Black Bay Books racks up at Indie Awards

Black Bay Books, a small, back-farm publishing house specializing in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama dealing with Florida, horses, and rural society, is one of the big winners of this year's Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

The first novel in Iza Moreau's Small Town Series, The News in Small Towns, was a top-five finalist in TWO categories: Regional Fiction and Mystery. Not to be outdone, Sara Warner's fine first novel, Still Waters, not only was a finalist in the Thriller/Suspense category, but WON the General Fiction category and took home the GRAND PRIZE for all fiction and  $1,600 in prize money. This makes Still Waters the highest rated independently published novel in the country.  

The Next Generation Indie Book Awards, sometimes called the 'Sundance' of the book publishing world, is a literary awards program that recognizes and honors authors and publishers of exceptional independently published books in 60 different categories. "Indies" include small presses, larger independent publishers, university presses, e-book publishers, and self-published authors. The top book in each category is reviewed by literary agents for possible representation, and winners are promoted during the BookExpo America event in New York City that coincides with the Indie Book Awards prize ceremony.

Here are the numbers: There were 60 categories in this year's awards. Each category had a winner and four finalists. Although I have no figures on how many publishers submitted books--or how many books were submitted in total--eighty-five publishers were represented in the medals list. Twenty-nine other books were listed as either self-published or published by entities such as Smashwords, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, CreateSpace, or  iUniverse, which are technically speaking, publishing platforms and not actual publishers.

Of the actual publishers, only one had more top-five medalists in  fiction than Black Bay Books--six--and they achieved this with six books. One other house had five medals--one for each of five titles. Black Bay Books received five medals for only two books.

This speaks not only to the quality of the Black Bay Books entries, but also to the fact that, like many cutting-edge independently published novels, Still Waters and The News in Small Towns transcend genre stereotyping. And isn't that the point of Indie Publishing?

A new rating system

Just over a year ago, I posted an article called "What's Happened To Our Reviewing System?" It took issue with the current way we rate books, but without suggesting a way to improve it. I'll rectify that now.

Say you're a fan of horror novels and Stephen King's Carrie is your favorite book. If asked by Goodreads or another site what you would rate it, you would click on the fifth star without a second thought. A fan of British science fiction might do the same for A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Dark fantasy lovers might bestow the highest ratings for some of Neil Gaiman's works. And if those books are your favorites, then giving 5 stars may be appropriate.

But how many stars would these same reviewers give Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, or Ulysses? To say that Carrie or American Gods is on the same level as The Grapes of Wrath is simply silly. But this is what's happening. Ratings simply don't tell the whole story.

So here's my suggestion: Let the horror lovers give Books of Blood, Volume 1 5-star ratings if they love it that much. But let all ratings be by genre, not across genres. When something is given a 5-star rating, that should mean "Among the best of the genre," not "Among the best books ever written."

I recently gave Neal Stephenson's Anathem 5 stars. That doesn't mean that I think it is a literary masterpiece that will be taught in colleges for centuries. I suspect that very few people will even get through it, but I simply couldn't go any lower. It is visionary, scientific, futuristic, and philosophic (in fact, he invents his own philosophical system) with interesting characters, a riveting story, and an unusual twist just when you think you're on the home stretch. It takes science fiction to a whole new level--just as his Snow Crash did a decade earlier--and as his Reamde does to the Thriller genre.

But if 5 stars indicates "Among the best of the Genre," what would 4 stars indicate? Well, obviously, not  among the best in the genre, but still quite good. Kind of like, maybe Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which is both thought-provoking and exciting. Yet compared to the Harry Potter series, it seems lacking. Another neat thing about this rating system is this: if you think that Pullman is the better writer, you can give him the 5 stars and Rowling the 4. I would give four stars to books that  might be among the best in the genre, but that I enjoyed immensely and would probably want to read again. Paul Theroux' Ozone and Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick (to which Vonnegut himself gave only a 2) come to mind.

And what about 3 stars? Although it usually means "good" or "I liked it okay," it has become a rating that no one wants to be given. Although it isn't death, a preponderance of 3-star ratings might be off-putting to potential buyers, especially when 5 stars is so commonly given. I'll give three stars, too, sometimes. I gave one to The Great Gatsby, which I've never really found that interesting, but it probably won't hurt Fitzgerald's sales any. I would hesitate, though, to give 3 or fewer stars to an e-book by an independent author. Instead, I would give a short review stating what I liked about the book and what I didn't. And not issue any stars, avoiding that part of the rating system. Or I might simply avoid rating it at all.

