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Archive for April, 2012|Monthly archive page

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When did selling books become so complicated?

In publishing on April 27, 2012 at 9:22 am

As many writers—and readers—out there know, Amazon is now in the publishing game. This prompted Barnes and Noble in January to announce they would not stock anything published by the online book retailer due to “Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent.” As a result, a number of books were instantly banished from Barnes and Noble stores. You can read about it at the Author’s Guild website.

This parochial approach to publishing and book selling hurts authors and readers. Why can’t book retailers simply do what they’re meant to do, which is sell books? This sort of attitude was a major source of frustration several years ago when my book War of Words was published by Union Square Press in 2009. Union Square is a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing, which is—or was, at the time—owned by Barnes and Noble. When the publisher purchased my book, I was promised great placement in all Barnes and Nobles across the country. They all but guaranteed I’d have a bestseller on my hands.

The book details the colorful newspaper wars in 1800s San Francisco, focusing primarily on the bloody birth of the San Francisco Chronicle and the deadly public feud between that paper’s founder and the sex-crazed Baptist minister who became the city’s mayor. I thought having the book released by a publisher backed by Barnes and Noble would be a major benefit—instead, it came back to shoot me in the foot.

I travelled all over Northern California, pitching my book to independent bookstores prior to its release. The vast majority of stores I visited refused to carry the book because the publisher was tied to Barnes and Noble. Most Borders I visited rejected the book for the same reason. The real humdinger came when Barnes and Noble stores I visited outside the San Francisco Bay Area refused to stock the book. They said no one outside San Francisco would want to read it. Right—and no one outside of Holcomb, Kansas, wants to read In Cold Blood? What about folks outside Chicago reading Devil in the White City?

It seems to me book retailers are placing far too many restrictions and guidelines on what they’re willing to sell–especially when brick-and-mortar bookstores seem to be an endangered species. How about simply stocking books and letting the customers decide what they want to read? Perhaps I’m being naïve.

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Pop culture’s decline

In Random thoughts on April 26, 2012 at 8:45 am

Photo: TrendRabbit.com

Dear Kardashians:

Will you please go away? On the front page of Yahoo yesterday, I saw a headline proclaiming you had signed the largest deal in the history of reality TV. Against my better judgment, I clicked on the story and read the E! Network is paying you $40 million for three more seasons. For the love of all that’s pure and merciful, why? Another question: Why did I click on the article in the first place? Answer: I’m studying our culture’s rapid decline in good taste.

Yahoo, it seems, has become a depository for pointless “news” stories. Almost daily, they have some article about you guys on their front page, whether it’s something about Kim being photographed without makeup or some idiotic missive on her current relationship status. To quote Shakespeare: “I don’t give a flying toss.” How have you perpetrated such an evil hold over our national consciousness? And how are you worth $40 million? I realize this question is naïve on my part, as I’m sure you generate an obscene amount of ad revenue for E!—but that simply begs another question: Why do people keep watching your show?

Perhaps this is a sign the Mayans were right; perhaps we’re on the brink of the apocalypse. From the “Real Housewives” franchise to you guys, we’re riding a turgid wave of intellectual decay. Quality television is a rare thing these days. If this is the stuff America is exporting to other countries, it’s no wonder foreigners have such a dim view of American culture. It seems most shows are singing competitions or “reality” shows depicting rich, dysfunctional, and all-round unpleasant people detached from real life. The latter category brings to mind the “Real Housewives,” a program responsible for elevating some vile wretches into the spotlight.

I wish we could turn back the clock when “pop culture” encapsulated artists who actually possessed talent—when reality television and manufactured stars weren’t even a concept on the horizon. It’s a good thing Bob Dylan’s success was never dependent on passing the audition phase of “American Idol” or “The Voice.”

As far as I can tell, the biggest talent you lot have is for marketing and self-promotion because you never, ever seem to be out of the spotlight. No matter how mundane your daily activities—whether it’s going to a store, showing up at some nightclub, or making a sex tape with a no-name rapper—it always becomes a story. You guys are like the guests who refuse to leave after the party’s over. We can never be free of you. Please, just go away. Take the millions you’ve already made and live your lives in private like the rest of us—because, quite frankly, we just don’t care.

