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.

Why are there so many typos in self-published e-books?

I began reading a very interesting sample from a young-adult science fiction novel I downloaded from Smashwords. It has fresh ideas, a well-thought-out universe, an exciting and unique plot, vibrant and interesting characters, and an absolutely stunning cover. What's not to love? Well, I hate to mention it, but there were four typos on the first page. In the second chapter there was a bad plot-line error, probably the result of the author planning to go in one direction and ending up going in another. I have continued to find sporadic typos but my interest in the book has not waned. I am anxious to read each new chapter to see what events and adventures will unfold.

Does this mean that it doesn't matter if a book contains errors? That we should be able to pass over misspellings and grammatical mistakes without comment? Of course it doesn't. Despite my enjoyment of this book, I would have liked it even more if I hadn't had to cringe over each mistake, if my concentration hadn't been broken by having to go back and reread an unpunctuated sentence or paragraph to make sure I got the proper meaning.

Those of us who publish our own e-books have a responsibility that traditionally published authors do not have and have never had--to act as not only the book's author, but as its only copy-editor and proofreader. No, your girlfriend or your mother do not count (unless, of course, they are professional editors).

I truthfully don't think that any author wants to be thought of as in any way illiterate. If we are talking about 2 tables, we mean two tables, not to tables. If someone finds a mistake like this in one of my own books and tells me about it, I will immediately--and somewhat shamefacedly--correct it. In fact, in a previous blog post entitled "The world is my editor," I encourage my readers to do just that.

But let's go a step further. Let's make it easier for our readers to let us know that our books contain an error or two. In the example I used above, I tried mightily to find a private email address so I could send the 29-year-old author a few of my comments without having to post them on her blog where everyone could see them. But there simply was no way--not even a message button on the book's facebook page. I regretted it, but I thought maybe the author would feel more gratitude for the comments than irritation that they were made publicly.

Here's my idea. Why not make it possible for readers who have purchased the book to communicate with authors from within the e-book itself? If you are reading along and see the word tomatos, just click on it, bring up an email window, and type, Hey, man. It's tomatoes. Yes, there is potential for abuse, but abuse is more likely to come in the form of a review, which, again, can only be done on Smashwords by people who have paid for the book they are reviewing. As both an author and a reader, I would favor this idea or something like it.

If  proofreading and copy-editing are to be necessary tools for today's authors, then let's see this as an opportunity to learn even more about our craft than yesterday's authors. Readers have new opportunities too; for the first time in history, they have the ability to actually help in the creation of  a work of literature. When I see fine new writing--like I see in the e-book I am reading--I want to do everything I can to help it succeed.

What's in it for me?

Recently, one of my formatting clients emailed me with some very nice compliments about my work and particularly about the way I am following up to make sure that her book is getting through the Smashwords and Amazon systems in good shape. Then she asked, "What's in it for you?"  So I'll tell you.

I've had many jobs in my life, but in most of them I have found myself around books and writing. I have worked in libraries, clerked in bookstores, owned a bookstore, edited not only educational materials, but literary magazines. I have even been a publisher--still am, in fact. Some of these jobs were unpaid, at least in green currency. No matter. Being around books and writers keeps me in the literary scene, inspires me to write my own works, and gives me hope for the future--something to strive for.

Owing a bookstore was a high point in my life until the megastores like Barnes and Noble came into town with the expressed intention of putting all other bookstores in the area out of business. I still loved going in to work, but something had changed. Instead of being a labor of love, it became a job. I am delighted that my bookstore is still operating--although under new ownership--but I feel no longing to have it back.

Instead, I feel an affinity with e-books, and when I learned about Smashwords and its policy of encouraging independent publishing, I learned all I could. I learned how to format e-books by formatting some of my own. The process was longer than I suspected because it required a lot of study and experiment, but I managed to get the books up in a way that suited me perfectly. It was at that point that I felt I knew what I was doing--especially when I compared it to what other people were doing. Yikes! Then I was fortunate enough to get on "Mark's List" of Smashwords formatters, which enabled me to format books for others.

And what a pleasure it is. I know most of you will doubt me when I say this, but I truly love formatting books. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, it doesn't matter. I enjoy getting to know each new author and find out a little about the way they live and write. I have formatted books for authors in the U. S., Japan, England, and Canada and have enjoyed interacting with each one.

