publishing

Can you guess how many of last year’s bestselling SF titles were published last year?

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One.

Actually, that’s not fair. I’m not counting the media tie-ins, of which there are four, three of which were published last year and made the list.

Of the rest, Ready Player One was published in 2011. Also, didn’t that one get a mainstream push? The other four slots were taken up with Ender’s Game, Dune, and two different editions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The only book that was a) original fiction and b) released that same year was the latest “Honorverse” novel from David Weber.

(A quick note: I don’t have anything against media tie-in novels. I wrote one myself last year for the Spirit of the Century rpg. They’re still not the same as pop art created outside a corporate structure, even ruthlessly commercial pop art like these lists.)

You may think it’s unfair to compare the books this way, because Ender’s Game, Hitchhikers and Dune are often assigned in school, but let’s look at the numbers. That OSC novel sold just over 100,000 copies. The tenth best selling novel on the mystery list is one of the “Dragon Tattoo” movie editions, with 127,000+ sales. Another edition of the same novel holds the fifth spot.

And the rest of the listed books are all original fiction, as long as you’re willing to throw stuff published under James Patterson’s name into that category, and I’m not sure I am. None of those books need to be assigned in school to reach six-figure sales.

If you look at the number one mystery novel, it would make #7 on the Romance list. I was tempted to leave any discussion of the Romance bestsellers out of this discussion because the 50 Shades of Grey + sequels have been the Big Cultural Thing this past year, which sort of skews the results.

Still, very few people are buying sf novels, and most of them are buying old favorites. I knew science fiction was a small part of the market, but I had no idea just how small it was.

I wish they’d included the bestselling fantasy novels, too.

This all leads me to three conclusions:

1) Science fiction is a genre in decline (obvs).

2) I am even more determined to reject the idea that fantasy should aspire to science fiction’s protocols.

3) I will never write science fiction. I don’t love it enough to move into that ghost town.

(Added later: John Scalzi confirms that Redshirts sold well enough to make the list, but most of those sales were ebooks. These lists only track pbooks. I wonder how including ebooks would change the comparisons of the books below.)

Twenty Palaces not for sale

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Some folks might have noticed that certain online sellers no longer show Twenty Palaces, my self-published prequel novel, as available for sale.

There’s a brief, frustrating story behind that: I lowered the price just before Giftmas and now some sellers don’t seem able to get the message that the price should return to it’s previous level. It’s the “channels” through Smashwords that are causing the basic problem, which of course means that Amazon is cutting the price on their site, as they do.

I’m not sure what the problem is. Sony, et al, got the update that lowered the price, but multiple attempts to revise it since have gone unnoticed.

So I’m in the process of pulling it from all of those stores. Once they’re all gone, I’ll begin listing them again, but at the price *I* set.

It’s frustrating and a waste of time, but I don’t have a lot of choice. In the meantime, B&N and iBookstore have been responsive and are currently selling the books. You’ll have to buy them from there for now.

Tobias Buckell revives his moribund series via Kickstarter

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Novelist Tobias Buckell posted a longish (5K) analysis of his own successful Kickstarter project; his Xenowealth books were not as successful as he and his publisher had hoped and he stopped writing them after three books. With the support of his fans, he Kickstartered (<-- new verb, just to annoy people) book four. Then, being him, he analyzed it and shared the information. Of course, having finished the post, I found an email in my inbox directing me to it, with the idea that I could do the same with the Ray Lilly books. That's not going to happen for several reasons. His readership: My blog gets fewer than 10% of the hits that his gets. He has nearly five times the number of Twitter followers. Also, he’s much better connected with other pros who can spread the word about his books.

His series: The Xenowealth books were not sinking in sales, they were stagnant. In hardcover! Mine were mmpb and sales for each book was dropping by about 5K readers for each. Also, I have the ebook figures for the prequel, Twenty Palaces: while they’ve been okay for a book I already wrote, it’s not worth setting aside a year (or a large part of a year) for those sales. I’m planning a post on sales of the prequel, so stay tuned for that.

His productivity: Dude had major surgery and serious health issues, and yet he’s still way more prolific than I am. That matters because as I said: setting aside a year to write a book. Not to mention that, while he’s finishing his novel (and running his Kickstarter) he has short fiction coming out all over the place and blah blah blah.

Anyway, give his post a read. It’s full of interesting ideas and common sense. As for me, I’ll keep plodding along with EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS.

