Existential Publication Questions (Mailbox)

Forget the procedure questions about publishing. What about the existential ones?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer one question about once a week.  I will use your first name ONLY, unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. And when I say one question, of course I mean five or six.]   


Katie (the anxious academic) writes:

Hi Chris,

Thank you so much for your page! It’s really helpful and uplifting for a stressed-out grad student like me.

I am a first-time author looking down the barrel of publication with a small house. Not only am I a first-time author, but I am a first-time FICTIONAL author which adds another layer of complexity to my writing. It’s been really fun and exciting and my editor is a godsend, but this is a terrifying process for someone who’s used to academic writing and has never published before.

I have several questions and it’s your page so you can answer as many as you’d like: Is it normal to feel really anxious about publication and if so, how do you deal with it? Do you know of any successful authors who have crossed genres like me? Is it unrealistic? What if nobody reads/likes my book? Am I overthinking everything?

Thanks!

My reply:

Hi there! I'm so glad that my particular cocktail of f-bombs and academia side-eye doesn't scare away ALL the grad students. My relationship to higher learning is often best described as a parent's, "I'm  only disappointed because I know you're fucking better than this."

"Now go to your ivory tower and think about what you've done.  No...wait. You'll probably write a paper or something, and that's how we got into this mess. Go anywhere but your ivory tower, talk to actual people, and do some praxis."

So before I get to your questions, let me just congratulate you. What an exciting time you've reached! Finishing a book is an amazing experience. There's still a lot ahead, but that first massive push is in your rearview mirror.

I'm going to plumb your academic background (which is not nearly as fun as it sounds) for a metaphor to give you some advice that you can keep in mind as I get to your questions. Remember that your objectives are big and will take many steps and years to achieve, but your goals are much smaller and can probably be broken down themselves into single-serving steps. If someone just took all the end products of what you needed to get an advanced degree and said "This is it. Go to it," it would overwhelm almost anyone. But that's not what you do. You start with classes. You get an advisor. You refine your ideas. You have a sense of what's expected before you start. You lose some sleep of COURSE, but you also kind of learn the next step as you go. And now you might remember feeling some terror at that first day of OMGITSSOMUCH at grad school, but there's no reason to be terrified.

This is a useful way to think about big life accomplishments (like publication). Just remember to take deep breaths, concentrate most of your attention on what's right in front of you, and focus on THE NEXT STEP. It's easy to publish a book if you never think of yourself as doing that. You're just going to query one agent a day for a few weeks. You're just going to do some revision. You're just going to go over some changes with a copyeditor. You're just going to let your agent do their thing. You're just going to sign some paperwork. You're just going to focus on something else for a few months and try not to stress eat literal cardboard. You're just going to go to a thing and sign some books. You're just a published author...... Oh HEY!!!

So let's get on to those questions while I still have three people's attention.


Is it normal to feel really anxious about publication and if so, how do you deal with it? 

So, so, so normal. I have a number of published authors on my friendslist (and several more who are in the shopping-for-agents/publishers state), and this is a really, truly stressful time for them. Among the worst moments of their lives. One says they are generally crankier than when they were quitting smoking, and another is trying to coordinate vacations to get their spouse and child out of the house so they will still be married when it's all over. ("You must leave Jeffery. You must leave, or your next coster-less cranberry juice will become an additional verse in the "Cell Block Tango.")

One keeps asking for help hiding bodies. I laugh nervously.

You're coming down from the adrenaline rush of a huge project but you still have to go through the process of SELLING that project. That's a lot of stress and emotion and uncertainty hitting you at once, and it all feels focused on something you've poured your SOUL into for probably at least the last year or two. No one in the world is going to be at their best during that––least of all not we usually-quiet writers who are not used to having to put ourselves "out there" most of the time.


Do you know of any successful authors who have crossed genres like me? Is it unrealistic? 

