Publishing Myths I Still Can’t Let Go

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Yeah, I still have the dream of walking into a Barnes & Noble and seeing my name up on the shelf, with some of my sci-fi tribe standing around chatting it up. Awesome. Would be equally amazing to get an invite to Dragon-Con in Atlanta with a room full of cosplayers living out characters I dreamed up. My tribe again. Those guys are crazy. Anyway, that’s the sort of thing that prompts a guy like me to sit in his study or out on the lake and pound away on a keyboard, dreaming up outlandish tech-scapes and apocalyptic drama – or maybe more often chuckling at something I thought up for somebody in the story to say. The thing about reality though is it’s unforgiving and thrills at squashing the pictures you had in your head going into something like publishing. So here’s a few things I can’t turn loose, but probably need to:

3. Book reviews and big name author blurbs are reliable gauges of quality, and those guys are just out there waiting on you to publish so they can blanket bomb you with their verbiage. Book reviews and big name author blurbs are in fact, by majority, paid for or culled through big publishing house connections. They’re about as meaningful as the things people you didn’t like wrote in your high school yearbook. Trying to get real live people to log in to Amazon and enter a review is as fun and satisfying as passing a kidney stone. Yet you need them, so let the heavy work begin. Go to places like the following to send thoughtful, customized review requests of blogs in your genre. You should know though, if you’re one of those keyword and search engine geeks, the Amazon algorithms put a ton more weight on verified purchase reviews than they do other reviews.

http://www.allbooksreviewint.com/                                             http://melanierockett.com/directory-of-book-reviewers/ http://www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/

2. In order to get on the bookshelf at a big chain bookstore, you just have to have a great book and put the time in – pay your dues. It’s a process, open to everyone. Maybe that’s the case; but I’m not seeing it as worthwhile if you’re an indie publisher or self-publishing. Way too much effort and very low probably of success. Get yourself on Ingram if you like since so many of them order through that database. Get yourself a Kirkus or Midwest review, though you’ll pay through the nose for Kirkus (and may have to pay at Midwest). Look up the Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and Hudson buyers online and submit if you like. The American Bookseller’s Association has an Indie Advance Access program where you can try and approach their small-store membership. Honestly, though, your time is better spent dropping this one for now, especially if it’s your first book or so, and churn up a decent on-line presence to drive people to your sales page on Amazon.

1. No reason I can’t just make the cover myself. I’m a smart guy. Give me a trial membership of Photoshop and get out of my way! Stop. Go back. Here be dragons. I spent days on this, learned the software, got my stock photography, even learned how to do lens flares J. J. Abrams would be proud of. I put that bad boy together and was overjoyed at how it looked. Family folks agreed at how amazing it was. A good time was had by all. Then I found out how hideous it looked as a thumbnail on ebook sites, how little impact it made when on the page with a bunch of other books, and just how many freaking rules of marketing and book cover best practices I broke with it. A savvy marketing guy named, Derek Murphy made a comment that stuck with me here – he said your book cover shouldn’t reflect a scene from the book because that’s worthless. It should just look like it belongs on the shelf next to books similar to it. That’s important.

So I’m done with this train of thought. Good luck to you if this is the road you’re headed down. Let me know if I can help!

‘The Messengers’ on Neflix

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The_Messengers_Intertitle.png

So let me ask you a question. Is it really unreasonable and overly nerdist to expect some basic physics be adhered to in my entertainment? Give me just a minute or two here; and I’ll make my case.

I ran nuclear reactors in the Navy, so I get the idea of what they look like, where you can go, and where you can’t. Not that that’s really necessary. When I watched the James Bond flick with Pierce Brosnan, ‘The World Is Not Enough’, I honestly tell you – I shielded my eyes during the reactor scene because it was so stupid. Not kidding – I had to look away. That sort of thing happens to me; and my wife has no patience for it. She says shut up and just enjoy the story.

Anyway, she and I periodically binge watch shows on Netflix together. We’re just about done with a single season deal called, ‘The Messengers’, which was rated 4.5 stars there. I gave a pass on the nonsense about illusory non-functional wings no one can see, this idea that God picks people each generation to run around in circles with intentionally ambiguous information trying to stop the rapture, and the random nature of these sins that mysteriously trigger transformations of regular everyday people into horsemen of the apocalypse. I’m cool, really. Somehow, even in this swamp of suspending disbelief, it was a scene about a mysterious new element that finally disconnected me. When somebody says they’ve got in their hand a material containing, ‘every element known to man, and a new one we’ve never seen before’, maybe that doesn’t bother you. Maybe a picture of the periodic table doesn’t pop up in your head with all those radioactive ones smiling there. I shielded my eyes, man.

So where do you stand on this? Go ahead and watch, ‘The Messengers’ because the people can act and there is a reasonable story, though you’re out of luck for a second season. I doubt you’re like me with the physics thing, so you’ll probably have a fine time.

‘Lady Of Mazes’ by Karl Schroeder

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mazes

Just finished Karl Schroeder’s, “Lady Of Mazes”; and it’s entirely possible I’m just not smart enough to have gotten all the good out of it. I love me some big ideas; and this guy kept them coming, no doubt. Ginormous ringworld populated by trillions of people, living in enclosed societies frozen out of certain types of technology (depending on which society you’re living in) by thingies called, ‘tech locks’ because that’s the level and set of values they wanted to have…like Amish in space, but way cooler. Augmented reality on steroids they call, ‘the inscape’, which provides consensual reality – decide what you want to see and filter out the rest. Folks call up simulations of what they should do to see how decisions will turn out. They call up simulations of themselves for others to deal with when they feel like checking out for a while. It goes on and on, man. Highly original and very interesting. Of course, because it’s science fiction, that all had to break up into bits; and I won’t go into all that. It felt a bit like something by Barrington Bayley, if you’ve ever tried something from him. (If you haven’t, go do that now – I’ll wait). But you don’t read Bayley for the snappy dialogue and believable character motivations, you know? Same deal here, at least that was my reality.

My issue is that it read at times, in fact most of the book, like random bits of dialogue and events that were honestly hard for me to follow. I blame my short attention span and impatience with wooden characters. Chapter divisions are there; but I couldn’t make sense of the logic behind them. People are doing all sorts of things; but most of that is just convenient for the conflict that needed to be set up and its resolution rather than a sensible flow of what people would do.

Anyway, the ideas stuck with me, if not the plot or the people. I’ll remember it, so maybe based on that alone, you should give it a shot yourself. Maybe just go in like a buddy of mine used to describe as his way of enjoying certain alt music like REM…think of it as an impressionist painting and don’t expect everything to float your boat and make perfect sense. I’m going to try another one by this same author, first in a series and called, ‘Sun Of Suns’. Will let you know how that one turns out.