Sincerely,

I.M. Bored

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Experiences beyond the page

In books, Writing on April 24, 2012 at 7:01 am

A small relic associated with one of New York's most bizarre crimes.

An article filed from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Monday featured a great story from Scottish crime novelist Philip Kerr, who had a strange run-in with a Russian cop while researching a novel in the former Soviet Union. Without giving too much away, it involves bottle of vodka, a naked man, a frightened translator, and a frozen lake. Working on my own books over the years, I’ve had several interesting experiences. The most memorable ones are associated with the writing of my first published effort, On the House. The book details the murder of Michael Malloy in Prohibition-era New York by a gang of bumbling killers nicknamed the “Murder Trust.” Malloy survived multiple attempts on his life—each one more outrageous than the last—without realizing anyone was trying to kill him.

I spent quite a bit of time in New York researching the book. Many hours were spent in the basement of the Bronx courthouse, reviewing trial transcripts and other official papers. One afternoon, while I was going through a stack of folders, a rather large gentleman with his own pile of documents took a seat opposite me at the same table. He wore an ill-fitting suit that looked two sizes too small for him. His shirt, buttoned no more than midway up his chest, revealed a large gold pendant on a clunky chain. Nearly every finger boasted a thick glittery ring. He immediately struck me as a character out of “Goodfellas,” a sort of walking cliché. When I looked up at him, he smiled by way of greeting. I did likewise and returned to my research materials.

It's out of print now. Bummer.

“What are you working on?” he asked in a New York accent that seemed totally appropriate to the way he was dressed.

When I filled him in, he told me he was familiar with the Malloy story. Most people who grew up in the Bronx, he said, knew it. To be polite, I asked him what he was doing at the courthouse—and, with great enthusiasm, he told me.

“I’m researching a case, too,” he said. “Mine!”

It turned out that some years back this gentleman was accused of breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stealing a number of valuable jewels (I immediately stole another glance at his fingers). He was eventually picked up by the cops, charged, and convicted. He claimed to be innocent of said crime and hoped to find something in the case files with which he could overturn his conviction.

“Sounds to me like you need a good alibi,” I said, entertained by the story.

“Oh, I got a great alibi,” he said. At the same time some “loser was tossing my ex’s panty drawer” (his words), he was on the other side of town having sex with the victim’s sister. He did not phrase this in a g-rated manner—and, to this day, I have no idea what it means to have “porked the dog legs” off someone. But this guy had apparently done it and was proud of the achievement. The sister had refused to testify on his behalf because she didn’t want her sibling to know of the tryst. Having shared this rather sordid episode with me, the gentleman fished a business card from his pocket and passed it my way. His name was Pete, and he worked for what appeared to be a loan agency.

“You’re a loan officer?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Let’s just say I work in collections.”

I immediately got the hint and stopped asking questions. Pete, however, kept up his friendly banter and wanted to know how long I’d be in town. When I told him a couple of days, he volunteered to be a tour guide of sorts and promised to show me a New York most people don’t get to see. This, he said, would entail visits to a high-end brothel, a member-only club, and suppliers of whatever commodity I desired. When I told him my girlfriend would most likely disapprove, he said, “I ain’t gonna tell her.” This would be the point in a movie where an angel appears on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each urging me to follow their respective moral path. In the event, my sense of decency got the better of me. I thanked Pete for his kind offer but ultimately declined.

When I returned home to the Bay Area, I finished writing the book and shipped it off to my editor at Penguin. It hit stores in October 2005. One of the would-be killers in the story was a Bronx taxi driver named Harry Green who was paid a small fee to run a drunken Malloy over one frosty evening. For various reasons, Green failed in his objective. Subsequently, he was the only member of the Murder Trust not to meet their end in Sing-Sing’s electric chair. Shortly after the book’s publication, I received a very nice email from an elderly woman in Berkeley who had read the book and enjoyed it. Would I care, she asked, to meet in person? This woman was non-other than Harry Green’s widow. I was quite flabbergasted by the whole thing and naturally agreed to see her. Mrs. Green (I don’t want to reveal her first name for privacy’s sake) invited my girlfriend (future wife) and I to dinner at her daughter’s house.