Two stars? One star? I see no real point to issuing many of these. If the book is truly terrible, let someone else give the bad news. I've noticed that many of the very worst reviews are from readers with an agenda. Also, if a book is bad enough to get only a single star, why finish it? It is an opportunity, however, to get your ya yas out on things you were forced to read as a child, like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, in college (Nightwood.), or something you finished despite your better judgment or if you simply had nothing else to turn to (the Lemony Snicket books). But use these sparingly.


Here are some other genres (or subgenres), just in the category of fiction
Romance, not to be confused with
Paranormal Romance--a different subgenre entirely
Classic World Literature (War and Peace, for instance)
Classic American Literature (Huckleberry Finn). Not to be confused with
Contemporary American Literature, like Jennifer Egan's award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad or the independent Still Waters by Sara Warner. Both these books, in time, might become part of Classic American Literature or even Classic World Literature, but let some time pass.
Science Fiction can be broken down into several sub-genres, including
Fantasy, which is not quite the same as
Dark Fantasy, which is, in turn, not quite the same thing as
Horror.
And so on, which is another thing Vonnegut said.


Rating books is a serious business. And we are the main reviewers now, not The New York Times. Although you are expected to give writers that are your friends the maximum number of stars, be as truthful as you can with your ratings. Write a short description explaining the number of start that you assign. And keep in mind--whether you are writing or reading the rating or the review--that the book is being compared to other books like it, not to literature as a gigantic and worldly whole.

Paper books will never disappear.

Thirty-two years ago I became a book publisher. In 1990, of course, electronic books were just random strings of code running around in the mind of literary teckies. Physical books made out of paper and ink were coming off presses in incredible numbers. Printers were relatively easy to find, so I negotiated with one in my area of North Florida. What I delivered was camera-ready; that is, I had designed the look of the book, typed it, proofread it, and assembled it. A friend designed a cover, so all the printer had to do was burn the plates and print it.

Now here's the thing. For a real paper-and-ink printer, preparation and setup are everything. Once preparation and setup are complete, it is just as easy to print 10,000 copies as it is to print one, but the preparation costs are steep. So the price of printing was tied to the number of copies. The book I delivered turned out to be just under 200 printed pages. If I would have chosen to get 100 copies, each one would have cost well over $20--an impossible proposition for a book whose cover price was $7.95.

I ended up ordering something like 5,000 copies of this book, which brought the cost per book down to just under $2, not including shipping which added another few cents to the total. And opening that first box and seeing the stacks of shiny red covers was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Yet, over 30 years later, I still have a good number of these books in storage, still in their original boxes with their original packing. Dozens of copies can be purchased on-line from stores across the country for under a buck.

Now we have electronic books, which have no physical storage problems. A huge debate is raging over whether or not the print book will eventually be totally replaced by electronic images of itself. But much of the same technology that gives us iBooks and Kindle has also created print on demand. Roughly speaking, print on demand simply means making a hard copy of an e-book. There are many of these print-on-demand publishers floating around the internet. Lightning Source, affiliated with library and bookstore distribution giant Ingram is one. CreateSpace, owned by greedy Amazon, is another. There are hundreds more to choose from. I chose CreateSpace because there are no set-up fees and because the book will automatically be listed and sold by Amazon.

One of my publisher friends recently suggested using CreateSpace, saying that it "wasn't rocket science." Maybe not, but getting your book--and cover--uploaded correctly to CreateSpace is not easy. I have now published three books through CreateSpace. For the last two, it took my wife and I several weeks to get things the way we wanted them in terms of book size, font style, margins, and the like. But their review process is extremely helpful. And designing a cover is always a pain, although CreateSpace will actually provide a selection of templates for free, as well as offering professional services in case you are not a do-it-yourselfer. This post, though, is for those who are.

