The Business and the Art: Or the Love/Hate Relationship Between Writers and Publishers

(Disclaimer: This post isn't to focus on any particular publisher and/or author. It's just how things often play out when creative types and business types work closely together.)

Writers want to have their manuscripts accepted for publication. Yesterday would be fine. Publishers are too busy to acknowledge an email submission, or to answer queries, or to make a decision anytime before next year.

Writers want to get the book out as soon as possible. Publishers want to make sure the timing is right, the editing is done, the cover works, the promotion plan makes sense.

Writers want creative control to realize their vision. Publishers know what sells.

Writers like to name characters according to their own personal reasons. Publishers don't want too many names beginning with the same letter or sounding alike. Publishers will change character names with a heartless stroke of the find and replace key. Writers will have heart failure when they see their beloved Anna turned into Justine.

Writers get attached to the particular name they gave their baby manuscript. Publishers say, "No, that title doesn't work. We are changing it."

Writers tend to fall in love with their own words. Publishers are more than happy to kill their darlings.

Writers know this book will be a bestseller, if only the publisher will get off his butt and promote. Publishers know this book will be a bestseller, if only the writer will get off his butt and promote.

Writers need publishers to edit, design, print and promote, while financing the entire process. Publishers need writers to create, rewrite, revise some more, refine, keep revising, and promote, while worrying that their investment in this project may never be recovered.

Publishers want to release something that people will pay money to read, then tell others about it so they can pay money to read it, too. Writers want to write something that people will pay money to read, then tell others about it so they can pay money to read it, too.

The artist head and the business head simply tend to approach goals from different directions. A bit of tolerance and understanding go a long way to create a positive, productive working relationship. And remember, when things get stressed and don't seem to be working out-- communication is the best policy. Communication with the party involved, that is, not with the rest of the world.

Ten Tips for a Better Blog

So after a major move, no internet (except my Blackberry), and a forced hiatus from visiting and commenting on blogs, I have been on a blogger binge this week.

Which brings me to reflect on ten tips for a better blog-- from someone who has a lot of blogs to choose from and limited time to read them (which is probably all of us who have been here longer than 3 weeks)--

1. Don't start your post with "Sorry I've been too busy to post here lately." That's boring. Also, hearing about your cold or your kids' or your coworkers' colds is boring. Descriptions of common colds and flu symptoms always send me running to the next blog down the line.

2. If you are involved in a blogfest that I'm involved in, I'll click to see what you're doing. If not, I'll move on. No offense, it's just about connecting with common interests.

3. I know the general advice is "keep posts short" but sometimes longer is better. Sometimes short is too short. Like, What? That's it? I wrote a post about homeschooling on my other blog that was one paragraph-- total cop out, I still feel bad about that one. I totally checked it in. Some topics need more treatment. My homeschooling experience was definitely one that did.

4. Edit posts and take out the wordy phrases and boring bits. A writer's blog should be well put together. I'm all for relaxing the strict rules of grammar and punctuation when blogging, but edit out those unnecessary words that make a post a hard- to- read time suck.

5.Then there's the captcha phrases, word verif, and comment verification. We all have our reasons for doing what we do, and there's a couple blogs I will always follow even with comment verif (Hello Old Kitty, I heart you), but it creates a distance. And captcha slows everyone down and also eats comments that may be lost forever. Want more comments? Then get rid of anything that slows down your potential commenters! Blogger catches spam really well now, so why worry?

6. I don't want to hear music. Not on a blog. Not at all. Unless it's Robert Smith and the Cure singing Piggy in the Mirror.

7. Too busy is bad for business. Too many gimmicks on the sidebar take time to load, are distracting and look cluttered. They direct attention away from the important part, which is your post, your writing, who you are. Do those swimming fish say anything about you personally, or are they there just to hypnotize me and make me sleepy? And Google ads are just plain annoying.

8. Wallpaper. Really? Wallpaper is outdated everywhere people, even in houses. Especially the flowery, busy stuff that looks like it was taken from a class on scrapbooking. No, your blog is NOT the cutest blog on the block.

