I write like…

Jul 19

Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Writing well | No Comments

Well, maybe I shouldn’t leave that all open-ended like that.  Some who don’t like my  work might choose to fill in the blank with their own idea of an appropriate noun or adjective.

But there really is a very interesting website that Radine Trees Nehring pointed out to me today.  It’s called “I Write Like”, and found at http://iwl.me/

The premise is that every writer has certain patterns they tend to follow: sentence length, number of adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc., in a sentence, how much dialogue, how choppy or protracted the dialogue is, etc.  At this site you put in a fairly large representative sample of your writing, and it compares it to a database of famous writers’ writing.  Then, it tells you who you write like!

I was excited and pleased to see that my prose is similar to Raymond Chandler’s! (I can only hope that it does NOT mean that I write like a dead guy.)

Why not drop by there, put some of your prose into the system, and see what it tells you?

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Copyrights, collective works, and misunderstandings

Jul 12

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing, The business of writing | 1 Comment

If you have investigated the Wolfmont website, you know that I have published quite a few anthologies.  It’s because I like the short story form, and believe it is a real challenge to write a short, succinct story that engages and entertains the listener–perhaps more challenging even than writing a decent novel.

The first anthology I ever published (2006) was titled Seven By Seven, and was an anthology of 49 flash fiction stories by seven different authors, all focused on the seven deadly sins as described by the Church. It was a success, earned a fair amount of money for all the authors, and in fact is still in print.

As I say, this was in 2006, and since I was new to the publishing business, I was not thinking of ebooks at the time, so there was no specific mention of this in the contract.  Along came the Kindle, and the publishing world started to change.  Early this year, I decided to put the book into Kindle and ePub format, primarily because people had been asking me if my company’s books were available in ebook format.  It was a lot of trouble, since I didn’t have the original word processing files for Seven By Seven, but ultimately I got it done.

The book didn’t do as well in ebook format–selling only three copies for a total of $5.25 in revenue.  But recently two of the authors from the original cadre of Seven By Seven contributors took issue with my conversion into ebook format, and began to make a public spectacle of it.

Now, I’ll admit right now that I was mistaken about copyright law in this, but it is an innocent mistake.  Before I did the ebook conversion, I had read what I thought were the relevant sections of law in the United States Copyright rules, as they apply to collective works. The book is copyrighted to my company, and my understanding was that the copyright applies to the entire work, in any format, although the copyright to the individual stories still remained with the original authors. So, I had proceeded with the conversion.  (Believe me, if I had not thought I was right, I would not have gone to the trouble of converting and restoring the word processing files!)

After the two authors contacted me, I called the US Copyright Office, and when I spoke with someone at the USCO, I asked them if copyright meant the entire work was copyrighted to me in any form, and the person I spoke with said yes, that it was.  They do say they will not offer legal advice, but they will answer basic questions about the rules.  I had also communicated with an intellectual property lawyer via the Internet, told him the problem, and he had agreed that my stance was correct. However, in order to try to stop the issue from escalating, I removed the Kindle version from Amazon and requested that Apple remove the ePub version from their iBookstore.

This morning, I called one more IP lawyer and spoke with him over the phone.  He was gracious enough to give me a few minutes of his time without payment, and I encourage anyone needing an IP lawyer to get in touch with Terry Williamson. Now, the truth is, what he told me didn’t make me happy, but at least it did clarify matters.

The world of publishing, especially digital publishing, is a rapidly changing one.  Ebooks present a new field of endeavor for lawyers and courts as they decide how to work with old assumptions about copyrights, print rights, and so forth. What it came down to, regardless of what the previous lawyer told me, and regardless of what the representative of the USCO may have said over the phone, copyright to a book in print form does not necessarily give the publisher the right to publish the book in any other format.  It appears that the publisher has this right, from the verbiage set down in the United States Code, but my guess is that this is an older rule and needs to be modified somehow to take newer ways of producing collective works into account.

In short, I was wrong.  It was an innocent mistake, but I was wrong.  The contract I had with those authors did not give me the right to publish the original book in any other form, no matter what I thought and no matter what the other IP lawyer had told me.