Yes!  I mean NO!  I mean..... Um....YES I know successful authors and NO it's not unrealistic. Fortunately crossing the fiction/non-fiction divide is common and easy, and writers do it all the time. Unfortunately what they can't do is cross the "genre divide" when that word is used in a slightly different way.

Most writers whose last names are not King or Rowling are locked into whatever fiction genre they are known for (and even for them, they can't stray too far*). If they want to cross genres, they generally have to have a pen name. It is not unheard of for a multi-bestseller to be REJECTED by a publisher if they write something out of their established fiction genre. This is because author names are a lot like branding, and if someone expecting a SF western crossover picks up your book to discover erotic horror, they may never buy anything from you again.

*King could do Eyes of The Dragon as long as it was Fantasy with a grisly six-page horroresque description of a guy dying from magic poison, but Rowling had to publish detective fiction under a pen name.


What if nobody reads/likes my book? 

Well.....that's always a possibility, and I know that is really the ONLY thing on your mind right now, but the best advice I can give you is to try everything in your power not to think like that. Treat it like a numbers game. You wouldn't have gotten this far if everyone hated it. Some people will like it. Some will love it. Some will not like it. You have a lot of work ahead of you finding the former group, and the more you kind of look at the next step and the WORK, the easier this part is going to be.

We all feel like we chip a little piece of our soul off when we write something big like this and that it's US being accepted or rejected by the world. I've seen writers hang up their pencils and never write again if this moment didn't bend their way. This part of the process is a month's-long version of that torturous moment in reality television where we find out if we're going home or advancing to the next round.

The more you just look at this as work, the easier this part will be. There's more to be done. There's the next book to write. There's feedback to incorporate. There's craft to refine. There's a short story you've been meaning to get to. There's second steps if you get some suggestions on how to improve the book. The more this is just a job and you're just going to do the shit out of it with all your heart and soul, the less something like this will seem utterly salubrious or utterly devastating to your invested ego and it will just be good news or a setback on an arc of your career that you intend to keep slogging away on no matter what happens. Once our ego is separated from this one bit of news and its validation of us in ways we probably aren't even admitting to yet (as much as that separation is even possible), then we can more objectively handle our failures (and successes) with much more professional acumen. (Imagine if your thesis were rejected. Would you pack up and go back to the farm? When you got your advanced degree, was that the last step and you were done?)

Even if you just have to say, "Right now, tonight, I'm making pasta primavera with peas, asparagus, and broccoli," just keep focusing on the next step.

Am I overthinking everything?

Let's pretend I said yes. Are you going to stop?

It's in a writer's nature to create a million scenarios in our imaginations, and we've just been plunked into one of the most stressful moments of "waiting to see" of our lives. There's almost nothing we can do BUT overthink everything.

Hang in there Katie. And focus on the work.

Best Modern Fantasy (LAST CHANCE TO VOTE!)

What is the best fantasy book (or series) written between 1976 and 2000? 

This poll is gonna be over pretty soon. I want to start our next poll (horror) in time to post the results on Halloween because I'm cheesy and sentimental like that. So to make sure there's enough time for nominations and possibly semi final polls, I'm going to be wrapping THIS poll up in the next few days. So get in there and make your will known.

Everyone will get three (3) votes. Use them....wisely.

The poll itself is on the bottom left of the side menus, below the "About the Author."

Flip flop

For the several (okay okay, the TWO) of you following along who are wondering about the update schedule, I'll be switching Tues and Wed this week. No post (more than this) for Tues, and our regular post tomorrow. This is because my doctor had appointment slots today, but not tomorrow.

Yesterday was an admin day.

Sapiosexual

I think about the word "sapiosexual" a lot. 

See, I have dozens of circles of people I interact with on social media who––while there might be one or two examples of cross-pollination––do not generally interact with each other. There are social issues conscious circles and OTHER social justice issues conscious circles and friends and people who follow me as a writer and people I game with and people I used to work with or went to high school with (you know, who didn't turn out to be total unrepentant racists). So I see a lot of conversations evolve among one group that AREN'T EVEN HAPPENING in others.

