The Open Author

This is one of the most exciting articles I’ve read in a long time. I’ve long said that the old publishing model is outdated, and really needs to be changed. The old model is a scarcity model. There are few books, and few ways to get those books. Only one entity can distribute the book, so it creates a monopoly. Because of that, the entity can charge whatever they want. Growing up, I remember paying $1.25 for a book. Now a paperback can run you over $15; a hardback will run you $30-$40.

Anyway, I’ve been working on a new book, one that I’m quite excited about. It’s a chapter book, geared toward elementary children. I have a friend who is a podcasting master, I think I might beg him to teach me how to do it, and release the book online.

To me, writing is too much of a solitary activity. I like to be with others, to hear feedback, and share ideas. I believe when this happens, a work becomes better. With the latest book, the driving factor has been my children. They love the book, and beg for more. They ask me about the characters, and what is going to happen next. My sister-in-law has written to me and told me how much she and her husband like it. It is an interactive experience, which is what I need. So the next logical step is to share that with a broader audience. It would be even better to hear more feedback, and would be fulfilling to me if more people were enjoying the book.

So, keep checking back. I’ve got 6 of 10 chapters done. I’ll talk to my friend, and see how difficult it is to get set up podcasting. Once the book is done, I’ll start releasing a chapter a week. Hopefully, that will give me 10 weeks to complete the next book in the series.

There are a lot of good groups out there, and many of them have taken on the phrase ‘X without borders’. You have Engineers Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders, etc. I’ve always thought Fence Builders Without Borders would be funny. However, now I’m thinking the ultimate would be for a group of pirates (maybe these guys?) to call themselves Boarders Without Borders.

Now that is a club I’d join.

Oh, and you too, Facebook.

About 3 years ago I signed up for Netflix, Walmart DVD online, and Blockbuster online. I wanted to see which interface was better, and who was quicker about sending me DVDs in the mail. Netflix won, hands down.

Blockbuster has recently come out with an interesting idea, however, where you can rent online, as well as in the store. They have been pestering me to ‘come back’ for years, but yesterday they sent me a free month, so I thought, what the heck. I’ll sign up, rent a few, and then cancel after 29 days.

I canceled after one. Here is why.

I put Enchanted in my queue, because the kids have wanted to watch it. I thought it would be a fun surprise. It was a surprise, all right.

I wandered over to facebook sometime later, and there in my newsfeed is a proud proclamation, ‘Marion Jensen added Enchanted to his blockbuster queue!”

WHAT!

I’m glad I didn’t add what I wanted (Beaches, Sense and Sensibility, and Pretty Woman).

Now I’ve gone through the settings of Facebook long ago, and have turned notifying all actions from external sites (nobody is so bored that they run to the web to see what I’ve been doing), but that didn’t stop Facebook. Even though the default to blockbuster online was ‘notify me first’, it posted this breaking story to my news feed. My co-worker logged in and saw that I had added Enchanted to my blockbuster queue.

I’m pretty ticked.

So, the lesson? Screw blockbuster, go with Netflix. And as far as facebook goes, BACK OFF.

As soon as I see an alpha version of Justin’s app, I’m bailing.

Interesting article over at the National Post (note, the paper has a conservative bias) on how Wal-Mart might have saved hundreds of lives in the aftermath of the Katrina Hurricane.

From the article:

“No one who is familiar with economic thought since the Second World War will be surprised at this. Scholars such as F. A. von Hayek, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock have taught us that it is really nothing more than a terminological error to label governments “public” and corporations “private” when it is the latter that often have the strongest incentives to respond to social needs. A company that alienates a community will soon be forced to retreat from it, but the government is always there. Companies must, to survive, create economic value one way or another; government employees can increase their budgets and their personal power by destroying or wasting wealth, and most may do little else. Companies have price signals to guide their productive efforts; governments obfuscate those signals.”

Governments job is to help us out. But if they don’t do a good job, they don’t get fired. In fact, often if they don’t do a good job, they get more money (because clearly, that will fix the problem).

But a business’s job is to also help us out, by providing goods and services. But if they don’t do a good job, they lose. We’ll go somewhere else. They do a good job because they have to.