In my defense, I had researched the problem and thought I was in the right. I asked a lawyer, and I asked the source of the rules, the United States Copyright Office. Even before I spoke with the attorney today, I took the offending work off the Kindle platform, and as soon as Apple complies with my request, it should be off the Apple iBookstore platform as well (it has never sold a copy there, anyway.) And if they want it, I’ll be happy to send each of the seven authors seventy-five cents via PayPal, which is one-seventh of the total $5.25 I made from selling the ebook form.

Now, the truth is, I daresay that if I asked ten different IP lawyers about this issue, I’d get at least three different opinions, simply because this is such a new area of endeavor. But in the end, in this case at least, it is simpler to let it go.  After all, from a purely financial standpoint, I’ve already spent almost six times as much as I made on the ebook, simply to get an erroneous legal opinion from someone!

The exchange between that author and myself became particularly rancorous, primarily because the individual “went public” with the dispute, and made a lot of implications that I was trying to harm authors, that I was trying to steal from them, etc.  To me, this is something that should have been handled privately and without noising it about in a public forum.  That is tacky.

The dust has yet to settle, and whether or not this will be a lasting blow to Wolfmont’s reputation, I have no idea.  But I have learned from it, and in the end, that is a good thing.

Copyright 2010 Tony Burton

Literary Porn Drawing Winner

May 30

Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Writing well | 3 Comments

Well, the time is up and, even though I didn’t get as many entrants into the “Write Your Own Literary Porn” contest as I would have liked, I did get a fewparticipants.  (I think a lot of people were chicken!)

The randomly drawn winner is… Barb Goffman.  Here is her entry:

“My breath quickened. It was nearly time. Our weekly rendezvous. In moments we’d be together, and I’d melt into the pleasure, tuning out everything else. Sometimes I wish we had more time together, more time to for me to explore. But a part of me relished our limitations. They made every moment more precious. One day soon, we’ll have to part, but not now. Not today. Now I turn on my TV, ‘Lost’ comes on, and I sigh in ecstasy.”

Sadly, her true love is now a thing of the past, only memories now, but she does receive a nice, crisp copy of The Writer’s Journey Journal, as promised.

Congratulations, Barb!

Literary Porn

May 17

Posted by Tony Burton in The business of writing, Writing ideas from life, Writing well | 19 Comments

No, NO!  It’s not what you think!  I’m not talking about Hemingway writing about a three-way, or Michener writing… well, never mind what Michener might write.  The mind boggles.

What I’m talking about is a topic that arose recently on the Dorothy-L listserv, the idea that some people write about particular topics with such passion and descriptive phrases that show a love… nay, a lust for a particular pastime or object.  We’re talking about things like car porn, gun porn, airplane porn, food porn, desert racing porn, tool porn and even debt porn.  (I have to admit that last one is beyond me….)

One Dorothy-L subscriber mentioned that an article in Washington Monthly said this about Tom Clancy: “Tom Clancy may not be able to write a good love scene between a man and a woman, but he can certainly write a good love scene between a man and a weapons system.”

But, I confess: when someone complained that a few people had labeled his choices of crime fiction as spy porn and he felt aggrieved about that, I was the one who suggested that the people who made that observation were not talking about sex in the traditional sense, but rather that the books he liked glorified the action and technique of spying, revelled in it, got into the depths of it and rolled around in the clandestine nature of it in fits of ecstasy.  (Well, maybe I didn’t say it quite that way, but that’s what I meant.)  The television show “24″ is a great example of spy porn.

So, in defense of those who may attach a label of “___________ porn” to any form of literature, I offered my own off-the-cuff version of a short passage of literary knife porn.  For your reading enjoyment, here it is.  (Oh, and unless you are in a strangely controlling work environment, it is Safe For Work.)

“Ronnie held the sleek Gerber Mark II in his hand, feeling the hilt warm to his touch. As he turned it, light from the street lamp outside the window glinted on the blade and seemed to travel along the polished, razor-sharp edge, at last flashing at the needle-like point like a star breaking through the firmament. He smiled and nodded.  This was the one.  He took up the sheath and slid the weapon into it, his lips slightly parted as the steel slipped home between the snugly caressing folds of leather. He pulled on his jacket, covering the sheath hanging beneath his arm and embraced it to him as a lover. No one else would know it was there… but he would. He could feel it.”

A few people wrote me off-list and told me they really liked it, and a couple said they felt strangely excited by reading it.  I made a mental note of those folks and decided not to ever turn my back on them when there were sharp objects lying around.  (I don’t have a Gerber Mark II, but I have held one before and they are very nice blades.  I have a few knives, though, and probably the scariest one is my latest acquisition, a SOG SEAL Team knife, once called the SOG SEAL Knife 2000.)