Like the conversation about "sapiosexual."

Among one group of friends, this word has been the focus of considerable scrutiny and criticism for about the last five years. They have unpacked and deconstructed it extensively. It starts as a lovely thought: that one is attracted only to people's minds and not their bodies. But interrogating that "I like brains" impulse often turns up some underlying biases, many that are probably unintended.

• These folks have considered the ways in which we often talk not really about intelligence itself, but what our culture considers to be valuable. Howard Gardner describes eight types of intelligence (Naturalist, Musical, Logical-mathematical, Interpersonal, Bodily-kinesthetic, Linguistic, Intra-personal, Spatial*) of which two, perhaps three get counted within our culture as counting towards the label of "smart." Probably athletes with phenomenal, near-preternatural levels of spatial and kinesthetic and intrapersonal intelligence are not who gets deemed "smart" even though those folks have JUST as many neurons firing upstairs as someone with a sophisticated vocabulary and a working understanding of computer programming languages. [*Note: Some sources add a ninth––Existential––but Gardner stops at eight.] 
• They point out that the way we test for intelligence is ethnocentric and assumes a white cultural background. This has been shown in several studies of its pervasive methodological flaws. To this day, IQ tests privilege white people of higher wealth backgrounds.
• They consider why we place such a high premium on linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligence. Essentially verbal and mathematical are the only "aptitudes" early education is interested in, and even by college there's not much difference.
• Beyond that, they consider the ways in which the ways the outward expressions of said "intelligence" is far more often linked to education, which makes it a little bit classist, and a formal academic dialect of the language, which often makes it racist as well.
• At this point these folks see "intelligence" (as usually valued by a self-identified sapiosexual) as looking a lot more like a middle-class or higher upbringing and a set of cultural values that matches up with whiteness. 
• And these folks point out that even if intelligence were better measured and understood and disproportionate values not placed on linguistic and logical/mathematical by academia, bragging about how one's attraction would not be inclusive of folks with processing or learning disorders that affect performance in these areas wouldn't be, in a manner of speaking, cool. Sort of like the intellectual equivalent of announcing proudly that you'll never date someone with a BMI over 22. 
• So it kind of lands as usually classist, often racist, and definitely ableist.

For five years this group has been kicking around this discussion, crystallizing their thoughts, solidifying their resolve around how problematic the word is, and calcifying their initial reactions to seeing or hearing it in the wild. Though a few at the outset were like "wait, but what if we like brains?" and we talked about it gently (way back then), in the ensuing five years, the hegemonic view has been to take a pretty dim view of people who use the word unironically to describe themselves.

"He's a 'sapiosexual'," one friend says.

We all know what they mean and begin to shake our heads. "Damn shame."

Most of my other circles of friends have not even been exposed to this discussion, and certainly not over five years. They find "sapiosexual" a good word to describe how they are romantically/sexually attracted to people's minds irrespective of their body shape. They like the word. They cheerfully say "It me!" when they read about it. You can pick it as a sexuality on OKCupid. The Guardian just did a big article all about it. Some folks even want to be recognized under the GSM umbrella.

These are also folks who write and discuss social issues and care about unpacking privilege and calling out bigotry. They go to the mat with bigots of every stripe. They are also people who care about social hierarchies. They call out unexamined privilege. They are also intersectional feminists. They are also people who consider ableism and its harm without dismissing it outright. They just.....didn't get that memo.

When the groups cross-pollinate in some way, and "sapiosexual" comes up, there are usually a lot of hurt feelings. Mostly because it's human nature to assume everyone is starting from the same core assumptions. One group is frustrated at having the same conversation for five years running and having to start completely over (again), and if they can't blow through the entire five years of dialogue in a snippy comment or two, clearly the other party just doesn't care about the impact. The other is trying to handle the fact that they've been told they're being terrible (possibly in a pretty combative way) about something they consider utterly innocuous, and not given more than a single interaction to digest five years worth of introspection. (Even my super condensed summation was six bullet points.) A lot of shortcuts get taken in the explanations that in the thick of an argument can make it sound a lot more like it's not okay to be attracted to who one is attracted to––which of course stands in stark opposition to an entire system of values when it comes to anti-bigotry around sexuality. Sometimes intentions are assumed and the best faith is abandoned.