The upshot is that I now have three books published through CreateSpace. Using their standard page and cover stock, each of the three books is about 100,000 words and all weigh in at just one pound, but there the similarity ends. Each has a different font, for instance, and different margins. They also have different sizes, which affects the price. Here'a a breakdown:
Book One, 6 x 9, 256 pages. Cost per book: $3.75
Book Two, 5.5 x 8.5, 304 pages. Cost per book: $4.49
Book Three, 5 x 8, 340 pages. Cost per book: $5.00

The "suggested" size is 6 x 9, which is what I chose for Book One. Larger pages translate into more words on the page and less pages overall. The larger the font, the more pages. And the higher the page count, the greater the cost. But all are attractive sizes and in line with sizes used by mainstream publishers for fine works of literature, which these are.

What's more, the price of these books is affordable to virtually anyone. For $5 you can own a great-looking copy of your masterpiece. And you don't have to order more than one to get that price. In fact, I don't think you have to order any at all--you can just let greedy Amazon sell it for you. But it you are someone who sells your own, you can turn a pretty good profit by taking a book you paid $5 for and selling it at the standard trade-paperback price of about $15. Even if you discount it for friends or promotions, you can double your investment.

So now we get to the reason for the title of this post. Although e-books will continue to have a greater audience and have a greater impact on our reading habits, print-on-demand publishers will ensure that many--if not most--of us will want print copies of our own books, even if we no longer have a need to litter our bookshelves with John Grisham or Stephen King tomes. And I don't think there's an author on earth that would pass up the chance to make that happen. I sure didn't.

Truth or fiction? Who cares?

When I'm reading book blurbs or movie announcements, there is one phrase that's guaranteed to send me scurrying to the next listing as fast as my little eyes can carry me. That phrase is: "Based on a true story."

If someone feels the need to tell me that their book is based on a true story, there is probably something seriously wrong with the work. Such as:
1. It is a quickly worked-up novel based on a sensational news story, whose author is hoping to cash in on the morbid rubberneckers in the audience. It tells me that the author was too lazy to create their own characters, plots, and situations.
2. It is a badly researched bit of history, biography, or crime drama that is called a "novel" simply for convenience (and maybe to attempt to avoid a lawsuit). It tells me that the author was too lazy to complete the research and get the facts right.
You can bet your boots that anything touted to be "based on a true story" is going to be an artless piece of trash.

But here's where things start getting tricky. Does that mean that all books based on true stories are trash? Of course not. Only the ones that are advertised as such by the authors or their publishers--the ones without literary value that appeal solely to the morbidly curious. One of the most famous pieces of "journalistic fiction" is Truman Capote's 1966 book, In Cold Blood. Dubbed by some critics as heralding a new form of crime reporting, it was labeled fiction by others because of changes Capote made in several scenes and for his re-creation of dialogue. Not to be outdone by his literary nemesis, Norman Mailer released his own piece of literary crime writing, The Executioner's Song, which chronicled the life and bad deeds of murderer Gary Gilmore. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for--you guessed it--fiction. Capote's book entailed six years of research and thousands of pages of notes. Neither he nor Mailer had to rely on "Based on a true story," to win sales and accolades.

The famous novelist E. L. Doctorow wrote a fictional account of the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in his highly praised 1971 novel The Book of Daniel. His next novel, Ragtime, used a combination of fictional and made-up characters in his intriguing story line. Was it based on a true story? Who cares; it was a great book and I enjoyed reading it.

That brings us to copyright page disclaimers. You know what I mean: "This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental." This is the actual text on the copyright page of Charles Bukowski's novel, Hollywood, which is a scathing roman à clef of the making of the movie Barfly. Is it fiction? Some of it probably. Is it based on a true story? Of course--everybody on earth knows this and no disclaimer can make it otherwise. There have been discussions of exactly how to word such a copyright disclaimer. What if only some of the things are true, what if the college is real but the basketball coach fictional? What if the stories are true but "the names have been changed to protect the innocent."?

Well here's a news flash. Every novel has at least a bit of truth, and most of them have more than a little. I've never written a novel or a story that doesn't have a great deal of myself in it, that doesn't use the mannerisms of someone I've met or observed, that doesn't use certain accents or colloquialisms I have heard from others, that doesn't describe living rooms or gardens of my friends and acquaintances. Again, any thinking person knows this. To have to add a disclaimer saying it isn't so, Joe, is just silly. It's a lie and everybody knows it's a lie.