Regardless, it is interesting to see how FEMA responded, and how Wal-Mart responded. Two entities who set out to do the same thing, but with different motivations, and the end result was a fairly drastic difference. From the article:

“

Aside from the public vs. private issue, Horwitz suggests, decentralized disaster relief is likely to be more timely and appropriate than the centralized kind, which explains why the U.S. Coast Guard performed so much better during the disaster than FEMA. The Coast Guard, like all marine forces, necessarily leaves a great deal of authority in the hands of individual commanders, and like Wal-Mart, it benefited during and after the hurricane from having plenty of personnel who were familiar with the Gulf Coast geography and economy.

There is no substitute for local knowledge — an ancient lesson of which Katrina merely provided the latest reminder.”

When you do things in a crowd with no organization, no plan, and no clear leaders, chaos is usually the end result. And then sometimes the opposite occurs.

A few weeks ago there was a post on digg about being rickrolled. If you are not familiar with what a rickroll is, you can read about this most interesting phenomenon here.

Ha, ha! No you can’t. That was actually an example of being rickrolled. You can really read about it here.

Ok, I’ll stop, I promise. The real article is here. Basically what happens when you get rickrolled is somebody posts a real response or comment to a discussion at hand, and then says something like, “you can find more information on this topic here.” They post a link and when you go ‘there’ you discover this dancing boy from the 80s. Don’t think that’s hilarious? Then you’re an old fogy.

Anyway, back to mob organization. A person posted about this phenomenon on digg. An unusual thing happened in the comments section. The first comment was somebody making a funny joke. The second comment was somebody who posted the first line of the song. The third person posted the next part of the song. What happens next is very interesting.

Everybody who posted the next line of the song got ‘dugg up’. Meaning their comments were displayed. Everybody else who made a comment other than the next line of the song, got dug down. By hundreds of people! There comments were buried, and you were left with the lyrics of the song.

Nobody said, “hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s try this…”, it just happened. hundreds of people just started all doing the same thing, and order sprung from chaos.

So, there you have it. Your daily dose of chaos theory. And speaking of chaos theory, if you want to read a great primer on this very interesting and applicable theory, you definitely should check out this site.

Or better yet, this is a fascinating site in order springing from chaos. You can get to the good stuff by jumping right to this page.

There is a short video called The Private Universe which shows a bunch of Harvard Graduates on graduation day. They are being asked questions about what causes the phases of the moon, and why are there seasons. Very few of them get it right. Most guess that the phases of the moon are caused by the earth’s shadow, and the seasons are caused by how close the earth is to the sun.

After watching that video years ago, I decided that my kids would have a basic understanding of the whole process. I thought it would be a relatively simple thing. Explain it once, we’re good to go.

For those that don’t know (at least for us in the northern hemisphere) to tell you simply look at the line between light and dark. The line always moves from right to left. So if there is light on the right side, the moon is waxing. If the light is on the left side, it’s waning. Another easy way to tell is if the moon comes up before the sun goes down, it’s waxing. If it comes up after the sun goes down, it’s waning. And if it comes up at the exact time the sun goes down, it’s full.

I believe I’ve explained it close to 50 times now. And my favorite question when we’re driving at night is, “Boys! Look at the moon, is it waxing or waning?”

What follows is quite humorous. Because they are boys, or maybe because they are my boys, they are incredibly competitive. It doesn’t matter so much whether or not they get it right or wrong, but whether or not somebody else gets it right or wrong.

So, somebody will guess waning, and then several others will go along. Then somebody changes to waxing, and they all change back. Usually my wife guesses, and they will change to her guess. Then they remember that she very often guesses wrong, so they will go back to the original guess.

In the end, I tell them the correct answer, and they either all cheer or groan, but inevitably it ends up in a fist fight.

“I guessed waxing first.”
“Yeah, but you changed your answer.”
“Yeah, I changed it five times, and 3 times I was guessing waxing, so I was right.”
“You’re a stink pot!”
“You’re a cotton headed ninny muffin.”

And that is where it comes to blows. But I put up with the blows, because I want them to understand how things work. To know whether or not the moon is waxing or waning, you really have to think. You have to be able to picture how the universe works. It’s a good exercise.

Anyway, the point of this post is that the other day I asked the question, waxing or waning? My oldest son asked, “which way is north?”

