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“Edward Gorey On Stage” battles its way into print!

Posted on by CJ Verburg

Determined to exist in time for the holidays, the print version of Edward Gorey On Stage: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer: a Multimedia Memoir continues to inch toward publication.  Over the past week this valiant little volume has fought off attacks of spontaneous indentation, skewed colors, and other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that tree-flesh is heir to.  Each new setback only renews its fervor to leap into shiny new covers, thence into wrapping paper and ribbon, thence onto a hidden shelf, down a stocking, or under a tree, to emerge at last into the delighted hands of a Gorey fan.

You can help make this unique mini-biography’s dream come true!  Official publication date is November 29, and like the Fiscal Cliff it’s still . . . well, a cliffhanger.  Stay tuned!  And join us to celebrate Victory (fingers Xd) on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 9, 4-6 PM at the Bottle Cap, opposite North Beach’s Washington Square Park, where four fascinating books will be matched with four delicious wines at a fabulous Wine and Book Tasting.

More insight from the Jonah Lehrer scandal

Posted on by CJ Verburg

When we left Jonah Lehrer (see my post of  July 31), his career was in flames, torched by the revelation that he’d made up quotations from Bob Dylan, as well as “repurposed” large chunks of writing previously published elsewhere, for his book Imagine.

I recently started reading Imagine, and was so put off by its glib storytelling, with facts inserted mainly for illustration, and grand generalizations often drawn from a single anecdote, that I quit after a few chapters.  That led me to wonder how such a shallow excuse for a book ever got into print.  My neighbor and fellow editor Susan Weisberg discovered that New York magazine wondered the same thing, and published an illuminating answer by Boris Kachka just a few days ago: “Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither was Jonah Lehrer.”

It’s long, but if you’re at all involved with journalism, literature, and/or science, it’s well worth reading!  Kachka presents quite a few lessons to be drawn from the Icarus tale of Jonah Lehrer, including one that’s particularly relevant to authors and publishers:

The tradition of the author’s lecture tour goes back at least as far as Charles Dickens. But its latest incarnation began with [Malcolm] Gladwell in 2000. The Tipping Point, his breakthrough best seller, didn’t sell itself. His publisher, Little, Brown, promoted the book by testing out its theory—that small ideas become blockbusters through social networks. Gladwell was sent across the country not just to promote his book but to lecture to booksellers about the secrets of viral-marketing. Soon The New Yorker was dispatching him to speak before advertisers, charming them and implicitly promoting the magazine’s brand along with his own. Increasingly, he became a commodity in his own right, not just touring a book (which authors do for free) but giving “expert” presentations to professional groups who pay very well—usually five figures per talk.

Sometimes we writers and publishers need to remind ourselves that this century is a different ball game from the one before, and we can profit from applying some of our creative curiosity to the new opportunities it offers.  And sometimes we need to remind ourselves why we chose this vocation, and refuse to be bullied by the lure of fortune and fame into compromising the search for knowledge that’s at the core of our quest.

FREE backstage Trick-or-Treat tour with Edward Gorey

Posted on by CJ Verburg

. . . but only until midnight Saturday . . . so click here 
before moonrise for your free copy of EDWARD GOREY ON STAGE: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer: a Multimedia Memoir.

This “thoroughly enjoyable” e-chronicle of an amazing artist’s little-known work for (and sometimes on) the stage will be published in print in mid-November — yes, a multimedia book on paper! — just in time to light up your holiday gift list.

Huge apologies to anyone who discovered with surprise (as we did) that Kindle accidentally canceled Free Day #1.  Luckily you still have a few more hours to add this unique behind-the-scenes portrait of a brilliant artist to your e-library as a Trick-or-Treat special.  Happy Halloween!

Marketing is the tail that wags the dog — but don’t forget the dog!

Posted on by CJ Verburg

Indie author/publisher Barbara Freethy has just become the first to sell over a million copies of her books on PubIt, Barnes & Noble’s e-outlet.  That’s AFTER she sold over a million on Amazon!

Naturally everybody wants to know how she did it.

First, she picked a bottomless market: Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance and Romantic Suspense.

Second, she focuses first and foremost on writing.  Her comments support my suspicion that sometimes social media do more to reassure us we’re working hard on our books’ behalf than to actually sell those books:

“I honestly think writing the next book is a more important and a better use of your time than investing too many hours or too many dollars into promotion.”

Yes, people can’t buy your books if they don’t know they’re out there.  But which draws more attention?  your Tweet reminding folks of your wonderful oeuvre, or your publication announcement for a brand-new opus?

 

How to welcome readers to your book

Posted on by CJ Verburg

Online booksellers make it as easy as point-and-click for a reader to buy any book that strikes his/her fancy.  Sometimes, ironically, it’s the publisher who changes the reader’s mind.

How often have you clicked “Look Inside” or “Download a Free Sample” to find out if you really do want to read this one?  And how many times have you been slapped in the face by page after page of boilerplate (“No portion of this book may be reproduced . . . I want to thank my wonderful spouse, children, best friend, dog, et al. . . Here’s the poem that inspired me to write this book . . . Gratefully dedicated to my weekly group . . .”) and clicked DELETE rather than grope on and on through the underbrush until you finally come to the story?

