Trimmed-out parts of nonfiction can become singles

July 14, 2011

Ron Seybold agents, amazon, e-books 3 Comments

Much like the music business using 45s of the 1960s and 1970s, today’s publishing is using smaller bits of books to attract sales of the complete work. The e-book option was exercised on a chapter omitted from a book by NPR’s The Math Guy, Keith Devlin. His new book The Man Of Numbers had a chapter dropped onto the cutting room floor that Devlin and his agent Ted Weinstein produced and have published as a single, available across all the ebook reader platforms.

There’s about 70 such Singles in the Amazon Kindle store, many  of them fiction in the form of short stories. Amazon wants an author to have a complete book for sale in order to get a Single into the store. The Singles, of course, have always been digital files; a few years back they were PDFs that you didn’t even need a Kindle to read.

The extra material from Devlin’s book is about Leonardo DaVinci and his 600-year jump on Steve Jobs. More importantly, it’s a way for Devlin’s traditional publisher to let the author test the waters, permitting authors to create these singles. Devlin cut his own deal in publishing to make the Single appear, but he needed permission from Man of Numbers publisher Bloomsbury to do it.

Independent singles in the record business could spark a complete album, and still do. The record label took its standard cut of the sales, though. Book authors who write long — especially the nonfiction writer like the one that I’m editing this week — can generate their own higher-percentage revenues from a single. Bloomsbury figures short works like this single will help sell The Man of Numbers. It also serves as a roadmap for making a good but standalone chapter an earner for an author. More details at the Paid Content website. Weinstein wants everybody to understand he’s not adding “publisher” to his business card, and he’s still an agent. That’s his story today, anyway. Good agents will see these allied deals and partner with their authors.

Synopsis: tough, but essential

July 13, 2011

Ron Seybold agents, synopsis Leave a comment

I call a synopsis of a book essential because this summary is packed with the essence of the story. Whether it’s aimed at non-fiction or a novel, a synopsis is an important tool to use in selling your writing. It also has benefit to you during the writing. Re-creating your synopsis, once every few weeks, lets you restate and polish what your work is designed to accomplish.

Over at the Guide to Literary Agents blog, Chuck Samubchino serves up an example about how to craft a complex synopsis: one with lots of characters. This is the mission for my novel Viral Times, which sports seven main characters. Five are important enough to have their own first person POV during the book. The action happens on three major locales.

Samubchino uses the example of creating a complex synopsis for the movie Traffic. This is a film bristling with characters and varied settings. He uses a good technique, organizing the story by setting. There are three major locales in Traffic, and his synopsis covers each setting with three paragraphs each, such as “In Mexico:” Yes, just nine paragraphs. You have to keep it short, no matter how long the book is on a final draft.

You’re unlikely to get something useful for a synopsis after a first draft. So this task, which is useful if you’re selling your book or publishing it yourself, is also an exercise in rewriting.

That vs. Which

July 1, 2011

Ron Seybold Grammar and Style Leave a comment

The more you write, the more often you’ll run into the fork in the road called that versus which. That is, which do you use and in what instance? A new book in the Workshop’s library is Woe is I, one that bills itself as “the grammarphobe’s guide to English in plain English.” It’s true — and possessives are also a meaty chunk of the book — this book by Patricia T. O’Connor is written in plain English. So that’s why, which you might have guessed from the book’s scope, Woe is I delivers a ruling on That v. Which on page 2.

The sentence above uses which correctly because the clause containing which can be pulled out the sentence — and we still get the point of the sentence. Not all clauses are so conveniently set off by commas, though. The clause that is bereft of commas is the one that needs that. One best way of thinking of this is, “can I get away with which here, or do I take the default of that?” That makes “which” a fast friend of the comma. Meanwhile, “that” is often the best choice in every other circumstance. O’Connor leaves us with a little epigram to sort out the distinction.

Commas, which cut out the fat
Go with which, never with that.

Steadfast vs. Changing Characters

May 18, 2011

Ron Seybold character Leave a comment

Life is change, goes the mantra which the Buddhists use. Many of our characters in our stories experience changes. The pull of transformation is strong, a way to keep readers engaged. As Tom Waits said in his great song, we all want to know How’s It Gonna End? Choosing a steadfast character offers a different kind of ride for the reader. This person is buffeted by events that try to pull him away from his core beliefs.