9. Anyone who wants more traffic should search Copyblogger or Problogger for tips. Or find a blog you like that fits your audience and do what that person does. Only still be you.

10. Be yourself. Have fun and enjoy the experience without stressing over numbers (stats, followers, comments, views). Work on content, visit other blogs, put yourself out there and like-minded people will find you.

So those are my Ten Tips, anything you want to add? And while we're on the topic, what is your biggest pet peeve with blogs? Go on, I'm listening.

A Special Day for One Very Special Lady

I had a different post scheduled for today then realized that it was a big day for a little lady. And I would be very lame if I didn't recognize Ann Best and her new release, In the Mirror, available today from WiDo Publishing.

Ann is so supportive of authors. She buys copies of their books out of her fixed income and reads and reviews them. Her review of my novel, Uncut Diamonds, is one of the best, most insightful reviews I've gotten, and definitely one of my favorites. Thank you, Ann!

Ann's memoir is an amazing story. I got an ARC to preview and could barely put it down.

Her writing style is intense in its simplicity, ideal for this story. I got drawn right in and read it straight through in a day and a half. It is about a family in trouble-- a couple whose lives get turned upside down by the repercussions of a shocking revelation. It is also the story of choices, and how one's choices affect those closest to them for years to come. By the time I finished the book, I felt like I knew this family. Ann doesn't write herself as the perfect, long suffering, injured wife. On the contrary, she has her flaws and makes her mistakes right along with Larry. They are two people who were once in love, now wanting to be good parents to their four children, but they're on different roads going opposite directions. In the beginning, it is a tale of  shattered dreams and betrayal. In the end, a story of hope and determination and survival and love.

Congratulations to Ann on the release of In the Mirror! 

I along with all of your blogging friends wish you much success!

Blogging: On its way out? Or just hitting its stride?

Before April I was hearing rumors of the death of blogging. I noticed obvious signs of blogger fatigue here and there. Nathan Bransford wrote a post Have Blogs Peaked? with nearly 150 comments saying yay or nay. Most expressed the feeling of "Yes, it's slowing down."

As a host of the A to Z Challenge, I went through the over 1200 participants and followed as many as I could, visiting and commenting along the way. Many of them are new, with under 50 followers. If you ask them if blogging is on its way out, I imagine the response  would be, "I hope not! I'm just getting started here!"

From participating in the Challenge, I not only discovered some great new blogs, but I discovered the answer to the question "Has Blogging Peaked?" No, I'm not going to tell you my complete opinion, because it would add another three paragraphs to this post.  But when you see 1283 bloggers sign up for a month-long blogfest that requires you to post for 26 days in April, using each letter of the alphabet-- well, what do you think?

Z is for ZEUGMA

The term ZEUGMA is used in several ways, all involving a sort of "yoking":

1) when an object-taking word (a preposition or transitive verb) has two or more objects on different levels, such as concrete and abstract, as in Goldsmith's witty sentence, "I had fancied you were gone down to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country," where figurative and literal senses of the transitive verb "cultivate" are yoked together by "and."  

2) when two different words that sound exactly alike are yoked together, as in "He bolted the door and his dinner," with "bolted" being used as two different concrete verbs.

Jane Austen was extremely skilled at using these two kinds of ZEUGMA in her work, for subtly humorous effect in dialogue between her characters.

The third definition has to do with grammar--

3) a grammatical irregularity that arises when a conjunction yokes together forms that cannot all be reconciled with other material in the sentence, as in "Either you or he was responsible." The "you" cannot be reconciled with the verb "was." In "one or two years ago," the singular "one" does not match the plural "years," but hardly anyone will try to avoid such a ZEUGMA by going the long way around with "one year or two years ago".

So there you go people, literary terms from A to Z! I hope you all learned something. I enjoyed the refresher course and will remember it better for having posted about the terms. I think this time I might even remember ZEUGMA.