Here’s what I’d love: If you are a writer, pick some subject or object you are really passionate about, and write a short “porn” piece about it—maybe 50 to 75 words—and post it here as a comment.  Remember, this is NOT real porn, so descriptions of personal plumbing or reproductive/pleasuring are NOT what I’m interested in.  I want to see how you can turn your hand to writing a short scene that evokes a feeling of passion… focus… perhaps even an obsession about an object or activity.  See if you can make the readers here start to fan themselves.

If you are NOT a writer, I’ll bet you have read a piece somewhere that is a porn piece.  Maybe it’s someone waxing rhapsodic about a particular car, or drooling over a certain computer.  Show us that piece, either by typing it into the comment area, C&P’ing it in, or giving us a link to it.

Come on people, show us just how much verbal sensuality you can dredge up!  And I make this offer: I will send a copy of The Writer’s Journey Journal to one of those who submits a sample of his or her own personal literary porn, chosen by a random drawing from among the names of those who submit samples.  I will draw from among those names next week, and announce the winner here.

As someone once said, “Let the bloodbath begin….”

Copyright 2010  Tony Burton

More About Returns

Apr 25

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | 1 Comment

The idea of books being returned by booksellers is a perennial problem, even in this day of ebooks.  Recently I got into a bit of a… shall we say “warm” discussion with an author about returns.  The author couldn’t understand why I did not wish to take all returns, universally.

Returns are a horrible, horrible thing for small press publishers.  Here is a fable of woe for you, based on a real-world event.*
Let’s use that same theoretical book that sells for $10, with a 45% discount to wholesalers.
Also, let’s say that I am having it printed on demand, since that’s what 95% of my books are.
Let’s also say that it costs me 3.50 to print it, and I elected to make the book returnable.
I’ll also say that I pay a 75-cent per copy royalty, which is 7.5% of retail, and that’s about in the middle of the usual range.
OK.  The book costs me $3.50, I pay .75, so the book actually costs me $4.25.  I get $5.50 from the wholesaler for each copy sold, so I make $1.25 on each copy, and from that I have to pay for cover design, ancillary marketing materials, promotional copies sent out to reviewers, etc.
I get that money 90 days after the month the books are purchased, even if the retailer pays the distributor for them on the spot, simply because that’s how the business works.
Now, let’s take it a little further.  Let’s say that the book wins an award of some kind… say the Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction.  Woo-hoo!  That’s great!
So, the book buyer for B&N gets excited about it, and orders 200 copies through distribution.
But the economy takes a downturn, and sales don’t do too well.  The B&N book buyer tried to stick it out because he’s embarrassed over making a blunder, and spreads the copies around all over the U.S. so no single store carries more than one, maybe two copies.  I get paid in 90 days, and I pay the author her royalties of $150.
The story gets a little sadder.  Sales plummet in general, and after a year, the book goes out of print.  The author gets her last royalty check, and we part friends.
Six months later, some bean counter at Barnes & Noble takes a look at things and says, “Holy cow! We’ve got 184 copies of this book sitting around, and we haven’t sold a copy since third quarter of last year. Send them all back!”  They can do that because we are still within that 12-month window after the book goes out of print.
Step back a bit.  When I set up that title for the $10 book and made it returnable, I had to choose whether I wanted them to destroy all the copies that came back, or if I wanted to have them shipped to me.  That’s a quandary there.
If I tell them to destroy them all, then I don’t have the chance to salvage any of them at all.  Maybe quite a few of them are salable: not stained, torn, fingerprinted, etc., but probably not all of them.  Maybe I could resell some of them.
BUT… if I tell them I want the books sent to me when they are returned, then I have to pay $2.00 per each copy returned, no matter what condition it’s in.  And you know what?  That $2.00 per book is more than I would have MADE on each copy I sold.
Let’s see:  184 copies returned and shredded, I lose the sales revenue for 184 copies, or $644.00.  And after that, I have absolutely nothing to show for it, plus I have already paid the author her royalties of $150 and there’s no way to recoup that.  So, effectively I’m out $794.00.
If I have chosen to have those copies sent to me, I’m still out the $794… PLUS I’m out another $368 for the returned book fees on the 184 copies, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to salvage a few books out of those returned that I can effectively re-sell somewhere, maybe to a remainders dealer for pennies on the dollar.  Essentially I’m out over $1,100 but have a POSSIBLE chance of selling some of those returned books… at a loss.
It’s an untenable, unsurvivable situation for most small press publishers, and why so few of us accept returns, and why those who do, usually regret it as they are going out of business.  Indie booksellers cry and whine about not being able to return books and how they have to be able to do it to survive.  Well, I feel no empathy.  If a bookseller buys a book of mine that doesn’t sell, he can mark it down or just hold onto it, and even if he doesn’t sell it, he’s out the cost of the book—in this case, $7.00.
If he returns it, I’m out the cost of the book, PLUS the royalties I’ve already paid on the book, PLUS the returned book fee if I said I want them to send the books to me when they are returned.  So, I’m out $5.50 + $0.75 + $2.00, or $8.25 per copy.
In this whole scenario the only ones who make out in the end are the distributors.  They have no real risk.  They serve as a conduit for the books going both ways.  They make money when the books are going in one direction, and they get money returned to them when the books go back the other way.
* I actually talked to an author once whose book took a plunge very, very similar to this one–only it was much worse.  His book won a big award, and the publisher pushed it hard to the book buyers for the chains.  The printed and ordered and RETURNED copies were more like 2,000.  It ruined the small press publisher, and the author had a very, very hard time finding another publisher to take him on.  His reputation followed him around like the smell of a skunk.