Your Hollywood antiheroes are classic steadfast people: Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, or Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. You have a pretty good idea how it’s going to end for a steadfast character: The way they began their life. You take on an extra challenge in putting a steadfast character at the heart of your story. Their code of conduct either has to be absolute, or one worth defending. Empathy provides a smoother path for the latter code; the hero has to be fighting the good fight we can rally around.

A character of evil can be steadfast, too, but you can tax the patience of some readers to stay close to such a character for hundreds of pages. Steadfast characters have a life of their own they must live, and nothing that crosses their path changes their outlook. They can be harder to embrace or root for, though. A changing character is more common, but if your storytelling skills are up to the challenges, steadfast gives you a way to tell your tale against the grain.

Writing Instructions

April 15, 2011

Ron Seybold practices Leave a comment

1. Write your book every day

2. Make a plan. Schedule, make sacrifices.

3. List 25 books you could write yourself; include something specific about each

4. List 100 books you need to read (that one could take up an afternoon)

5. Make a slow notebook (try in pencil; nothing’s slower than that). Note the changes in your writing when you slow down with this notebook.

6. Make a group of writers who write the kind of book you’re writing

7. Surround yourself with 20 little assignments. Things as small as “Write paragraph about Sarah’s dog.”

8. Do your best. But learn to let The Good overcome The Perfect

9. Read aloud, then assess the fit. Write in your truest voice. (We practice this every morning and evening the Writer’s Workshop meets.)

10. Make a list of things that drain you, plus a list of things that feed you. More

Greatest Hits: Calculating the value of agents

April 2, 2011

Ron Seybold agents Leave a comment

An agent recently posted a blog entry about how much value can be earned by being represented during a book sale. There’s no doubt that a professional negotiator can keep dollars in your checkbook while you arrange a contract with a book company. As good examples, Rachelle Gardner lists e-book payments, frequency of royalty checks, sales threshold for royalties to begin, and size of advance. All, she says in her Why Authors Need Agents posting, provide value in exchange for an agent’s cut.

But there is that cut, since everybody gets a piece of the author’s efforts when a book is sold to a publisher. 15 percent in most cases, making the average first-time author’s $5,000 advance a $4,250 check to deposit. Nobody should quibble over $750 in service to publishing a book. You’d do well to spend that little on an outside professional edit before submitting your work to anybody. Even if you’re publishing it yourself.

There’s another factor in the formula to consider, and that is the sale itself. Agents are paid sales professionals whose primary function is to interest an acquisition editor in your book. What caliber of publishing company, and what treatment your book gets after signing the contract — well, these are benefits whose value varies wildly. The first benefit changes all the time in these days as publishing firms scramble to stay profitable and in business. More

Prescription for writers

March 15, 2011

Ron Seybold inspiration Leave a comment

From a morning seminar I took with Lee Smith, a writer of short stories and novels:

Most people who come in here don’t have the possibility of entering into any story other than their own. You do. To do this, write fiction every day. Just sit in the chair and put one word in front of the the other. This putting one word in front of another is to put the world in order. It’s theraputic.

Good interview with Smith at the Writers Write site, written about the time that I heard her give the above prescription. I’m going off to sit in my chair and put the world in order.

Sometimes you structure your own instruction

March 2, 2011

Ron Seybold structure Leave a comment

Here in Austin there’s a good Writer’s League, its HQ here with operations across Texas. But down at the HQ this month a novelist (with three published, one on the way) showed off one of the big elements of writing that came up missing in her MFA program. Despite all the other fundamentals of craft taught, structure was missing.

Her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana taught her all about dialogue, point of view, and character, she explains, but nothing about structure.

It’s not that surprising that structure would fall out of the syllabus of a state college’s fine arts masters writing program. Structure is the hardest — no, most complex and challenging part of writing a novel. I recommend books to the students in The Writer’s Workshop on the topic, many written by screenplay savants. Robert McKee’s Story is among the most thorough, but my, it is thick with terms an MFA storyteller might find brand new. I keep coming back to it like studying a historic text. There’s a terrific audio version of the book narrated by the author himself, who gives blistering weekend seminars on screenwriting. (For a brilliant and funny take on the advice from the movie Adapation, a story about a fledgling screenwriter writing a movie, have a look at this NSFW version.)