It's not that one group cares and the other doesn't. It's just a case of divergent linguistic evolution. One group had a five-year conversation. They learned to see "sapiosexual" as a watchword. The other group wasn't there. They were off getting gelato at the local freezery They don't see the problem. And while they might not need five years to be convinced to just use "not that into looks," probably wouldn't get it in one flame war and will at least think the first couple of people they run into are being oversensitive. Plus, sometimes, even people who are trying to be social advocates for other groups don't always tap their patience, take the time, slow down, and explain even the highlight reel  before going on the attack.

And of course it would be unfair to not acknowledge that this swings the other way too. Sometimes people won't listen no matter how gently they are told. No amount of patience is enough. Being in any way problematic is bad, and they aren't "bad," so this is clearly a case of oversensitivity donchaknow. Sometimes people won't listen UNTIL someone gets angry and they realize that social censure is going to be the consequence for their behavior. They are mixed in with the people who care, and there are no special glasses to tell one group from the other. Life is a spectrum and "total inconsiderate asshole" IS at one end––always.

So it gets pretty messy. And I don't have the answers. But it's exactly the sort of shit I stare at the ceiling and think of at night.

I don't have some didactic take home for this. Or for the the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of situations like it ranging from some on-the-edge case of cultural appropriation, the understanding that a word or phrase is AAVE, to a particular manifestation of casual ableism, to some celebrity's canceled status. I'm more a "better safe than sorry" type myself, but who even knows what memos I haven't gotten.

If I did have a take home, it would be entirely too finger-waggy for some and too mealy-mouthed for others. (Personally, I do a lot of sliding into people's inboxes with a "Danger, Will Robinson!" routine about what they're about to step in.) But it strikes me that sometimes the subcultures and even social circles we are in create "shibboleths" with which we can sometimes be the very gatekeepers we hope to see fewer of in the world.

And so, I think about the word "sapiosexual" a lot.

Pitches and Synopses and Blurbs, Oh my! (Mailbox)

Share your blurby wisdom!  

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer questions about once a week.  I will use your first name ONLY, unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. I love doing two at once....even if we're just talking about answering blog questions.] 

So I just happened to get two questions in the span of a couple of days with a high amount of overlap.  So clearly the celestial bodies are aligned and the sentient universe wants me to talk about your blurb, your pitch, your summary/synopsis. So let's do that.  But first...the questions.

Cathy asks:

I saw a quote that has inspired a question!

“You shouldn’t ever write a novel that you can summarise because then you should just write a summary. What is the point of writing something that isn’t a challenge? I can’t think in a simpler way anymore. I really can’t.”

 - Arundhati Roy, when asked about the complexity of her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

(First, I'd note that that interview was discussing her work in general but also focussed on the situation in Kashmir, & India as a whole, and the rise of populism, and is worth reading for its own sake - https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/news/if-kashmir-is-occupied-by-an-army-right-now-india-is-occupied-by-a-mob-says-arundhati-roy - she was talking to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the Edinburgh Book Festival.) I shrank this bit for the sake of formatting space. -C

But the quote at the end made me stop - I've never seen that opinion before, and it goes against almost all of the writing advice I've seen.

In so many places I've seen the advice that you should be able to summarise your novel in a couple of paragraphs at most. An elevator pitch. 

If you can't summarise it in 50 words, then it's too complicated.

But then you've got an acclaimed, Booker prize-winning author saying:

“You shouldn’t ever write a novel that you can summarise because then you should just write a summary."

What do you think?

To be honest, I am biased and was delighted when I read that - a book I'm working on has no chance of being summarised in a few sentences, and I have been worried for a while I was doing it all wrong because of so many articles which mention this.