Returns are a terrible problem for small press publishers.  Here is a fable of woe for you, based on a real-world event.*

Let us talk about a theoretical book published by a small-press publisher (my company) and let’s say that same theoretical book sells for $10, with a 45% discount to wholesalers.

Also, let’s say that I am having it printed on demand, since that’s what 95% of my books are.

Let’s also say that it costs me $4.00 to print it, and I elected to make the book returnable.

I’ll also theorize that I pay a 75-cent per copy royalty, which is 7.5% of retail, and that’s about in the middle of the usual range.

OK.  The book costs me $4.00 to print and I pay a 75-cent royalty, so the book actually costs me $4.75.  I get $5.50 from the wholesaler for each copy sold, so I make 75 cents on each copy, and from that I have to pay for cover design, ancillary marketing materials, promotional copies sent out to reviewers, etc.

I get that money 90 days after the month the books are purchased, even if the retailer pays the distributor for them on the spot, simply because that’s how the business works.

Now, let’s take it a little further.  Let’s say that the book wins an award of some kind… say the Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction.  Woo-hoo! That’s great!

So, the book buyer for B&N gets excited about it, and orders 200 copies through distribution.

But the economy takes a downturn, and sales don’t do too well.  The B&N book buyer tries to stick it out because he’s embarrassed over making a blunder, and spreads the copies around all over the U.S. so no single store carries more than one, maybe two copies.  I get paid my $300 in 90 days, and I pay the author her royalties of $150.  I have $150 left, and I use it to pay bills.

The story gets a little sadder.  Sales plummet in general, and after a year, the book goes out of print.  The author gets her last royalty check, and we part friends.

Six months later, some bean counter at Barnes & Noble takes a look at things and says, “Holy cow! We’ve got 184 copies of this book sitting around, and we haven’t sold a copy since third quarter of last year. Send them all back!”  They can do that because we are still within a 12-month window after the book goes out of print. (This is required for returnability by most distributors.)

Step back a bit.  When I set up that title for the $10 book and made it returnable, I had to choose whether I wanted them to destroy all the copies that came back, or if I wanted to have them shipped to me.  That’s a quandary there.

If I tell them to destroy them all, then I don’t have the chance to salvage any of them.  Maybe quite a few of them are salable: not stained, torn, fingerprinted, etc., but probably not all of them.  This often happens, but maybe I could resell some of them.

However, if I tell them I want the books sent to me when they are returned, then I have to pay $2.00 per each copy returned, no matter what condition it’s in.  I don’t get to pick and choose. And remember: that $2.00 per book is more than the gross margin on each copy I sold, much less the net margin.

Let’s see:  184 copies returned and shredded, I lose the sales revenue for 184 copies, or $736.  And after that, I have absolutely nothing to show for it, plus I have already paid the author her royalties of $150 and there’s no way to recoup that.  So, effectively I’m out $886.