At first I didnt’ see the significance of the question, but then realized that if the moon is directly overhead, and you don’t know which way north is, you might very well guess wrong. I always know which way is north, so in my mind it wasn’t part of the process. It was ‘existing knowledge’.

So it was an exciting moment, because I realized he’s getting it. He got the answer right, but I’m not sure if it was because he guessed correctly, or if he worked it out. We’ll see how it goes the next time.

The most important thing is to have a great manuscript.

If the agent/publisher says they want to see 5 pages, you really don’t have 5 pages. You have 2. If they are bored after 1-2, they won’t get to the fifth page.

Marketing trends. Remember that when you send the manuscript, it’s a good 4 years before it comes out. So if you decide to write something that is ‘hot’ now, it will be old news by the time it comes out.

It is possible to make as much in the LDS market as it is in the national market. You can make more in the national market, but it is very possibly to do well in the LDS market. However, you will probably make less in the LDS market.

One of the downsides to LDS market is if 2 publishers (really just one) turn you down, you don’t have many other places to turn. In the national market, there are dozens of publishing houses.

Self publishing just does not work. There are too many new books coming from publishers every year to leave shelf space for vanity press books. The only reason you would ever self-publish is if you want a few copies to give to family and friends, or if you have a massive outlet to sell your book (example, motivational speaker to thousands, and can sell your book after speeches).

Heather Moore, Michele Paige Holmes, Jeff Savage, Annette Lyon.

They meet weekly. They bring a scene 6-8 pages with copies for everybody. They read it through once, with everybody making notes on their copy. Then they go around the table and each give their report. They have a timer, since they are all good friends, and can sometime get off track.

They all feel that the critiquing helps them develop their skills, and make their books better.

You improve not just by getting your work critiqued, but by listening to others being critiqued, or by critiquing yourself.

‘Pick up’ groups can be ineffective, if you end up with people on different levels, or writing different genres. It’s better to get to know people, find who you would like to critique with, and then make invitations.

The group then actually goes through a few critiques so we can see how they do it. One thing that impresses me is how quickly they do it (they cut the time down a bit for the presentation, but still). They clip right along. I think a timer is very important this kind of critiquing, but think it could be very effective.

If I didn’t mention yesterday, Tim is a senior editor from Putnam. Where have I seen this guy before? He looks very familiar.

The Basics of Good Writing

Most important
Voice
Narrative tension
Conflict and resolution
Immediacy

Almost as important
Sympathy for protagonist
Fresh and original take on the story
Compelling secondary characters
A beginning, a middle, and end
A narrative arc
Opening that hooks readers immediately
Internal logic
Point of view
Extraneous threads
Pace

Voice is the most difficult to fix. This is where ‘natural talent’ comes into play.

You need to know your character, intimately.

You character shouldn’t be ‘perfect’, but at the same time, if the voice is right you can pull it off.

Conversely, the anit-hero can also be good. Think Clint Eastwood’s cowboy’s characters. Not somebody who you would bring home to mother, but you still root for the guy.

The authors are talking about agents. Questions will be asked, answers will be given, and I’ll record the good bits.

Authors – Janette Rallison, Brandon Sanderson, Jeff Savage, James Dashner

Brandon says anybody can be an agent, or rather can say they are an agent, but you should watch out for somebody who has represented successful books. It’s also nice to find an agent that fits your genre.

What does an agent do? Janette says that publishers want to give you a contract that is in their best interest, and agent is there to make sure that you get treated fairly.

Brandon is a big advocate of going to conferences, meeting agents and publishers, and being out there.

The question was asked about publishing houses only looking at manuscripts submitted by an agent. All of the authors say that while you can get published without an agent, an agent will often get a quicker response, or have a better idea of who to send things to. Brandon said he had his manuscript at Tor for 18 months, and when he submitted his YA idea, he had responses back in 3 weeks.

Somebody asked if you choose door number one, and Monty Hall shows you that nothing is behind door number three, are your odds better to switch to door number two, or stick with one? Nobody was sure. The answer is switch to two.

What are the formal steps to finding an agent? James says the old fashioned way is to send out query letters, send out chapters, send entire book.

Brandon mentioned a few places that let you ‘check up’ on whether or not your agent is a good one. I missed them, unfortunately. I think one was this site.

Janette says that big publishers don’t market your book. You are pretty much responsible for your own marketing/promoting.