Thanks

And secondly,

Aubrey asks: 

Hey, there. Hope all is well! 

I know how busy you are, so if you have time to answer, great, if not I totally understand. 

I am currently trying to market my novel series, and when I can get people to pick it up, they love it. But actually GETTING people to pick it up is starting to seem impossible. Do you have any advice on how to write the perfect blurb or pitch? My books are a contemporary Mafia series, and always seem to lose out to the ones with mostly naked guys on the cover, and I'd like to not have to so literally pimp them out. 

Thanks for all you do. Some days your blog is all that keeps me writing. 

My reply:

I want to take one quick moment to apologize to everyone. Yes, even you. Apparently you all have this image of me where I'm so fucking busy that I can't answer an email or handle a question. Like, I just wake up in the morning and start screaming as I write. I scream as I write while I dress, scream as I think about what I'm going to write in the shower, scream/brush my teeth/write-with-my-free-hand, I drive to my nanny gig screaming and typing on my phone despite the danger, and if my email pings, I stop screaming for a moment, glance over at the counter, take a deep breath and scream EVEN LOUDER.

Let me divest you of this image. Now that I have the FAQ and the Facebook FAQ, I only actually get one or two questions a day that they don't cover. I love hearing from folks, and even though the day may come where I have to stop replying to every query I get, I set aside some time each day to deal with audience stuff (whether that is answering emails or moderating threads or whatever). Plus....these questions make up a SIGNIFICANT portion of my blog and my most popular "segment." So please please please keep em' coming. Don't be shy.

Let's start with that Arundhati Roy quote and work our way out to the more commercial aspects of these questions. And for the time being, I'm just going to focus on that quote and leave alone the fraught topics she sometimes writes about that bitterly divide even some of the short list of folks I would gladly jump in front of a bullet for.

To put it bluntly, this is a really "I have arrived" thing to say. It's like Joyce saying that he SHOULD be studied for years to be understood. Roy is an amazing writer of deep complexity and nuance and you can easily say that every sentence in her works is vital to the gestalt, but most everything can be summarized. In fact that's one of the skills you will often be set to in a liberal arts education because it is so absofuckinglutely useful. This is why you did it so often in English class. So you would learn not to be like, "And there was this one scene.....where the guy......takes these scissors.......and he kills this other guy......but then the guy kind of deserved it......so......" Instead keep it focused on the most vital information.

As a quick note: in praxis, "summary" in and "synopsis" are similar, but they are not interchangeable. A synopsis is usually what's on the back of a paperback. It's often written in the same tone as the book. It may be written "in character" or as prose or as bullet points or something. It often leaves out the final act for the reader to discover and avoids "spoilers." A summary, on the other hand, is a more academic response to a work. It is written more formally. It is written in the present tense. And it will contain the work's climax and spoilers. While all synopses involve some amount of summary, not all summaries are a synopsis. 

Think for a moment about the very best books you've EVER read. Could any of them not be summarized? I'm not asking you if you feel as if you can't do justice to every twist and turn and how gloriously the author dealt with details and how the work made you feel. I'm simply asking if you couldn't break it down to a couple of sentences.

Should you read Beloved cover to cover? Oh fuck yes! Can I convey every agonizing moment of gorgeous prose and deep emotional complexity in a three-sentence summary? Oh fuck no! Can I summarize it, though? Sure: A woman named Sethe is haunted by the ghost of her eldest daughter who she murdered to keep from slavery. At first the haunting is by a revenant, but then by a physical manifestation of a woman named Beloved––the only word on her eldest daughter's tombstone. Beloved consumes Sethe's life until the black community intervenes with an exorcism. 

Obviously any summary leaves a lot out, including the entire romantic plot line. That's what a summary IS. It is just the main ideas. That's why you open the cover and start reading if you "WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE," but distilling the MOST important information is actually a sought-after skill.