If I have chosen to have those copies sent to me, I’m still out the $886… plus I’m out another $368 for the returned book fees on the 184 copies, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to salvage a few books out of those returned that I can effectively re-sell somewhere, maybe to a remainders dealer for pennies on the dollar.  Essentially I’m out over $1,200 but have a POSSIBLE chance of selling some of those returned books, although at a loss.

It’s an untenable, unsurvivable situation for many, if not most small press publishers, and why so few of us accept universal returns and why those who do, usually regret it at about the time they are going out of business.  Indie booksellers often insist on being able to return books, saying they have to be able to do it to survive.  Consider this, though: if a bookseller buys a book of mine that doesn’t sell, he can mark it down or just hold onto it, and even if he doesn’t sell it, he’s only out the wholesale price of the book.

If he returns it, I’m out the wholesale price of the book, PLUS the royalties I’ve already paid on the book, PLUS the returned book fee if I said I want them to send the books to me when they are returned.  So, I’m out $5.50 + $0.75 + $2.00, or $8.25 per copy. Maybe I can recoup some of that, but maybe not.

In this whole scenario the only ones who make out in the end are the distributors and wholesalers.  They have no real risk.  They serve as a conduit for the books going both ways.  They make money when the books are going in one direction, and they get money returned to them when the books go back the other way.

*As for this fable, I actually talked to an author once whose book took a plunge very, very similar to this one–only it was much worse.  His book won a big award, and the publisher really promoted to the book buyers for the chains.  The ordered and RETURNED copies were more like 2,000.  It ruined the small press publisher, and the author had a very, very hard time finding another publisher to take him on.  His reputation followed him around like the smell of a skunk.

The next time you are upset over a publisher who doesn’t want to accept returns universally, stop and think about it for a moment, and ask yourself if it’s fair to the publisher.

Writerly Resources Take 3

Apr 17

Posted by Tony Burton in The business of writing, Writing well | 11 Comments

As a writer, sometimes we need to have special resources that are OUTSIDE what we might think of as writing resources.  After all, whether we like it or not, each writer is also a businessperson.  We produce a product (composed words) to a standard (sometimes our own, sometimes our editors) and we attempt to get consumers (readers) to use our product.

So, here are a couple of business items that are free or very, very cheap, that could come in very handy to the author on a budget, along with what I think are great information resources for crime writers.

Free incoming fax lines.

Often I’m asked if I can take a fax, whether it’s a contract, a set of specifications, or whatever.  Yeah, I know, it’s the age of email, but there are lots of places where they have standard forms in hardcopy and they simply are not going to go to the trouble of retyping the document to send it to you as an email attachment.  Some people are afraid that you might manage somehow to change the original if it is a word processing document. For whatever reason, it’s nice to be able to say, “Sure, here’s my fax number!  Just send it along.”

Online fax services are very, very useful. The fax is sent to a number provided by the company, and when a fax arrives, you get an email. In the email, there is a link to view the fax and print it if you wish.  The faxes are archived there for a period of time, too.  You don’t require a second line or a fax machine… unless you’d like to send faxes as well.  Of course, these services also offer paid options where you can send faxes, especially useful if you already have a scanner attached to your computer. Here are a couple of online providers of incoming fax numbers, that don’t cost anything.

Accepting credit cards at book events.

Many (if not most) of the time at book signing events there is someone who handles much of the book sales, collects money, etc.  This is especially true if you are the type of author who does these events primarily at bookstores or organized conventions.  But many authors, myself included, have discovered that there are sales to be made at less bookseller-oriented events: craft fairs, smaller conventions or conferences, street fairs, etc.  At many of these locations, you don’t have a central purchase point.  Now, for a long time I gladly accepted only checks and cash.  But at the last three events where I sold and there was no bookseller present to handle sales, I lost quite a few sales because I was unable to take credit cards on the spot!  This is not only bad business, it disappoints potential readers.

My wife is one of those people who only carries cash when I browbeat her into doing so.  She pays for everything with a credit card, and we pay off the bill in toto each month.  (She also uses the collected card points to buy birthday gifts and anniversary gifts, to the point where she seldom actually spends money on anything like that!)  The reason I want her to carry cash is for those out-in-the-boonies places where you may need ten or twenty dollars, and nobody takes Discover.