A recent post on LinkedIn’s Crime Fiction group by Iain Parke and Bad-Press.co.UK reminds us as writers to take advantage of our readers’ appreciative attention by asking them, once they’ve read this book, to review it on Amazon and other sites.

Boom-Books always includes such a request at the end of our books.  Every reader is a partner–our reason for existing–and we hope they’ll want to share the fun they’ve had with the stories we publish.

We also pay close attention to the beginning of our books!  The front matter, as it’s traditionally called, is the first thing a reader sees (after the cover) when s/he opts to Look Inside or Download a Free Sample.  In print books, this may comprise a title page, a half-title, a copyright page, a dedication page, even a preface and/or introduction.  No problem–most readers can easily flip to Page One.  But with an e-book, your reader generally is obliged to scroll through everything that falls between the cover and the story before s/he can get a taste of your writing.  Why waste those precious few seconds of curiosity with stuff your potential reader doesn’t need or want to know?

What DOES the reader need and want to know?  The book’s title, author, publisher, and the fact that it’s copyrighted.  (You might also include its ISBN, and a dedication if that’s important to the author.)  So that’s all the information we put between the cover and Chapter One.  Since e-books don’t have pages, there’s no need to fill up blank space as in a print book.  The copyright line goes something like this:

Book Title Copyright (c) Your Name 2012. All rights reserved. Full copyright notice is at the end of this book.

Last but not least, the title page is an ideal place for your cocktail pitch!  (That’s your a 25-words-or-less answer when someone drifts up to you at a party, drink in hand, and asks, “So what’s your book about?”)  Including a teaser up front offers a hand to your potential readers by (A) utilizing their few seconds of attention to tell them why they’ll enjoy your book, and (B) reminding them, if they don’t return to it until days or weeks later, why they want to read it.  If the book’s gotten rave reviews, include some short excerpts here, too.

For examples, take a look at the Kindle title pages for Charisse Howard’s historical romance Dark Horseman and Carol Verburg’s mysteries Croaked and Silent Night Violent Night.

 

How are readers finding books?

Posted on by CJ Verburg

Being hard at work in San Francisco, I couldn’t attend Digital Book World’s Discoverability conference last weekend in New York; but DBW’s newsletters are so consistently useful that I’ve looked forward to hearing about it.

Here’s the first scoop:  We know less than we thought we did about how readers are (or aren’t) finding our books!

Reader behavior is in flux and the ways in which people engage with and discover new content has grown exponentially, according to data from Bowker presented by the company’s vice president of publishing services Kelly Gallagher . . .

– In 2011, nearly half of consumers changed their book-buying behavior (chart below)
– 39% of books are sold online, 26% in stores, and the rest in nearly a dozen other ways (chart below)
– People discover new books in up to 44 different ways

Perhaps most daunting is that e-reader owners, tablet owners, online book shoppers, customers of different retailers, people of all demographics, readers of all genres are all discovering books in different ways.

Imagine the complexity: a 27-year-old female romance reader from suburban Indianapolis who reads on a tablet computer but spends most of her time browsing the Web on her laptop versus a 43-year-old female romance reader living in Los Angeles who reads and buys exclusively on her e-reader. They’re both romance readers and female, but couldn’t be more different otherwise when it comes to how they discover and read books — and reaching them takes different marketing tactics.

The details are fascinating, and so is the chart.  Read all about it in DBW’s newsletter!

Battle of the Amazons, or, Comparing Apples & Oranges

Posted on by CJ Verburg

If you want to know where publishing is going, forget tea leaves and oracles and read these two reports from the front lines.

In “The Difference Between Apple & Amazon,” Dan Frommer hits on a contrast with implications for what we’ll be buying and doing for the rest of our lifetimes.  As Peter Brantley recently observed, in the 21st century it’s technology companies, not authors or publishers, who are shaping literature.  Frommer looks at this Colossus of Rhodes astride our landscape and reminds us that one foot’s about making stuff that everybody on earth wants to use, and one foot’s about selling really cool hardware.  Which is reaping bigger profits?  Which is more likely to achieve planetary domination?  Some surprising answers here!

In “Hats off to Amazon” Mike Shatzkin perceptively assesses the real message in Bezos & Co’s recent press conference.  It’s not the new Kindle Fire, or being able to opt out of ads, that makes Amazon — now more than ever — a force to reckon with.  It’s their astute exploitation of where multimedia’s going and who’s on board, notably including the kids who are growing up with tablets rather than books, TV, or CD players as their default entertainment source.  In a culture that defines the winner as the one who dies with the most toys, this is major news!

The Grammar Hammer embraces misplaced commas

Posted on by CJ Verburg

Today’s Comma-D of Errors, from FreeWood Post:

“The Russian Embassy was trashed today in D.C. by an angry mob of inebriated men who showed up from the neighborhood bar across the street thinking there was a promotion for “Free Pussy.” They commenced to start a riot and trashed the place but were disappointed after discovering that there was no free pussy.

“It seems there was a misunderstanding when protestors were standing out front with signs reading “Free Pussy, Riot”…”