Roy is often contrarian towards conventional wisdom in just this way, and I think she does so to bring an important, oft-unconsidered aspect to the table even if she could just as easily advocate for the other side––sort of to force the hand of nuance. A lot of people limit themselves to summaries and so they lack the flavor and substance of a work. My three-line summary does not even begin to convey the sheer scope of horror in Beloved that is rooted in mother-daughter relationships and the relationship that develops between Sethe and Beloved is....deeply, profoundly creepy. For that, you would have to read it, and I think that's what Roy is getting at. Literature can't be summarized (even though it literally can). And if that sounds like exactly the sort of paradox artists live in, you're starting to catch on.

As we shift focus to the commercial side of this question, I want to point one last thing out about the Roy quote: she has an advantage over most writers that unless she scrawls her name on eucalyptus leaves ten million times, whatever she writes is going to be published. So she no longer needs to consider that a tight synopsis is a fundamental part of the traditional publication process.

Pitches and blurbs are a little different, and let me unpack this one at a time.

A writer's pitch––and right now I'm talking about a fiction novelist––is a query letter. There's no need to have an elevator pitch if you're writing fiction to be published. (Yes, I know the Jim Butcher story. I fucking **PROMISE** you that The Dresden Files were going to get published one way or another.) You are a writer. Your "pitch" gets to be revised, edited, and a little bit longer. (Isn't writing AWESOME!) I've written an in depth guide here. This is what you will send out with sample chapters (or whatever an agent asks for).

Unless you're writing screenplays IN HOLLYWOOD, you don't need an elevator pitch. And I swear to you, on all the writers' guides of the greats, that even if you are writing screenplays in Hollywood, this is one of those things that is sort of kind of true, but mostly a myth––like being "discovered." It doesn't really happen, and you're definitely not throwing away your shot if you focus on writing quality work instead of practicing what you would say if you ended up in an elevator with Christopher Nolan. Would you even know if you were in an elevator with the biggest publisher in the world? Would you recognize them? Go work on your query letter....and only do THAT after your book is done.

Okay, Blurbs....

Because now we're moving into MARKETING. The book is done. And you want someone to give it a chance. Enter the blurb. Remember the sentences that used to be at the top of every paperback or movie poster. (You still see them, just not as much because of different marketing tools.) Those are blurbs. Just enough to pique curiosity.

• Start with the hook. 
• Don't summarize.
• No longer than a Tweet. 
• Appeal to emotions.

Blurbs are like flirting, and even though my flirting is vaguely like a wombat with indigestion and has caused me to adopt a courtship ritual that is more like "I project weaponized cuteness and then say 'Yes!' a lot," I can do my best to explain blurbs.

The line forms to the left.

You want to tease your reader. You want them to want more. You want them to have an ever-so-slight sense of what the book is about and the genre without giving away the store.

"In a world where feelings are illegal, love was the ultimate crime...."
"The harbingers rolled into town one Tuesday. Now Billy had one week to stop Armageddon..."
"How do you measure a year in the life? How about love..."
"In the last days of Earth, could there be hope for the Unwanted?"
"A Jedi must not know passion. Or emotion. Or love."

You get the idea? Emotional. Charged. A little over the top. These are not quick summaries. "Eight friends deal with HIV over the course of a year." NO!  This is a wink from across the room. This is the promise of more if they take the step. Make that reader want to turn the book over and read the...um......SYNOPSIS (glances upward at the earlier part of the article). Hook them.

Now....there's another informal meaning of blurb that sort of just means ANY promotional short writing, and you probably want someone else to do your blurb if you're trying to sell books. "Author Aubrey weaves a breathtaking tale of modern organized crime dynamics, steamy romance, and supernatural forces living among us. A thoroughly enjoyable romp. If you like Kim Harrison, you'll LOVE this!"  See how that's just not going to work if you write it yourself?