Having spent more than a year writing a book about a gang who plots a fiendish murder, I wondered jokingly if I wasn’t being lured into a trap. Would the Green family tarnish my food with anti-freeze (as the Murder Trust had done to poor Malloy)? Or, would an aggrieved member of the clan try to run me over as I approached the house? In the event, it was a lovely evening. The dinner was a backyard barbecue. A long table had been set; the centerpiece was a diorama featuring a toy taxi running over an action figure. The Greens were wonderful people. Harry’s widow, then in her eighties, was a real firecracker with a great sense of humor. She met Harry after he had served ten years for his involvement in the Malloy case. She described him as a good man who had made a very bad choice. Upon his release from prison, he spent the remainder of his life on the right side of the law, working in various professions. I wish now I could remember all the details, but my notes from the evening are packed away somewhere!

At the end of the evening, as Katie and I got up to leave, the Greens gave me the toy taxi cab from the table’s centerpiece. It still sits on my writing desk today.

On the House unfortunately went out of print several years ago, but I hope that someday it makes a return. If it does, I’ll add an “Afterword” and detail the man Harry Green became.

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Writing room makeover

In creative spaces on April 19, 2012 at 9:01 am

Where I bang the keys . . .

Every writer dreams of having that perfect creative space, a place where they can retreat from the stresses of the real world and work in relative peace. The reality, of course, is many of us can’t afford a little studio out back or a separate office somewhere. The next best thing is a room in the house you can claim as your own. My hideaway is a bedroom upstairs I requisitioned as an office. The above picture is what the room currently looks like. I have long been threatening to do something with this space—to make it more of a writer’s retreat.

My dream involves installing a recliner, mini-bar, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—none of which will actually happen. If I really had my way—and the necessary cash to pull it off—I’d live and work in the English countryside. I’d own some quaint cottage with an appropriately English name, something along the lines of “Inkwell” or “Quill House,” on a wooded acre or two. It wouldn’t be far from a proper country pub. By proper, I mean stone fireplace, beamed ceilings, and no flashing fruit machines. The mornings would start with an early walk in the country—coffee mug in hand and dog at my side—followed by breakfast with the family. I’d then retire to my writing shed out back and get my daily quota of 1,000 words down on paper. With the writing finally out of the way, my wife and I would head to the pub for an evening drink and be home in time to catch the latest “Downton Abbey.” Yes, life would be grand.

Since I live in a suburban town in Northern California and not my native UK, I’ve had to amend my vision somewhat. I’ve started work on the project, though I’m not entirely sure what the end result will look like. Regardless, I’ll eventually post a picture of the great “Home Office Makeover.”

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My apologies to J.K. Rowling

In publishing on April 13, 2012 at 8:40 am

She looks utterly devastated, doesn't she?

Today, J.K. Rowling is a woman consumed by fear and anxiety. “But, why?” I hear you ask. The answer is simple: Her first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, comes out the same week as my humble effort, Human Game. The Parabolist of Potter, the undisputed queen of bestsellerdom, knows she has met a worthy opponent. In me, she faces a man with a few books released by respectable publishers but only purchased by a small circle of readers composed primarily of his wife, parents, and yours truly.

Yesterday, I discovered J.K. Rowling’s doomed tome hits stores a mere five days before mine. The poor lass; she’s probably in her Scottish castle, cursing her luck and kicking her priceless objets d’arts. I almost feel sorry for her when I consider the pressure she’s under. Expectations for her first non-Potter book are at a stratospheric level. Not only must she contend with fears of whether readers will embrace her as a “serious” novelist, she must now worry about the infinitesimal ding my book will make in her sales. Sorry, J.K., you can blame my publisher, Penguin, for the scheduling snafu.

True, her book will undoubtedly enjoy five months of pre-release publicity, rife with speculation about the plot and characters. Media outlets will hound her publicist to set up interviews, while pre-orders will likely push her book to the top of the bestseller lists months before it even comes out. But on the actual week when her publisher–Little, Brown and Company–thrusts The Casual Vacancy onto the reading public, a segment of the population will flock instead to purchase Human Game. Who are these people? The same folks I mentioned above: My wife, my parents, and me.

If the fates are particularly cruel, six inches of column space in some random book review section may even mention my book, cutting into the endless number of pages devoted to Rowling’s effort. It will surely be a bitter pill for the Goddess of Gryffindor to swallow.

