worth it in the end to get rid of all the 10-to-15-year-old tech I have cluttering my office, but man, the clearing out is a major undertaking, especially if you're not content to just chuck it all in the trash. I'm gonna swing by FedEx and the thrift shop, and then I will be ALMOST done.

How to kill sales

Dean Wesley Smith has a great post on the importance of cover design and description in selling your book. I have to agree that it's surprisingly difficult when you're in the midst of writing a book to figure out the kind of book you wrote--it's just a major shifting of mental gears.

Ergonomics

So, part of the reason getting a new computer is such a pain for me is that I have to worry about stuff like the exact height of my monitor and how wide my keyboard is. (The old keyboard works with the new computer, BTW. The box for the "MADE IN THE USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!" shelving unit, which was supposed to contain two shelves and two end units, actually contained one shelf and four end units ("USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! We've got the best weed!!!"), but with the help of my trusty screw gun/drill, I was able to turn it into something even better suited to the task than the original.)

Anyway, you might think that stuff like that isn't worth it to worry about. I had a boss like that once, about 10 years ago. That's why I have to wear wrist braces while I type.

Actually, that's both too mean and far too kind. Said boss wanted to help. Everybody who heard about how my workstation was hurting my wrists (it was set up so that my wrists were bent as far back as they could go, and there was no apparent way to adjust it) thought that was really bad and really wanted to help fix it.

Unfortunately, it was a completely dysfunctional office, so of course my wrist pain (like everything else) had to spark a major turf war that took SIX MONTHS to resolve.

You heard me: SIX MONTHS.

Of course, by the end of it, my wrists were permanently damaged. And I took shit for wearing wrist wraps, despite the fact that at least two-thirds of the staff wore wrist braces of some sort, a level of RSI that I have never seen in any other workplace.

That, by the way, was the very last full-time job I ever worked.

I've been my own boss since then. I wear braces when I type, I'm careful about my set up, and as a result I no longer have constant wrist pain.

When we talk about writing--how to write, writing habits--we often don't talk about the fact that we're as dependent on our hands and wrists as any athlete. Don't assume, like I did, that the soreness will go away--stop it from happening to begin with. However much control you have, exercise it so that work doesn't hurt you. Don't try to tough it out or assume it's nothing worth worrying about. I wish I had started wearing stiff wrist braces the very first day, when I looked at that keyboard setup, thought, "Jesus! This is a mess!" and could not fix it. It would have cost me less than $30, and it would have saved me a world of pain and worry.

Progress report

With computer stuff, I wrote a mere 300 words today, but I also outlined the next chapter, which performs the rather important task of getting me out of Exposition Land and into A Plotville, so I'm glad to get that straightened out. As in Trust, handling the exposition is kind of a challenge--right now I'm sort of just roughing it in, you know, "Philippe goes here DESCRIBE STATION." (I'm a big fan of PRIMITIVE ALL CAPS in early drafts.) My hope is that this will help me dole out the exposition in reasonable dollops later--for example, if I see "He walked into the room and saw DESCRIBE PATCH DESCRIBE GEORGE DESCRIBE SHANTI" maybe I can split those things up a bit, especially if there's another DESCRIBE PATCH later on.