Randomness for 12/11

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1) A motorcycle with a track instead of wheels, from 1939.

2) Do people gain weight during the holidays? Science says no, not usually.

3) A six-year-old tries to guess the plots of classic novels by their covers.

4) How much we care about Star Wars, graphed over time.

5) Look at this Instagram (Nickelback parody) Video. Not only have I never knowingly heard Nickelback once, but I have never been to Instagram. I still laughed at this.

6) Why is ‘w’ pronounced ‘double u’ rather than ‘double v’?

7) Author Christopher Priest shares his opinion of Robert McCrum, an associate editor of the Observer.

Another end of series evaluation

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Over on the Black Gate blog, Peadar O’ Guillin writes about the reason his series failed to find a readership. I figured since my own blog post about the failure of the Twenty Palaces series remains the most popular post on this site, you guys might be interested in his story, too.

One thing I’d add: that title isn’t doing the book any favors. The more involved I become in books, the more important titles seem.

Randomness for 11/17

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1) Hilariously creepy Windows 95 “tips”

2) Develop A Strong He-Man Voice. Not just for dudes, obvs.

3) The anti-capitalist history behind the game Monopoly.

4) Why Authors Are Crazy (for gif lovers)

5) How readers discover a first novel: A case study. Also a commercial for Goodreads.

6) Tired of women coming into your recreational spaces doing things they like? Now you can buy an app of a cute girl watching you adoringly.

7) Raymond Carver’s OKCupid Profile. via @warrenellis

Amazon flexes

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Last night while I was playing Dominion with my family, Amazon yanked the Kindle editions for a great many books from their website. At the time no one was sure why, but according to the NYTimes, they’re demanding new contract terms from a distributor and the erasure of all Kindle editions was muscle flexing. (Update: as pointed out on LJ, that article is from last February. Damn I feel dumb for not noticing that. This PW article reports that Amazon claims a “glitch” caused the removal of all those Kindle editions. The supposed glitch appeared to affect Big Six companies only, though, and there has been no explanation for that.)

An awful lot of authors lost impulse sales but, you know, boo hoo, right? Amazon is a private company who can do what they like with their website. If they want to take my books down, that’s they’re right.

What I can’t wait for is the reader backlash. How long are consumers going to put up with this bullshit? Yeah, Amazon wants lower prices, but what good is a low price if the book isn’t available to buy?

Kindles break. Kindles become obsolete. When it’s time for consumers to replace their old ereaders (or when the time comes to do some Christmas shopping), how many of them are going to stick with Amazon?

Ha ha oh god now Amazon’s deleting reviews from other authors

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Not authors reviewing their own work, or authors reviewing work from the same publisher. They’re pulling down all reviews from authors.

And just in case you think they might be sorta cool about it, they’re back to their usual bot-speak:

Any further violations of our posted Guidelines may result in the removal of this item from our website.

Note that they’re not talking about the reviewer’s book. It’s the book he’s writing the review for that they’re threatening to pull. So you guys out there who were thinking of paying back your writer enemies by reposting reviews to their work until Amazon yanks them, now’s your chance.

Best of all, once your enemies start to complain, the response they’ll get will be short and sweet and made of copypasta:

I understand that you are upset, and I regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. However, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on this matter.

http://www.comcastmustdie.com is moribund now, isn’t it? Has anyone registered Amazonmustdie.com?

NaNoWriMo post (being more prolific)

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It’s almost November so I thought I’d post a little something about NaNoWriMo.

First of all, why does this happen every year in November? It seems like such a bad choice, what with Turkey Day falling near the end (for U.S. residents) when it can be tough to keep to the daily grind, not to mention the preparations for Giftmas. April would be better. Maybe March.

Next, there are always people who feel a little overwhelmed by the idea of fifty thousand words in thirty days. Don’t be one of them. The numbers might sound large but that’s less than 1,700 words a day.

Not every writer finds that sort of pace comfortable. When I was writing KING KHAN I was doing about 3K words a day, but EPIC FANTASY WITH NO DULL PARTS has been much slower, between 1.5K to 2.5K a day. Other writers might do 800 words a day on average, or a single page. There’s nothing wrong with that, because every writer works in their own way, at their own pace.

However! Many, many writers would consider 1.7K words a mediocre or disappointing day, so don’t be intimidated. One of the most valuable things about an exercise like NaNoWriMo is that it gives you a chance to stretch yourself and prove that you can do more than you expected.