If you DO write a blurb yourself, stick to a tiny summary, say what the book is LIKE (genre, a book it's similar to that many have read), but keep the sort of hook/enticing language, and talk up the BOOK without seeming like you're bragging about yourself. "Gumshoe McDick takes a case working for the mafia that seems too good to be true. But everyone has an angle and no one is exactly what they seem. Soon Gumshoe is in over his head, and the only way out is to face Chicago's underworld leaders: the ruthless succubus gang. A mixture of urban fantasy and gangster genre, with enough steamy romance to keep the pages turning well past your bedtime."

Just between you and me....I'll give you a little bit of "insider trading" advice. One of the beauties of blurbs and synopses and such is that they're SHORT. So if you're having trouble knowing what details to cut out of a summary or how to blurb your book with really enticing language, you can get professional quality help for usually only ONE HOUR'S worth of someone's freelance rate. (Unless you want them to read the whole book––which just so you know them reading YOUR summary will probably be sufficient.) That's all they're going to need. So it's cheap to farm this one out if it's giving you the vapors.

Encapsulate my entire masterpiece in a tweet???????

I hope this helps. Summarizing isn't easy, especially with an eye on making something as appealing as possible.

Best Modern Fantasy (COME VOTE!!!!)

What is the best fantasy book (or series) written between 1976 and 2000?

OUR LATEST POLL IS LIVE!  COME VOTE. 

Because we don't need to run any semifinal rounds, this poll will be up until mid-September (when we will start taking nominations for our Spooooooooooky Halloween poll: best horror). That gives you time, but it'll go faster than you think. Vote early. Vote often.

Two reminders: 

ONE: this is about BOOKS. If you loved the recent Good Omens miniseries, but you never quite could get through the book, then please vote for something else.

TWO: a lot of really good books did not get enough nomination "seconds" to make it to the poll. I know these were some of your faves, and there's going to be some "HOW CAN ANY POLL NOT HAVE," but these are entirely reader response polls and thems the breaks.

Everyone get three (3) votes, but that there is no ranking, so using as few votes as possible is better.

The poll itself is in the lower left at the bottom of the side menus.

I'm told if you're on mobile you have to click "webpage view" then scroll alllllllllll the way to the bottom, you can find the poll.

Another Cranky Rant: No I Won't Give You a Free Book (Claire Youmans)

Some people, I have to give free books.  There aren’t many of them.  Either they’ve done me huge services in exchange for a book or books or I’m closely related to them. I also have to have a set in my office to show off. 

This year I have SIX books. All shiny new, with consistent styles and new covers and better jacket copy. All of which cost me a pretty penny, let me tell you.

I just ordered the sets that I HAVE TO give away and have on hand to be sent to Japan from wherever they’ll be printed.  I still have more to order for shipment to the US. In the process, I found out some highly disturbing information.

All those “fees” and “costs” that I’m now being charged meant I had to raise prices, as I’ve said.  But somewhere along the line, my profit margin went way, way down, too.  On a hard-copy book, at full retail price, MY share is less than $0.75.  Yes, that is not a typo. I get less than seventy-five cents. I have to sell like Anne Rice or Stephen King before I even cover my costs. 

If I use my special author price, I simply don’t get the seventy three or fewer cents. I also have to pay for shipping.  I should do this for you? I bet you won’t even write a review. If you bother to read it. 

So that “free book” is costing me just about what it would cost you, if you’d just order it yourself. You can get it for less — YOU can read it for FREE — if you go into your public library and ask them to order it. Yes, the books are available from the Secret Library Distributor Catalogs, of course. 

Loan you my copies? Besides the fact that I’d never get them back, do I look like a library to you? Just go to the library and ask them to order them for you.  I need MY copies right here.

I’m a writer and I’m not going to stop doing that. I am very fortunate that I am in a position of being able to do so. But given the way the industry is moving, I may give some serious though as to whether I want to publish over the next few years. I may want to wait until the industry shakes out and stops trying to shake me down. 

My books are damned good.  They are well worth reading.  But, to quote the song about a chair, “If I can’t sell it, I’m gonna sit right here on it. I ain’t gonna give it away."