PJ at 19whiskeys has posted a great little piece on the two types of writers. I won’t tell you what the two types are, because I want you to be overcome with curiosity and click that link.
However, let’s just say that type B is where everyone is going to want to believe they are. So, considering cognitive biases, if anyone is unsure whether they fall into A or B, I’m thinking they’re likely just A.
The other day, having read one book described as “one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century” and another as “one of the best-selling books of all time,” my brain starting spinning in amateur research mode.
My first question was: what does “one of” mean? Does it mean the 3rd best-selling book of all time? The 22nd? Among the top 1000?
As one might expect, Wikipedia has a list of the best-selling books of all time, with various estimates of total sales. But, with books from the 19th and 20th Centuries on the list alongside ancient works, Analytic Me started to wonder about rates of sale.
After all a train that travels 100 miles in 10 hours is nowhere near as fast as a train that travels only 1 mile in 1 minute. Likewise a book that sells a million copies over a thousand years is not being chosen at the same rate as a book that sells two thousand copies in a single year.
And, to answer the objection that a book like the Bible wasn’t selling at a steady ready over time (particularly before the invention of moveable type), I would point out that it still had centuries during which to drum up support and publicity.
So let’s take a look at how the numbers crunch.
At the Huffington Post, Rebecca Serle interviews Newberry Prize winning author Kathi Appelt, specifically on the subject of American Fantasy. Not fantasy fiction written by Americans, but fantasy fiction that draws on American locales and imagery.
Regular readers know that I have been all over this like a bear on a beehive with my Story Behind the Story series, explaining how I wanted to step away from the elves and swords and write fantasy that drew on American imagery and textual artifacts the way Tolkien drew on northern European imagery and textual artifacts.
Appelt could not echo my sentiments more clearly than when she says: Continue reading
Today is the birthday of Charles Scribner, personal editor of author Ernest Hemingway, whose last name I heartlessly employ as a euphemism for booze sipped while writing.
Now, this might seem the perfect occasion to combine the literary agent links with the editor/publisher links like I threatened promised hinted I might do, last week.
But, no! You shall have your literary agent links, separate and per the usual schedule, and you shall like it!
Want to know how close we can be to the sort of conflict that drives good historical fiction?
For the residents of the coastal town of Mystic, Connecticut, it’s as close as their own front yards. On a hill that is now part of a quiet neighborhood, almost 400 years ago, a fort of the Pequot people was destroyed by English colonists.
As reported by the Associated Press:
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children’s swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood. A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries.
It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.
Often, Americans look for historical intrigue and suspense overseas, in the Highlands of Scotland, the Imperial Court of China, India under the Raj, or among the legions of Rome.
But, long before the familiar struggles of the Depression, Prohibition and its gang wars, the Old West, the Civil War, and even the Revolutionary War, the eastern shore of America was the setting for much romance, violence, friendship, and betrayal… all of the elements that make up a good historical novel.
Librarian and author Lawrence Clark Powell said, “Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.”
I would add this to his list: “Link to help others.”
In that spirit, on to the writer links!
Tin House publishing has kicked off a mini-controversy with their plan to accept manuscript submissions from writers who can prove they’ve recently bought a book.
As Anne Trubek of Good puts it: “What we have is a glut of people who want to be writers, who do not buy the consumer products of the industry they are seeking to join.” Continue reading
Another week, another round-up. Or roll. Or soup. Whatever you like to call it.
Sadly, many publishing pro blogs are suffering the same summar blahs that have afflicted the lit agent blogs. (*Knock Knock* Mr. Rinzler? Ms. Kroszer? Are you okay in there?) But, I still have plenty of intriguing stuff for you to check out!
So, let’s get right to the publishing pro links: Continue reading
In a recent Huff Post blog, author Melanie Benjamin joins the chorus of publishing-related people who are starting to speak some sense in the maelstrom of “everyone can be a writer” cheerleading.
While her main point is that aspiring writers should also be avid readers (her raison d’écrire was Tin House publishing’s decision to require a bookstore receipt for unsolicited manuscript submissions) she touches on the core of my argument that publishing is in danger of becoming a pyramid scheme.
I think that’s the problem today; too many authors, not enough readers. So many people dream of seeing their book on a front table in a bookstore; so few people actually buy books that are on front tables–or back shelves–of bookstores. So few people even know where their closest bookstore is located.
As someone who can think of three chain bookstores, two independent bookstores, and three used bookstores within walking distance of where I live (not to mention the bookstores in the National Mall’s various museums) I could not agree more.
But more importantly, “too many authors – not enough readers” is the Formula of Ultimate Doom for the publishing industry’s current toxic combination of DIY marketing and cross-consumerization of readers into wannabe writers. It’s the reason all pyramid schemes fail: not enough new recruits funneling resources to the top cats who are reaping all the rewards.
Benjamin goes on:
I have no problem with a publisher requiring an aspiring author to show proof that he’s read at least one book lately. Wouldn’t it be great if every writers’ conference required the same thing for all applicants? Wouldn’t it be wonderful–if not strictly ethical–if every literary agent did this, too?
I’ll be honest: considering some of the quirky pet peeves for which agents reject queries, I can’t see the ethical problem in asking for some proof that a writer is involved in the literary process beyond clicking send on an email, so long as the agent doesn’t require that the book be one she or her firm represented.
I have a stack of books knee-high already from 2010 alone. Bring it on!
Heck, if every aspiring author read ten books a year, this industry would not be having the problems it’s having today.
I will see that bet and raise you, Melanie. If half of the aspiring authors (specifically those for whom getting published is more for dazzle than devotion) would shift their enthusiasm for literature entirely from writing to reading, publishing would be both financially and artistically richer.
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For a similar piece by Joseph Bednarik, read “The Law of Diminishing Readership” at Poets & Writers.
During conservation work at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, built in the 1500s by Suleiman the Magnificent, workers discovered a 100-year old Turkish hand grenade in the core of the wall.
Israeli antiquities experts believe that someone stashed the grenade in the middle of the wall through some broken stone during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.
But, what if there were another explanation? What if someone from our near future slipped back in time to visit the Grand Sultan during the height of Ottoman rule, making a pit stop in the Empire during World War I to pick up supplies and weapons?
Perhaps the grenade ended up in the wall as it was being built. A good writer could really build a story around that.
