Michael Hauge and Write on Vancouver 2011

I've just come back from a weekend writing conference, Write on Vancouver, sponsored by the Romance Writers of America. This year their guest speaker was Michael Hauge. When I told my writing friends who our speaker was I was expecting their response to be along the lines of 'Oh my gosh, really, you got Michael Hauge!' but instead I received looks of bafflement. "Who is Michael Hauge?" they asked.

I was looking for a topic to blog about and thought, great! I've got my topic, but I'm finding that it isn't as easy to describe who Michael Hauge is as I thought it would be.

Michael Hauge is, among other things, a story coach. I think of him as being like an emergency surgeon for your screenplay or manuscript. He breaks up a story into six stages: Setup, New Situation, Progress, Complications and Higher Stakes, Final Push and Aftermath. Between each stage is a turning point. Stage One and Stage Two comprise Act One, Stages Three and Four comprise Act Two and Stage Five and Six make up Act Three.

Sometimes when I talk about plot structure someone will make the comment that it is formulaic. Eileen Cook mentioned that typically a face has two eyes a nose and a mouth but most of us manage to look different from one another. Just because a manuscript follows a structure doesn't mean it is going to be like every other manuscript that has followed that structure. (I love Eileen, she is witty. I don't know her personally, but if you ever get the chance to hear her speak I would encourage you to; her books are good too!)

Anyone who is interested in Michael Hauge and his ideas on story structure might like to visit his new website, Storymastery.com.

How to help make your book an Amazon bestseller: the Importance of Tags

Amazon uses tags to determine which books to recommend, as well as their placement in bestseller lists. As such, tags can help a book climb to bestseller status or condemn it to languish in obscurity.

Nick Daws, in his article How to Use Tags to Help Sell Books or E-Books on Amazon, gives the following advise on which tags to use:

1. Use your own name. This will make it easier for fans to find all your books.
2. Be specific. If you wrote about birds don't just use the tag "Birds," also use what type of birds, "Bluebird" and "Crow", for example.
3. Use the town/city where the novel took place as a tag.
4. "Use tags that have been applied to popular titles similar to yours." Looking at other books, especially popular ones similar to yours, is a good way to get ideas for tags.

I encourage anyone who wants to learn more about tagging on Amazon and its importance to sales to read Nick Daws's article.

Agents as Publishers: A Scam

At least, according to Dean Wesly Smith it is, and he should know. He writes:

[This scam] is designed to take a writer's work, control their work, and make more money off that work than the writer does.

What scam is this? How does it work?

Writers lose money, lots of money, by allowing an agent to publishing their manuscript through the agent's publishing company. Here's the math:

If you publish your book on Amazon and charge $5.00 for it you would receive 70% of this which comes to $3.50. That $3.50 is yours to keep and do with whatever you want.

If you publish your book through an agent scam the agent takes that $3.50 and splits it down the middle, half for you and half for him. What the author might not realize, though, is that his expenses come only out of your half! So while, in our example, the agent is receiving $1.75 of the $3.50 every pay period, this money doesn't count against his expenses and you, the author, get zilch until all of the agent's expenses are paid.

This is not a good deal for writers.

Writer's Write

This week Joe Konrath wrote a blog post in which he talks about what things increase ebook sales and what things don't. Highly recommended.

One of Joe's most surprising points was that, in his experience, advertising doesn't have any significant impact on ebook sales. Good to know.

His post reminded me of Asimov's first rule of writing: writer's write. I know, that is about writing, not sales, but it's something I try and remember every day.

Authors Can Now Sign Ebooks!

In her article, Would You Sign My Kindle, Stephanie Rosenbloom shares how a digital autograph signing would work:

... a reader poses with the author for a photograph, which can be taken with an iPad camera or an external camera. The image immediately appears on the author’s iPad (if it’s shot with an external camera, it’s sent to the iPad via Bluetooth). Then the author uses a stylus to scrawl a digital message below the photo. When finished, the author taps a button on the iPad that sends the fan an e-mail with a link to the image, which can then be downloaded into the eBook.

