Category Archives: Blogroll

What separates a surprise blockbuster hit from a surprise blockbuster flop?

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hollywoodGood ol’ Christopher Pendegraft at Scriptshadow has hit on it again.

First, he takes a very clinical approach to teasing apart blockbuster successes and failures. For the successes, he rules out existing intellectual properties (“Batman and Avengers … couldn’t make less than a billion bucks if they tried.”) and stuck to the surprise hits like Guardians of the Galaxy and Life of Pi. For the failures, he looks at those that surprised the studios by flopping despite the money poured into them, like Lone Ranger and Battleship.

Then he digs into why those that worked worked and why the others didn’t.

I disagree with him on a few points, but I’ll cover that after the quote (which comes after the jump). Continue reading →

Category: Blogroll, My Two Cents

Hillary Kelly urges us to serialize our novels

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Reading-Its-Classic-22Hillary Kelly has a historically well-informed (rare!) and strategically insightful (rarer!) opinion piece on novel serialization at the Washington Post:

More than 150 years [after Dickens serialized “Dombey and Son”], the publishing industry is in the doldrums, yet the novel shows few signs of digging into its past and resurrecting the techniques that drove fans wild and juiced sales figures. The novel is now decidedly a single object, a mass entity packaged and moved as a whole. That’s not, of course, a bad thing, but it does create a barrier to entry that the publishing world can’t seem to overcome. Meanwhile, consumers gladly gobble up other media in segments — whether it’s a “Walking Dead” episode, a series of Karl Ove Knausgaard ’s travelogues or a public-radio show (it’s called “Serial” for a reason, people) — so there’s reason to believe they would do the same with fiction. What the novel needs again is tension. And the best source for that tension is serialization.

Perhaps I am a bit biased in my enthusiasm, since I just embarked on a Free Fiction Friday project to serialize my own novels. But, I’m doing it more to keep the pressure on myself to write, rather than to “juice sales figures.” (After all, it’s Free Fiction Friday.)

In any case, I agree with Kelly that serialization helps build tension, not only among readers but also for the writer for whom the imposed breaks in the narrative serve as reminders that the story must remain interesting.

What do you think?

Category: Blogroll, My Two Cents

Most over-used short story titles … I’m guilty

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AtHomeNeil Clarke, editor at Clarkesworld, published a list of the Top Ten Most Common Short Story Names, derived from the magazine’s first 50 thousand submissions. And, since there were a lot of ties, the actual number of titles in that Top Ten list is nearly 50.

I see four containing the word “home.” There were 16 submissions named “Home,” 16 for “Homecoming,” and 8 each for “Coming Home” and “Going Home.” A compelling numerical and semantic symmetry.

Although not a perfect match, it makes me a little embarrassed to have a short story titled “At Home.”

And, while I don’t have a story called “The Box” (which was #3 on Clarke’s list, at 15 submissions), I did start a serial called “The Crate” which didn’t generate much interest and was abandoned.

To be fair, once you do the math (and I always do the math) you realize that even the #1 short story name on the list, “Dust,” at 18 submissions accounts for less than one story every 2500 submissions. That’s actually not so bad, in my opinion.

Let’s just hope stories about kinnebecks and ligans don’t start taking off …

Category: Blogroll

Game of Clones : Sometimes the second version is better

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old_bookI’ve said before that remakes and adaptations are often better than the originals, using OutKast’s Hey Ya! and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind as examples.

The argument is now being made, by Chris Taylor at Mashable (but also by others), that the HBO series Game of Thrones is surpassing its source work, George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire:

In 1996, Martin published … A Game of Thrones, the first in what was then supposed to be a trilogy, to critical acclaim. In 1998 came the second volume, A Clash of Kings, and lo, it was even better. The year 2000 saw the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was perhaps one of the most densely layered and consistently surprising tomes I’ve read in any genre. It took the HBO show two seasons to do justice to this book.

And then? Martin spun his words, and his characters spun their wheels. He sat in his home in New Mexico typing out page after page, introducing new character after new character into his world of Westeros but not really advancing any of their storylines …

The showrunners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, have been far less self-indulgent. (And for good reason — if a book is only bought a million times, it’s still a huge hit for the publishers. But if a show drops down to a million viewers, it’s a disaster.)

… In short, wherever Martin seems to be going out of his way to keep strands untied, introduce ponderous new strands and frustrate the reader, Benioff and Weiss are doing the opposite — uniting strands and delighting the viewer.

Read the rest here.

Category: Blogroll | Tags: , , ,

The novel won’t stay buried, and neither will its inventor

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Frankenstein-Its-AliveEveryone loves the zombie novel. No, I don’t mean a novel about zombies. I mean the novel itself as an artform, which walks on undeterred by  premature declarations of its demise.

Continue reading →

Category: Advice From A Dude, Blogroll, My Two Cents, News | Tags: , , , , ,

Should you never say these things to an author?

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mytwocentsLists of things you should “never say” to this or that group of people are a plague on the Interwebz.

For one thing, they are typically arrogant assertions of privilege and entitled elevation above normal human interaction. Moreover, they’re often premised on a subtext of denigration and grievance against the class of people presumed to be saying the things in question. Often, the “things to never say” are strawman arguments, gross exaggerations, or distorted misquotes intended to slander a certain kind of person as unsavory, vulgar, or deserving of disdain.

How dare one of you say such a thing to one of us? Yeah, go f*ck yourself.