Now I admit that it is wrong--and illegal--to write about a real person, either by name or giving that person a pseudonym, and insinuate that this person has committed a crime or done some other unsavory act without direct proof. And writing about real people can have consequences. When Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward Angel, using thinly disguised versions of his family, friends, and home town, he was unable to return home for eight years due to the negative furor from those he wrote about. Worth Tuttle Hedden's marvelous novel Love Is a Wound is a similar effort. The biographical detail of the novel is part of its greatness and helps make it the culmination of her life's work.

So my advice to people who worry about exactly how to word their copyright disclaimer or their "based on a true story" blurb is this. Just hit delete.

What are the indie writers writing?

I was concerned about the fact that when looking through the New Releases on Smashwords, I rarely see anything that looks like literary fiction. No Moby Dick- or Huckleberry Finn-type stuff, even after I turn off the adult filter. So I did a little research on the number of books in different genres and this is what I came up with.
Genre                              All Titles      Titles over 25,000 words
Young Adult                        5,600                       3,520
Fantasy                              5,210                        2,750
Sci-Fi                                 4,980                        2,580
Romance                            3,970                        2,770
Mystery/Detective                3,920                        2,780
Suspense/Thriller                 2,570                        1,760
Horror                                 2,400                        1,510
Literary Fiction                    1,560                           740

There were also several categories that weren't actual genres--Christian, African-American, Gay & Lesbian, Holiday, Humor, and Women's. These would actually be subgenres under one of the categories on the list: Lesbian Mystery, for instance, or Romance featuring African-American characters.

Then there were a couple of catergories that shouldn't have been there at all: Adventure (which can usually fit inside either Mystery or Thriller), Drama (which should only be used for theater pieces, although most of the books actually listed under this heading could almost certainly be put in one of the 8 major categories above, and in the same percentages), and Poetry (which, like Theater, should be a separate category outside fiction).

And for what it's worth, there should be a Smashwords category for books over 60,000 words instead of 25,000. Twenty-five thousand words can be a good novella, but is more likely to be an unfinished or poorly thought-out novel. Sixty thousand words is my absolute low word count for a complete novel. And a study has recently shown that Smashwords readers prefer full-length works. This would make it easier for them to find.

So I was right to be concerned about literary fiction. It is the lowest of the low. But why? Do authors who write literary fiction think they are too good to publish directly into an e-book format? Or are they waiting until all other avenues (traditional publishers, agents, small presses) have been tried? Probably a little of both. I'm primarily a writer of literary fiction, by the way, yet none of the dozen or so books I have on Smashwords or Amazon are literary fiction.

Why am I saving my best work for last-minute publication? Do I really think that, in my mid-60's, I'm going to start seriously making the rounds of agents and publishers? Again? In this literary and economic climate? Not likely. But like other posts I have made in this blog, this one is helping me to review my own situation and  possibly make new decisions about my work.

I am confident that in time, literary fiction will significantly increase, giving readers a greater choice in what they read. Giving them, in fact, a better choice. Count me in on that.

UPDATE: 3/3/2012: About a week after I created this post, Smashwords expanded their search categories. Although they didn't create one for "books over 60,000 words," they did create categories for "over 50,000" and "over 100,000."

Just say no to the 1%

By now many of you may have heard about Amazon's new power play. With their new "KDP Select" option, they have created a sizable fund to entice e-book authors away from organizations like Smashwords and give Amazon exclusive rights to their books. In other words, you would have to remove your book from Smashwords, Diesel, the Apple iBookstore, and every place else that sells and distributes e-books except Amazon. Cool, huh? Oh, wait. No, it's not..


I went on the Amazon site--to my own dashboard, in fact--and it was daunting. The first thing I saw was a large banner introducing KDP Select and showing a huge amount of cash in their "fund." They have even created a new column at the end of each of my titles asking me to Enroll in the program. I won't, and neither should you.