Smashwords to Release Books as Apps

Through Smashwords' partnership with ScrollMotion they will be able to "create, promote, merchandise and distribute Smashwords ebooks as mobile applications."

These apps will be sold in Apple's App Store, the Android Market and the HP App Catalog. Smashwords estimates that the "Revenue from customers buying and downloading apps to smartphones and tablets will reach $38 billion by 2015."

Further reading:
Smashwords Press Release
Smashwords Partners with ScrollMotion to Deliver Indie Ebooks to Major Mobile App Marketplaces

Writer Beware: Contracts

I consider myself relatively knowledgeable about the business of writing, which is why Kritine Kathryn Rusch's post this week shocked me. I used to think of an agent as a writer's advocate, someone who would, among other things, help the writer negotiate her contract with a publisher, someone who would have the writer's best interests at heart.

In Advocates, Addendums, and Sneaks, oh my! Kristine writes that, for the most part, this is no longer true. For example:

I hadn’t realized until a few months ago that the adversarial relationship that sometimes existed between writer and publisher had moved into the agent/author relationship.

My first glimmer came when I looked at a former student’s agency agreement. Honestly, when the student contacted me to look over a contract clause, I thought the clause was in a publishing contract—at least that’s how it read in the e-mail. Then I saw the entire agreement and realized who had issued it.

The agreement called for the agent to have the right to represent the writer’s work in all forms for the duration of the copyright of the work, even if the relationship between the agent and the writer was terminated. I blinked, damn near swallowed my tongue, and told the writer not to sign the agreement. Even though the agency was a reputable one, this clause was horrible.

Too late, though. The writer had signed the agreement a year before I looked at it, and something had happened between writer and agent to call that clause into question.

I would urge anyone who is considering getting an agent to read Kristine's article. As I understand it, she isn't saying, "Don't get an agent," as much as she is saying that writers need to learn how to read contracts and then read them. She gives several examples of clauses to watch out for, as well as some rather nasty tricks that might fool even an experienced writer.

eBooks promote reading

Carolyn Kellogg, writing for the Los Angeles Times, notes that:

... getting an ereader can lead to more reading. Thirty-four percent of Californians surveyed said that with an ereader, they read more books than they did before.

That's good news for authors. :)

On a completely unrelated note, when I read this next article I had to read the first paragraph twice, it seemed incredible. Here it is:

Wildlife is thriving in lakes contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, with both overall numbers and species diversity holding up well. Any harmful effects from the radiation appear to be dwarfed by the benefits of having no humans in the area.

As Michael Marshall, writing for New Scientist, explains,

The area around Chernobyl was evacuated after the disaster ... this has been a boon to the local wildlife. Endangered European bison and Przewalski's horses have been introduced successfully.

Here is a link to the article.

Flee, by Joe Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson

Flee is a fast paced, well-written thrill ride. Easy to read and impossible to put down it takes the reader into a world of spies and espionage. This book kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. If you like reading thrillers or detective fiction, this book is for you.

If you like Flee, or books like Flee, you might also like Joe Konrath's Jack Daniels stories. Jack is a woman -- I hadn't known that! -- and a very cool character; she reminded me of Sam Spade. I'm looking forward to reading these.

Book Country by Penguin Group

Update (August 16, 2016): It looks as though Book Country no longer exists.

Penguin Group's latest venture is Book Country, a website for writers of genre fiction. According to a New York Times article by Julie Bosman, Penguin says that the site is intended to help build a community of writers by, among other things, giving them the ability to comment on and critique the manuscripts of other writers.

In addition to forming a community of writers and telling them a about how the traditional publishing industry works; agents, agents and publishers can swing by bookcountry.com and look for new talent, giving writers who use Book Country a way to get in contact with industry professionals that they wouldn't otherwise have.

One thing I was curious about. Penguin said that in a few months time they will attempt to generate revenue from the site by giving members of Book Country a way to self-publish their books for a fee by ordering printed copies. I'm not sure what that means. However, given the recent success of ebooks as a publishing format I wonder why Putnam is putting emphasis on printed copies which are far more expensive to produce and store than electronic copies.

It will be interesting to watch and see what happens.