I grew tired of losing sales, but it was frustrating to go to my bank and be told that I would be charged upwards of $400 per year to process credit cards, whether I needed to do so or not, and they would also take about 3.5% of each sale.  And, if I wanted to process them on the spot, I’d have to buy a special (translation: EXPENSIVE) device and pay an extra monthly fee.  Hey, I’m a poor author here!

Finally, though, I found a great place that offers a very affordable plan, and allows me to process my sales either when I get home (from my computer) or even from my cell phone, on the spot!  Their basic plan is $35 per YEAR, and allows processing of Visa and MasterCard payments from your computer, via the Internet.  The next step up is $60 per year, and allows you also to accept Discover and American Express, and to process payments on a phone (cellular or landline) without any special equipment.  That’s a heck of a big savings for me over $400 per year, plus the cost of the special wireless device and the extra wireless processing fees.  The service is called ProPay, and is located at https://epay.propay.com/ I know, it’s not FREE, but it’s quite a bit cheaper than any other service I have checked out, including PayPal and my own banks.

Gun and ammunition information.

It always amazes me how many crime writers (fiction and nonfiction alike) are absolutely clueless about the device most often used in the stories they write: The Gun.  I read where someone “clicks off the safety on his revolver” and I go into spasms.  I see where the perpetrator used a “12-gauge rifle” and shudder.  People, people, people!  You wouldn’t write a story about a race car driver and rhapsodize about how the driver “dropped the transmission into 4th gear and peeled off from the starting line,” so why be inaccurate in use of guns in your stories?  It is sloppy, it is unprofessional, and it really bothers those of us who are anal-retentive gun information freaks.  Here are some online sources of information that will help you to look really knowledgeable and keep you from kicking the in-the-know readers out of your story in dismay.  (And the information is FREE.)

  • The Gun Zone  http://www.thegunzone.com/
  • Genitron  http://www.genitron.com/
  • About.com Guns and Shooting Forum  http://hunting.about.com/od/guns/Guns_and_Shooting.htm
  • Carry Concealed  http://www.carryconcealed.net/


    • Stay tuned–there are more Writerly Resources coming your way!

    And let me know if these have been helpful to you.  I love to read comments from my readers!

    Positively Prosaic

    Apr 11

    Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Language | No Comments

    Do you ever subject others to your writing?  I mean… excuse me… do you ever share your creativity with others in the form of the written word?

    I know I do, in a variety of ways.  I always have my wife read what I’m writing, and solicit her feedback.  She is honest, too, which occasionally makes for some very depressing letdowns.

    Sometimes it’s something like, “Honey, I know you put so much of yourself into your writing, but… well, this just doesn’t work for me.”

    We do have some differences in taste in reading materials, and that’s OK.  Often I have to ask her, “OK, Lara, now read this from the viewpoint of a person who enjoys crime fiction.  Don’t critique the subject matter, but look at the style, word choices, technique, etc.”  She’s flexible enough to do that, and it really helps.  Luckily we are well-aligned in a lot of other ways, which helps to keep things motoring along smoothly.

    I saw this comic recently:

    Pearls Before Swine

    If you are sometimes called upon to give appraisals of your friends or loved ones’ writing, maybe it’s time to pick up a few new words to use that sound better than they really are.

    Like this blog entry: prosaic.

    Oy, what a character!

    Mar 26

    Posted by Tony Burton in Writing well | No Comments

    Character Development. That’s the thing that your parents said came from disciplining yourself to pick up your room and work an after-school job, or the thing that your coach said came from sweating your butt off during pre-season workouts.

    But it’s also an important part of writing an interesting story, whether short or long.

    It’s important that your characters be engaging, but characters for different types of stories usually have different characteristics.  A literary novel, for example, usually is focused on the development of the characters as they interact with each other and the environment of the story, and ultimately shows that the protagonist (at least) has grown and become a different person during the course of the novel.  At the outset we may love the protagonist, we may loathe him/her, or we may have some feeling along the continuum between these two extremes.  What is important is the interaction of the characters and how they change during the story.  I understand this, and don’t mind it a bit.  Kafka’s Gregor Samsa or Twain’s Huckleberry Finn are excellent examples.