(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

Y is for YOUNG MAN IN THE PROVINCES

The phrase, YOUNG MAN IN THE PROVINCES,  was used by Lionel Trilling, famous literary critic of the 20th century, for a kind of novel that deals with the experiences of a young provincial in a great city. Classic examples are Fielding's Tom Jones and Dicken's Great Expectations. Or YOUNG WOMAN IN THE PROVINCES, would be Dreiser's Sister Carrie.

Another twist on this theme is when the pernicious forces of the city move to the outermost provinces and corrupt a pure savage-- this pattern appears in Huxley's Brave New World.

Can you think of any modern YA novels that have this element as a major theme? With either a boy or a girl as a main character? Remember, the main elements are city and country, and how these different environments affect experience. (Like in the children's story about the city mouse and the country mouse.)


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

X is for X-CERPT

Okay, there's no official literary term I could find that starts with X so I have to cheat a little. But that's okay, because EXCERPT is an important term to understand in the publishing industry.

As in posting an EXCERPT of your work on your blog. Be careful with this one. Most of us aren't the best judges of what's good and what isn't in our own writing. We can post something we think is fabulous, and really it stinks. This makes us lose credibility and look unprofessional in an industry that demands it.

If you are under contract, don't post anything from your manuscript until you receive permission from your publisher, and then only post an approved EXCERPT.

As for posting an entire manuscript online? Again, dangerous territory. Many publishers will consider this previously published and not touch it. Although this is changing as we speak so I'm not even sure why I bring it up as it makes me look out-dated and ignorant. But hello, it used to be the case. Now, self-published e-book authors with work that sells extremely well are getting offers from agents and publishers. Think The Christmas Box and The Shack. Think Amanda Hocking and Karen McQuestion.

Self-published authors with anything that sells extremely well will get offers from agents and publishers. As they say, "Show me the money." That's what it's all about-- money. If an author, self-pubbed or whatever, is a potential money machine, then the calls will come.

But until you are a proven money-machine, be careful what you post online, and especially avoid EXCERPTS from your current works-in-progress.

W is for WIDO PUBLISHING and the WINNER of the Submissions Contest

Recently I held a submissions contest where the WINNER would win a contract with WIDO PUBLISHING. The top three finalists are announced here.

And the winner is announced HERE-- 

Congratulations to Paul Anthony Shortt, who has won a publishing contract with WiDo Publishing, for his manuscript, "Locked Within."


Paul's blog is Coffee Thoughts. Stop by and wish him well. He deserves it for beating out many other excellent entries in the contest.

Well done, Paul!

And well done to Kerri Cueves and Jack Hessey, who were also among the three finalists. Many thanks to all those who entered.

V is for VAPOURS

This post is for all you Victorian fans out there, and note how the spelling of vapours has the British "u" in it? So very Victorian.

VAPOURS is a word commonly used in eighteenth-century literature to account for eccentricity. VAPOURS were exhalations, given off by the stomach or other organs of the body, that rose to the head, causing depression, melancholy, hysteria, and so forth. In 1541 Sir Thomas Elyot wrote that "of humours some are more grosse and cold, some are subtyl and hot and are called vapours." Heroines of eighteenth-century fiction were particularly susceptible. Young, in 1728, produced these lines:

Sometimes, thro' pride the sexes change their airs;

My lord has vapours, and my lady swears.

Too bad the Victorians didn't have access to that other V word, Valium, which would cure their vapours quite well. As a matter of fact, too bad we modern women don't have access to it, except when we go to the dentist. Okay, maybe it's good we don't, after all.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

U is for UTOPIA

UTOPIA is a type of fiction describing an imaginary, ideal world. The term comes from Sir Thomas More's Utopia, written in Latin in 1516, describing a perfect political state. The word UTOPIA is a pun on the Greek "outopia," meaning "no place," and "eutopia," meaning "good place." The earliest UTOPIAN work was Plato's Republic. Dystopia, meaning "bad place," is the term applied to unpleasant imaginary places, such as those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.



(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)