Let it be known I take no pleasure in reducing one of the world’s most beloved storytellers to a quivering mass of insecurity and self-pity—but such is the cutthroat world of publishing. I wish there was something I could do, but things are out of my hands.

Sorry, J.K.

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What’s the best way for an author to be remembered?

In books, writers, Writing on April 10, 2012 at 9:18 am

This past weekend, I checked the Amazon listing for Human Game and was pleased to see the sales ranking had jumped from the million-mark to the neighborhood of 200,000. Someone had obviously pre-ordered a copy. To that kind-hearted and anonymous individual, I send my sincere thanks. The book isn’t due out until October 2—indeed, the Amazon listing does not yet feature the cover image—so it’s great to know that someone is eager enough to order the book seven months before its release.

I once read somewhere that for a book to be a bestseller, heavy promotion has to begin about six months before it hits stores. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea—but, certainly, an aim of this blog is to get the word out. I realize blogging alone won’t sell books, but I’m hoping it helps. At this stage, it’s too early to tell. I do find it interesting, however, that several visitors to my blog have got here by entering the book’s title as their search-engine query.

While discussing all this with my wife over the weekend, I said, “What I’d give for just one major seller!” I feel no shame in admitting this. Yes, I want to sell out—I want to sell out an entire print run! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a writer, musician, or any artist, for that matter, wanting to make money from their toils. Of course, I don’t write solely for cash. I enjoy the process and take great satisfaction in receiving the final product from the publisher prior to publication. I’m just saying one bestseller would be nice!

This all leads to a question: As an author, is it better to be remembered as a prolific scribe who turned out high quality books that never sold in large quantities, or remembered solely for one big-selling book in particular? Pondering this question, I drummed up a short list of authors who only ever produced one book—but, of course, they’re works have the stuff of immortality.

Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Ralph Ellison – The Invisible Man
John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights

As for authors who produced numerous works but are remembered primarily for one book, I came up with the following (this, of course, is open to debate):

Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Joseph Heller – Catch-22
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
D.H. Lawrence – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Honestly, if I were to be remembered at all, I’d be happy to be remembered either way, for it means the work–whether multiple books, or just one–has touched a considerable audience.

The Guardian approached this from a different angle last year and composed a list of authors “famous for the wrong book.” Among them are Kurt Vonnegut for Slaughterhouse-Five and Evelyn Waugh for Brideshead Revisited.

Are there any authors you’d add to the above lists?

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Putting the smackdown on young, aspiring authors . . .

In books, e-books, publishing, Writing on April 3, 2012 at 9:02 am

Saturday’s New York Times featured an article on teens who self-publish their books with financial help from Mom and Dad. The parents of the young scribes interviewed say it’s a great way to encourage their kids to keep writing and to reward the months of work their children put into their manuscripts. Some in the publishing industry, however, see this as a negative thing. They argue it doesn’t teach children anything about perseverance or the real struggles involved in getting published.

The article quotes novelist Tom Robbins, who sounds somewhat bitter:

“What’s next Kiddie architects, juvenile dentists, 11-year-old rocket scientists? Any parent who thinks that the crafting of engrossing, meaningful, publishable fiction requires less talent and experience than designing a house, extracting a wisdom tooth, or supervising a lunar probe is, frankly, delusional. There are no prodigies in literature. Literature requires experience, in a way that mathematics and music do not.”

The article doesn’t actually assert that the parents interviewed think anything of the sort. But while we’re on the subject: Why compare writing to dental work and architecture? It is, resorting to cliché, comparing apples to oranges. One can’t say that writing a novel requires as much talent as designing and launching a lunar probe. They require two completely different skill sets. I’d say successfully sending a rocket to the moon requires an incredible amount of specialized talent. Or, maybe I’m being delusional.

I’ve stated my thoughts on self-published works before. While I’m not opposed to people publishing their books themselves, I think too many self-published authors rush to get their work out there and inundate the market with sloppy material. Then again, traditional publishing houses hit the public with a fair amount of garbage, too—so give these kids a break. Are they really causing any bestselling authors and powerful editors grief by putting their work out there? No. But what about the argument that “literature requires experience”?

The kids profiled in the article range from a 12 year old to a high school junior. While adults may stay clear of books written by teens, we can assume other teens may show interest in stories crafted by their contemporaries. I would venture to say these young authors have channeled teenage experiences into their fiction–experiences other teens would more likely identify with than someone who graduated from high school 20-plus years ago.