So, when I recently saw a list of things to never say to authors, I thought maybe I should comment on it since I’m in the elevated in-group rather than the denigrated out-group. Continue reading →

Category: Advice From A Dude, Blogroll, My Two Cents, Sharing

Author J. A. Konrath dismantles AG-AU hypocrisy and the agency model

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Hard to argue with these numbers:

picard-face-palmThe Authors Guild has, many times in the past, voiced that ebook royalties should be raised. So do something about it.

The AG, and Authors United, have been able to get beaucoup media attention during the Hachette/Amazon spat … Now the AG, and all of the bestselling authors who supported AU, need to show some backbone and integrity and use the same tactics to force the Big 5 to raise digital royalties …

Konrath's numbers, my chart

Konrath’s numbers, my chart

On a $25 hardcover, the author makes about $3.75, and the publisher around $5, after all production, delivery, and middleman costs (distributors and booksellers). On a $25 ebook, an author makes $4.37, and the publisher $13.12. How did this happen? Where was the outrage when this was slipped into all major publishing contracts? …

I won’t point fingers, but a Google or Twitter search will show how many authors seem to think Amazon is bad, the agency model is good, and the poor Big 6 are getting the shaft. Uh, no. That’s just plain wrong. I’m going to explain why the agency model in this particular case is indeed bad for authors …

Under the prior [wholesale] model, Amazon bought ebooks at a percentage of the recommended retail price. Then they priced them how they saw fit. The wholesale price for ebooks was often about half of the hardcover price. So a $25 recommended retail price meant Amazon paid $12.50 for the ebook. According to most contracts, the author made 25% of the net price the publisher received. So at the above numbers, an author would make $3.12 NO MATTER WHAT PRICE AMAZON SOLD THE EBOOK FOR.

Konrath-AuthorTake

Konrath’s numbers, my chart

In other words, if Amazon wanted to sell the ebook for $9.99, the author still makes $3.12. Sell it for $5.99? Author makes $3.12. Sell it for 99 cents? Author makes $3.12.

So what happens when the agency model comes into play? First of all, Amazon no longer controls the price … Amazon works its butt off trying to keep prices low. That’s why so many people shop there.

With the wholesale model, authors made more money per unit and sold more units. Funny thing is, publishers also made more money under the wholesale model. But instead the Big 6 decided they wanted an agency model. Authors still get 25% of net. But net has gotten lower in almost all cases.

With the wholesale model, net was $12.50. With the agency model, net is 17.5% of the list price set by the publisher. So the publisher sells it for $12.99, the author makes $2.27. Sell it for $9.99? Author makes $1.74. Sell it for $5.99? Author makes $1.04. Sell it for 99 cents? Author makes 17 cents.

Read the rest at J. A. Konrath‘s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Category: Blogroll, My Two Cents, Sharing

This week’s book links have not been banned

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wereadtoknowwearenotaloneI’ve been relatively quiet during Banned Books Week, but here are a few cool literary bits and pieces I’ve found for you guys.

Stephen King argues that books—by which he means paper codices—are going to be around for a long time, and I agree with him.

Script Shadow asks: What makes a good story idea? Also, what makes a bad idea? And, can you make a bad idea good?

The movement to make scientific publishing more open to the public is on! But, can it work, realistically? Let’s hope so.

Now, if you want to know why I’m no fan of Banned Books Week, keep reading. Continue reading →

Category: Blogroll, My Two Cents, News

Tuesday’s links are full of rage!

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darko-readingEver get furious about a book that was too long for its own good, or about a book that was full of falsehoods, or about a book you thought was great but other people didn’t care for?

Okay, so maybe “rage” is a strong word for today’s lit links, but there’s something of frustration about them all.

First we have author Ian McEwan complaining that very few novels earn their length, and that he prefers shorter works that (aligning with the ethos of Poe) can be read at one sitting. (Good news for those of us who aren’t afraid to write novellas!)

The Atlantic takes on non-fiction publishing with a piece on the lack of rigorous fact-checking, which calls into question whether most non-fiction should be more honestly marketed as fiction.

National Public Radio examines how F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby (in the fine American tradition of Moby-Dick) went from flop to The Great American Novel.

Lastly, what if you learned that some of your favorite authors were writing novels that were going to be sealed away in a vault for a hundred years so that you’d be long dead before anyone could read them? Well, it’s happening! Rage on!

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Style guide: Texts, performances, and periodicals (including websites) are italicized. Key persons are in bold.

Category: Blogroll, News

Monday’s links are fair, at face

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Reading-VincenzoToday’s links are all about fairness and seeing both sides of the issue!

♦ We all know that book jacket designers are deeply influenced by the content of a book, but did you know the influence can also go in the other direction?

♦ In the interest of fairness, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published two sides of the e-book debate: librarian Luren Dickenson‘s top 10 reasons to give e-books a try, and bookstore owner Harriet Logan‘s argument that e-books can never match physical books for beauty and collectibility. (Check below the jump for an unfortunate glitch in this story.)

And, for a humorous take on the issue, check out Ikea’s new ad for the “bookbook.”

♦ On the subject of access, we recently learned that a key work of Copernicus that was long thought lost has now been found! But, we also learned that book privileges long available to prison inmates have now been lost.

And Margaret Atwood‘s latest book? None of us will likely ever read it because it’s scheduled for publication in 2114! How is that fair?

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Style guide: Texts, performances, and periodicals (including websites) are italicized. Key persons are in bold. Continue reading →

Category: Blogroll, News
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