This is a bit more than just a shot across the bow of Nook and Apple. Although Apple's iPad allows the use of an app that enables the reader to purchase books in the Kindle format, books purchased from the iBookstore are in ePub. Ditto Nook and Kobo and other major e-bookstores. The Amazon Kindle machines read only books formatted in the Kindle (.mobi) format. If more authors decide to become Amazon-exclusive, fewer books will be available to those customers who own reading devices that use only ePub formatting, such as Kobo and Nook. So not only will Amazon realize more sales from books, but from e-book reading devices as well.

Amazon's first step is to get independent authors, such as you and me, to sign up with them for a 90-day trial period. But this trial period will be renewed automatically unless you can determine how to opt out. We can guess what comes next.
1.  Amazon will control more and more not only of the e-book publishing industry, but the even more lucrative e-book reading device industry.
2.  Amazon will require anyone publishing e-books on their KDP program to enroll in KDP Select, which will then become permanent.
3.  Amazon will begin charging authors and publishers a fee for allowing them to have exclusive publishing and distribution rights on our e-books.
4.  The royalty that Amazon gives to its authors will decrease over time.

This is speculation, of course, but I have seen Amazon move in this direction with its traditionally published books. They make more demands, have higher fees, and take more of a cut of profits than any other book distributor. Seriously, why would anyone or any organization want such exclusive control? How much money do they need? Is it just a game to them? If so, it will only work if we play. Let's continue to be proud of our independent status and support the companies that support us, such as Smashwords. It is just another example of saying "No!" to the 1 percent.

Afternote: A recent blog article by Smashwords founder Mark Coker, goes into detail about Amazon's new "KDP Select" option. Mark's post, which can be found here, attempts to make sense of what Amazon is trying to do.

How much should I give away free?

One (more) reason to shop at e-book venues like Smashwords is that you are generally allowed to read free samples from whatever you are interested in buying. Amazon allows prospective buyers a 10% free sample for all books. Smashwords, on the other hand, allows the author to choose how much of their hard work to give away free. Most go higher than 10%, and they should. Here's why.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am an inveterate blurb reader. If the description interests me and it does not have egregious spelling or grammar errors (one recently published book had a spelling error in the title--not only in the title field, but on the cover), I will download the sample. Two recent books--Shifting, by Miracle Jones, and The Ex-Pacifist, by Sarah Wilson, passed the sample test early. So did the series of hilarious short stories entitled Ueda Sensei Solves Crimes of Depravity and Perversity, by Robert Crayola. I happily paid for the remainder of those books. Last night, though, I was reading the sample from a book of mystery stories that had both positives and negatives. The setup was clever and interesting but the narrator was kind of a dickhead. Unfortunately, the sample ended before the first story did, preventing me from knowing how the story came out and, more importantly, how good a craftsman the author actually was. I opted not to buy the remainder. Another five or ten percent in the free sample and I may have chosen differently.

Some authors may decide that giving away more than 10% of their book cheapens it. Quite the contrary. In my opinion, the more they give away, the better chance they have to make a sale. I have always thought that the first 20 or so pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone dragged a bit. Rowling was new to writing and probably fussed over those first pages a little too much. Marilynne Robinson's fine novel Housekeeping, begins with a 30-page preamble that is somewhat less than interesting, yet the book--also a first novel--as a whole is first rate. I don't see any reason why authors shouldn't allow up to 50% of free material, or even more. The more a reader has invested in the book--the time spent as well as familiarity with the characters and the plot--the more likely he or she will pay to read the remainder.

The length of a book may influence the sample size, although it shouldn't. For a 200,000-word novel, 10% is probably enough to allow a buyer to make a decision. That's after all, about 60 pages of a printed book. Still, 100 pages would be better. Conversely, I have seen some books that are so short that a 10% sample only covers the title page and license notes. A sample will work only if it actually samples the work.

A minimum sample size, in my opinion, would include the following:
for a novel: at least two chapters.
for a book of short stories: at least one complete story.
for a book of poems: a sampling of at least 10 poems, unless the poems are extra long.
for a play: at least one complete scene.
for a book of nonfiction: the introduction and at least two complete chapters.

Authors are encouraged to experiment on sample size, checking their own work and making sure that their sample includes enough material. If 20% gets to within a page of the end of a chapter, make it 21%.

So the more you give away, the more you get. That's a pretty damn good exchange in these times. In fact, I have actually convinced myself to go back to my own books on Smashwords and up the free samples. Maybe you should do the same.