Not every piece of writing that’s published has to be a deeply moving experience for the reader (look at James Patterson). It can be something lightweight, written with the sole intent to entertain. Authors can think that what they do is deeply profound—but, in the end, their main job is to entertain. So let these kids self publish their books and enjoy the moment. Life only gets more stressful as one grows older, so let them enjoy the fulfillment of a dream . . . even if it’s only for a short while.

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First impressions: My opening paragraphs . . .

In Writing on April 2, 2012 at 8:41 am

It’s always fun, when in a bookstore, to pick up a random book and read the opening paragraph. Over the years, this exercise has resulted in the purchase of books I might have otherwise missed or ignored. I discovered Fred Vargas’s The Chalk-Circle Man this way, which soon led me to her other wonderful books. As a teen, the opening lines of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye hooked me instantly. I’ve been a fan of Philip Marlowe’s adventures ever since.

It goes without saying that a great opening sets the tone of a book. Ian Fleming and John Steinbeck are responsible for my two favorite opening paragraphs. Fleming’s introduction to Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, is brilliant for its sense of atmosphere:

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling–a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension–becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

The opening to Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is wonderful for its vivid evocation of setting:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.

While I’m certainly not attempting to compare myself with the likes of Fleming and Steinbeck (!), I thought I’d share the opening paragraphs to my previous books. I hope you enjoy . . .

On the House (Berkley, October 2005):

This story is true. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent, for nearly all the participants were perpetrators of nefarious schemes and bodily harm. They were low-rent thugs and booze-addled crooks surprisingly incompetent in their criminal undertakings. This is not a tale of smooth operators in silk suits. It is, instead, a story of bungling ineptitude, of a crime so convoluted, authorities were “admittedly skeptical” of its veracity when it first came to light. Once the facts were established, Bronx District Attorney Samuel J. Foley declared the scheme to be “the most grotesque chain of events in New York criminal history.”

In the Dark (Berkley, November 2006); Published in the UK as The Blackout Murders (JR Books, March 2008):

A dark, cramped space of stagnant air, the bomb shelter’s interior smelled of cold mortar and stale sweat. A stone seat ran the length of one inner wall, while, on the floor, an electric lantern cast a pallid circle of light across the morbid discovery made earlier that morning. The brick-built shelter was one of several on Montague Place, Marylebone—near Regent’s Park in Central London—and one of countless similar structures that lined the streets of the capital. It was just shy of nine o’clock, and a harsh winter’s sun backlit the city’s shattered skyline. Daybreak came hard to London, a metropolis whose landscape had been forever altered by incendiary and high-explosive—but the air-raid sirens had remained silent the night before.

War of Words (Union Square Press, May 2009):

A profession not without risk, the job of newspaper editor attracted men of stern stuff in the testosterone-rich days of old San Francisco. Nearly fatal beatings and bloodletting by pistol and bowie knife were regularly occurring phenomena outside (and sometimes inside) the sanctity of the newsroom. Gunpowder and steel proved highly effective in expressing one’s displeasure with an article–more so than a letter to the editor. An angry reader gunned down a reporter in the autumn of 1852 outside Sacramento after the scribe penned an editorial criticizing the governor. One editor got the picture and posted the following notice on his office door: “Subscriptions received from 9 to 4; challenges from 11 to 12 only.”

Dark City (Ian Allan, London, October 2010):

Christmas shoppers crowded narrow Birchin Lane in the early afternoon hours of Friday, 8 November 1944, their collars turned up against the heavy fog that hung over the city. They paid scant attention to the Vauxhall that turned into the street shortly after two-thirty and came to a stop outside Frank Wordley’s jewelry store at number 23. Three young men, one of them carrying an axe, clambered out of the vehicle and approached the store’s front window.

The Killing Skies (Spellmount/The History Press, London, March 2006):

Memories still lingered. A generation of British men wiped out in the mud-swamped, rat-infested trenches of the Western Front. A war not yet far removed by the passing of time. Now, on a Sunday, a mere two decades after the Great War’s guns fell silent, the BBC carried the subdued tones of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, broadcasting from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street . . . At 11 a.m. on 3 September 1939, as barrage balloons ascended above London, Big Ben tolled the hour of war.

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