    In a crime novel, on the other hand, most readers will say that they want a protagonist that they can relate to, identify with, or perhaps fantasize about being.  (I’ve heard a couple of female readers simply say they fantasize about being WITH Jack Reacher, but that’s a different thing!)  Sure, there may be some growth and maturing of the character during the novel, but that’s not the focus of a crime novel.  The focus is on solving the mystery, or stopping the villain, so that “good” ultimately triumphs.  Is “good” always GOOD?  Maybe not, but it’s all relative.  (Moral relativism is a large part of crime fiction, else we would not condone Sherlock Holmes asking Dr. Watson to help him break into Charles Augustus Milverton’s home to steal incriminating blackmail letters.)

    Of course, we don’t want a two-dimensional character in any sort of story.  (Leaving aside the wonderful novel Flatland by Abbott.)  A flat protagonist make it difficult for the reader to connect with that character, and thus the reader is always kept on the fringes of the story instead of being an integral part of it.

    The best stories I have read have not been those with the most beautiful passages of description or the most poetic combinations of words, but those where I connected with the main character—where I cared what happened to that character, where I was tense when there was danger, where I laughed when he said something funny, or cried when she was sad.  If the character cannot make me feel emotions based on what he or she is going through, there is something wrong.

    I know that genre fiction is supposed to be plot-driven more than character-driven, but there needs to be a blend of both for the story to have wide appeal.  Sure, a book that has pencil-sketched characters and is primarily action and events occurring, with characters reacting to the events in a wild drive to survive, will have fans.  But it will not have the kind of impact that the same story would have if the characters are empathetic and “real” in their development and portrayal.   Tell me which of the following would have the most emotional impact on you:

    • A young woman’s body is found in an alley, with no identification.
    • A young single mother’s body is found in an alley, with a bag of broken baby food jars beside her and a baby rattle, still in the package, clutched in her hand.

    Or, here:

    • He screamed at the man in the chair, “I can’t stand it any more.  I’m leaving!”
    • Watson screamed at Holmes, sitting there calmly smoking his pipe, “I can’t stand it any more!  I’m leaving!”

    In the first one, I have no doubt you felt a more immediate connection with the dead young single mother as a victim, than you did with the stranger.  And in the second case, you probably would be more drawn to find out what is going on with Watson and Holmes, than with some unknown persons with no history or character depth.  Sure, I hijacked some characters from A.C. Doyle, but the point is that having a well-developed character creates more reader interest with anything that happens in the story.

    If you are primarily a reader, what do you look for in the protagonist of your favorite type of literature?

    If you are a writer, what do you do to make your characters fully-fleshed and interesting?

    Inquiring minds want to know!

    Ebooks – Nifty, But Still Immature

    Mar 14

    Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | 15 Comments

    As someone with more than a few ebooks in publication, I’m thrilled with the advent of ebooks in general.  Kindle versions of both Wolfmont and Honey Locust books have done well, and I’m pleased about that.  Plus, we have some other versions of ebooks for sale at The Digital Bookshop, and those have been moving, too, though at a slower rate than the Kindle versions on Amazon.

    But I hear rumblings of discontent from both readers and authors about a few things, and I’d like to address a couple of those things. (No, we won’t talk about DRM here, as that is a business decision and not a technical one.)  One of them is the multitude of formats: ePub, Mobi, PRC, PDB, LIT, LRF, PDF, ad nauseum.  But think about this: it took a very long time for the most basic of business documents, the word processor document, to settle down to two or three basic formats for most of the business world: Microsoft Word, RTF, and OpenDocumentText.  There are still a few holdouts using WordPerfect, and many home and non-business users using Microsoft Works, but on the whole we have very few standard formats.  This has only come about fairly recently, though, and think of how long word processors have been around!  The first home word processor I ever had any experience with was for the Coleco Adam in 1982, and the next one was on an Apple IIc in 1984.  Of course, neither of these machines could read word processor files from the other.  Think of how long ago that was, and how long it has taken for the industry to settle down to a basic two or three formats!

    The second big issue is the apparent differences in how the same ebook document will look, depending on which e-reader or software package you use to read it.  There are many dedicated e-readers on the market: the Kindle, Sony has two or three, of course the new nook from Barnes & Noble, and lesser-known dedicated e-readers from Ectaco, Plastic Logic, etc.  As for ebook reading software, there are yBook, Adobe Digital Editions, EReader, Stanza, Mobipocket… and there are often versions of these to use on different platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and a variety of smartphones and PDAs.  But, often the same ebook file will look very different when viewed on two different e-reader programs!