There’s also John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. Truby is a story consultant in Hollywood whose students, we’re told in the book’s back-cover blurb, wrote Sleepless in Seattle, Shrek and Scream. Here’s a takeaway: A story can be condensed into a theme line, like this from Citizen Kane: A man who tries to force everyone to love him ends up alone. Then you split this theme into oppositions, because in drama you would like conflict and something for the heroine to pursue and win. Much later in the process you are deciding on plot points to support that dramatic journey, the arc as they like to call it.

Index cards are superior tools once you can decide your scenes, or snapshots of the big story. I like Scrivener, (from literatureandlatte.com) a software tool for both the Mac and now Windows, to give me computer-based cards I can arrange and then flesh out, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Perhaps the biggest point to take away is that an MFA will not give you a complete education on creating fiction. We teach in workshops to people who are already well-educated in fine arts, but need practical guidance on essentials — skills the college left them to structure for themselves.

Getting readers means luring web visits

February 1, 2011

Ron Seybold websites Leave a comment

Publishers expect any writer to maintain and feed a website. Even Stephen King has this task on his to-do list, although he’s got an assistant to do the work. Your website may represent many hours of work to stock it with content — I call it feeding. There’s a handful of things you can practice to get readers looking at your site more often. These visits generate interest in your work (agents), evidence of your craft, plus sales if your book is published. Jane Friedman of Writer’s Digest posted a nice roundup of the fundamentals of driving traffic to a site. Among her suggestions on There Are No Rules:

I’m a strong believer in the breadcrumb method, where you have accounts on multiple community sites. That’s because you never know how people might find you, and the more doorways you have leading to your site, the more traffic you will get over time. Even if you’re not active or devoted to a particular community site or social media channel, you can still appear to be active if you adjust the settings in your favor.

I’ve got accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Friedman lists what she calls “well-worn” devices to attract traffic. They’re well-worn because they work.

  1. Comment on other people’s blogs. Virtually all comment systems ask you to leave your name and site URL. If you leave valuable comments, people may visit your site.
  2. Link to other people’s blogs frequently and meaningfully. If you link to someone, and you send them significant traffic, they’re going to notice! They might link to you one day, or pay attention to your work if you’re within the same community.
  3. Add your website’s address to your e-mail signature, business card, book, etc.
  4. Offer guest posts on sites/blogs with more traffic than your own.
  5. Be active on relevant community sites, which can interest people in what you’re doing, which can lead to visits to your site/blog.
  6. Ask for a link trade, where others agree to permanently link to your site/blog in their blogroll, and you return the favor on your own site. (This is by far a less popular method nowadays; it’s pushy and can damage credibility if you don’t believe in the links you’re sharing. Better for this to happen naturally, over time.)
  7. Be active across social media and alert people when you have a new post. (And/or make sure your URL is clearly listed on every social media profile.)

What’s the ebook doing to indie bookstores?

January 2, 2011

Ron Seybold e-books Leave a comment

I don’t know if our independent bookstore BookPeople has slayed anyone yet. Many books are sold at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco and HEB stores. BookPeople is a local treasure, to be sure. But its owner rattled his saber recently to say the store’s success, and shunning ebooks, defies the trend. What trend, exactly?

That B&N and Borders and Books A Million have put indie stores out of business? Yes, true. In every major city there’s at least one BookPeople, like Tattered Cover in Denver, or A Clean Well Lighted Place or City Lights in SF, or Powell’s in Portland. Smaller indie stores, like BookWoman in Austin, suffer more from the Boxes. Where the BookPeople owner goes awry is thinking ebooks won’t matter: “One thing you can’t do with a digital book is get it signed by an author… you can’t drop it in the swimming pool by mistake and have it work when you pick it up.”

But unsold ebooks have no return costs, and scant delivery fees. Physical books won’t die – but these comments sound like Blockbuster insisting “movie rental via mail will never work.” Consider the percentage of books sold at BookPeople with no chance of being signed, or the number dropped into swimming pools. These are not great reasons to dismiss ebooks. Reselling used books, lending them to friends, marking up ebooks easily: those are real shortcomings.

I pray for the continued health of BookPeople, which has shrunk in size from its zenith in the 90s, after its so-modest beginnings as Grok Books when I arrive in Austin in the 70s. Such survival would be a more prudent goal than hoping to slay anything. And if this store could become an outlet for indie ebook buying, somehow, tying the store experience with the advantages of ebook cost and storage, that might break some genuine new ground in Austin.

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