That said, there are a number of ways to increase productivity and get those pages done. Since this is something I’ve been working on personally, I have some tips:

Just get it on the page. You can always rewrite later. Not every writer works this way (some make each paragraph perfect then move on and never return to it) but if you can get momentum, keep it going. If you don’t have momentum, force yourself to push until you get it.

Don’t stop at the end of a chapter or scene. If possible, end in the middle of a scene when you know what’s going to happen next. When you return the next day, the half-scene will help give regain the previous day’s momentum.

Know what you’re going to write before the writing starts. You don’t want to spend your writing time thinking about what you ought to write. Use your teeth-brushing time, your shower time, your commute time, whatever for that. Turn off the news/music/TV/whatever and plan the next day’s work. It helps.

Reduce your distractions while you write. I have to write at a coffee shop, because it’s impossible for me to ignore my wife’s and son’s voices. A few weeks ago I looked up from my revisions on KING KHAN and was surprised to see EMT’s in the shop working on a man who’d collapsed at the other end of the room. Apparently, the guy fell, 911 was called, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics came through the door to check on him, and I noticed none of it (-10 to Listen checks). But if my wife says “Hmph!” at the other end of the room I completely lose my concentration (and my wife is an extrovert, so it can be challenging for her to leave me alone.)

That’s why I get out of the apartment to get my pages done and, before I go I turn on Mac Freedom to thwart the temptation to check email or Twitter. Freedom doesn’t work for everyone, but there are a helluva lot of productivity programs out there to choose from. Try to find one that works for you.

Prioritize. Everyone has important things that need to be taken care of every day. The writing will only be done if you put writing time on that list. No one ever finds time for writing, they only steal it from something else. If you find yourself at the end of your day without having written a word, it should be clear that everything you did that day was more important to you. The little choices in our lives demonstrate the things we value most.

And there are many, many things more important than writing: caring for your kids, caring for sick loved ones, making your rent, caring for your own self. If you’re one of those people who can’t write because you are overwhelmed with important responsibilities, then you have my best wishes and I hope life stops leaning on you so heavily. If you didn’t get any writing done but managed to watch your favorite shows or argue politics on Facebook, that’s no big deal in the larger sense, but you’re showing what’s truly important to you.

Don’t get writer’s block. I know, right? There are some kinds of writer’s block that can’t be avoided: sometimes you’re depressed. Sometimes you’re grieving. Sometimes life stresses are so huge that the idea of sitting down and working out how to thwart an alien robot invasion seems trivial and overwhelming at once. Those writer’s blocks are legit, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

But if you’re “blocked” because you don’t know what will happen next, there are a series of questions that can help resolve plot issues. Make a list of the characters and ask: What does each character want in this particular situation? What resources can they access? How far are they willing to go? What line will they never cross?

Also, what tone are you trying to go for? It’s always easier to create conflict conflict conflict by making certain characters into irredeemable villains, but if you don’t want that, you’re going to need to work out a way for decent people to have conflicting goals that they absolutely must achieve.

This is what I just did for an upcoming chapter in my book: all the ideas I had were unworkable and/or cliche (including, I kid you not, an arena fight scene). I left my laptop at home and took a notepad and pen instead, making long lists of possible plot complications for that part of the story. The bad and cliche ideas went onto the page first so I could get beyond them, and within a half-hour I had what I needed.

Smart choices aren’t always the easiest ones. Writers we all admire–the ones who write moving, surprising books–sometimes seem as though what they do is magic. And sometimes it is (or at least, it seems to come from a part of the brain we don’t understand all that well so it seems like magic). But usually what’s happening is that they are generating a whole bunch of ideas and discarding the ones that aren’t excellent.

One of the best ways to bring momentum to your writing–and to be prolific–is to be excited about what comes next. So plan the next part of your book before you start writing it, take the time to consider all the creative choices available, and choose the best.

Good luck.

Pengdom

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Yeah, Penguin has been spun off its parent company and will merge with publisher Random House. Also, Random House is my publisher for the Twenty Palaces books. The merger won’t affect me much at all, except that I will have one fewer market to sell future work. It does mean that some of the folks currently riding out Hurricane Sandy have to also worry about having a job once the storm clears.

This is a good place to read more.

For everyone in the path of Sandy who still has power to read this, stay safe.