    For those of you who are upset with this aspect of ebooks, let me remind you of something: HTML, the common term for Hypertext Markup Language.  HTML was first defined in 1990 and was introduced to the public in 1991.  Since that time, its use has multiplied geometrically as the old ARPANET/MILNET became the Internet and now almost everyone thinks of the World Wide Web as the primary highway for the Internet, although that was not originally the case.  Even though HTML is at least nineteen years old, there still issues with its performance when you move from one platform to another.  Have you never experienced the the weirdness where you go to a web page and you are told, “Sorry, you cannot view this page with your browser.”  Or if you are a web designer, you probably have seen how some browser settings can totally screw up a beautiful page you just created.

    Ebooks in general, and ePub and Mobi formats for ebooks in particular, are nowhere near the maturity of HTML, yet somehow many people expect them to be totally solid and stable across all platforms.

    I’m here to tell you: it aint that way, folks, and probably is not likely to be that way for some time. You’re going to have glitches.  Sometimes a file will look beautiful on a Sony reader, but look like crap on your PC when you view it through Stanza, or even through Adobe Digital Editions (one of the cleanest of the readers.)  Or it may look great on your computer, but when you read it on your iPhone, it may look… well, odd!  The original font or font size may not carry over, and sometimes the centering or spacing will be off–but only on some platforms, and if the original ebook creator didn’t test it on your particular platform, he or she may not realize it.

    Even more annoying, they may not be able to fix it even if they DO know about it.  I know that I have tweaked and finagled an ebook where it looked beautiful on Adobe Digital Editions, and when I took it to Stanza… oy vey! Such a mess it was!  And even the messes are not consistent, because the next one I create in the exact same way may look great on the Stanza platform, but not so hot on the eReader.

    Here’s the  bottom line: If you want to read or produce ebooks at this point, you’re going to need a couple of qualities–patience and understanding.  Nobody can produce ebooks, even in the most popular formats (ePub and Mobi/PRC), that look great in every possible reader.  About the only way you can create an ebook that looks exactly as the original publisher wanted it to look, is to publish it as a PDF file, and even though that is the type of ebook that hews most closely to the original in visual presentation, it seems that not so many people want that.

    Oh–I guess you could distribute the ebook as a text file, but that removes from the publisher the ability to use special formatting, boldfacing, italics, underlining, or any of the other cool things that help make a book more readable and understandable.  It condenses and pares the book down to its essence–words alone–and while that is sometimes enough, often it handicaps the publisher from making the greatest possible impact with the ebook.

    I guess we all need to take a deep breath and relax, try to understand that ebooks are still in their toddler-hood, if not infancy, and it will probably take quite a while before there is both a shakeout to standardize the “best” two or three formats, and before there is some true standardization that means your copy of War and Peace will look the same on a Sony reader as it will on your Apple iPad or your little netbook.  You wouldn’t toss out your baby because he didn’t conform to all your expectations, would you?  Well, have some patience with ebooks, too, because they are still developing.

    Hey, at least we don’t have monks sitting in dark scriptoriums, writing out one or two pages of text a day!

    Monk in scriptorium

    Monk in scriptorium

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    Writerly Resources, Take 2

    Mar 13

    Posted by Tony Burton in Writing well | 3 Comments

    Here are a couple more things that may be of assistance to the budding… or experienced… writer of tantalizing tales.

    Statistics. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) once quoted Benjamin Disraeli as saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Even if that is true, sometimes a handy statistic can help prove a point, or establish a plot point, or make a character sound knowledgeable.  Here is a site that is (more or less) a clearinghouse of statistical resources: http://www.robertniles.com/data/

    yWriter.  If you’re one of those writers who may occasionally need help keeping scenes, chapters, and so forth sorted out (and, really which of us doesn’t??), you might want to give yWriter a look-see.  It is a freeware program written for Windows, designed specifically with writing novels in mind.  As it is FREE, it might not hurt to download it and check it out.  It may not help you, but then again, it may be just what you are looking for to get that monster of an unfinished novel under control. http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

    CIA World Factbook. Need information to build the backstory for that rogue who is ripping off your character’s jewelry?  Need to know that Mexico is actually a larger country, in square kilometers, than Mongolia?  Want to know what the flag, currency and major products of export are for Bangladesh?  All this sort of information, and much more, can be found at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html (This assumes, of course, that you trust the Central Intelligence Agency.)

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