And I don't want to format the fruit of someone's hard work--sometimes their life's work--and leave them hanging between worlds, wondering what to do next. How much should I price my book? How do I get an ISBN? Should I make my book DRM? Why is my book still in Review? Why can't my friends see the sample? There are dozens, or even hundreds, of questions like this, and I know the answer to most of them. And if I don't, I am very likely to know exactly where to go to find out. Why should my clients have to wade through dozens of pages of FAQs or wait for days or weeks to get  replies from Smashwords or Amazon? Hell, they want their books available now. 

So do I, and helping them to make it so is fun.

Every story has a story.

More than twenty years ago, one of my co-workers at the Florida Department of Education showed me a photo she had taken of an old, abandoned church she had discovered in a wooded area near her home. It was a creepy picture, dark and viney, like something you might find in an Edgar Allan Poe story. You could almost feel the dried bat dung on the rope in the creaking bell tower. I remember her saying, "This would make a good setting for a horror novel, wouldn't it?"

For the rest of the day, I thought about that question, and that night I sat down and wrote part of the first chapter and a few ideas for characters and future chapters. I gave them to her the next day.

My co-worker was Anne Petty, who is now an established writer of dark fantasy novels and stories, a world-renowned J. R. R. Tolkien scholar, and the publisher of Kitsune Press. The book would be called Hell and High Water.

For the next six months or more, the two of us wrote on the book, little by little, meeting often in the conference room where we would spread out our chapters and notebooks and discuss motivation, direction, description, characterization. and all the other intricacies that make up a well-told story. We generally wrote alternating chapters, then discussed them and made constructive criticism. We didn't always see eye to eye but were always able to compromise on the language. And most of the time the compromise turned out to be better than either of our original suggestions.

The rigors of sending to literary agents and publishers got the best of us quickly, and the book went into our respective desk drawers and computer files (floppy disks, then). But that didn't stop us from continuing to write together. Over the next two years we planned and completed two additional novels connected to the first not so much by character, but by locale--the north Florida Gulf Coast, with all its myths and legends. The two additional novels in what we have always called "The North Florida Trilogy" are titled Museum Piece and Time Piece. They too, after brief tussles with agents, were consigned to invisible segments on a floppy.

Until now. With the increasing popularity of the e-book--and the fact that we're not as young as we once were--Anne and I realize that we finally have a chance to get these three novels out to readers. All three have been fiercely edited and rewritten over the years into a form we both are excited about. Hell and High Water is the first of the novels to appear in e-book form, and is available on Amazon and Smashwords.com (where, when you purchase it, you own it (and all revisions) forever, in all formats. It is inexpensive (about a quarter of what you'd pay for a new paperback) and readable not only on e-book reading devices such as Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks, but on your computer screen as well.

Oddly, Hell and High Water did not end up as a horror novel. We call it, instead, literary suspense, as are Museum Piece and Time Piece, which are currently undergoing Anne's final review. They will appear at intervals in the upcoming months. We will, of course, let you know in our blogs and facebook pages, so stay tuned.

I think that, after so much waiting, the books deserve to be read.

Scary writing.

It has become a tradition for me to read a book of horror or ghost stories during October--the month of Halloween.  This year I have chosen 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories, edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg. Some of the authors are famous in the genre, like H. P. Lovecraft, O. Henry, and Sheridan LeFanu, but most of the names are completely unfamiliar to me. As a former bookstore owner, an unknown author used to be a kind of a rarity. Just for grins I looked up a few of the strange names on Advanced Book Exchange and was only mildly surprised to find that many have no book publications. One author, Thorp McClusky--who has written the best story I have come to so far--has only one and it is a book on chiropractic medicine.

Looking at the publication history of these stories, I began to understand. Many of the stories were first published in cheap horror magazines with names like The Popular Fiction Publishing Company or Weird Tales--both of which were published in the 1930s. In other words, pulps. During the 1920s-1940s, pulps came in many genres--western, action-adventure, romance, and horror. They were purchased by the masses because they were so cheap and because they were sometimes so outrageous that tired working people could lose themselves for an hour or two and forget about the Depression or the conditions in the factory. But lots of magazines meant that there had to be a lot of writers and many young writers published their first stories in pulps--Ray Bradbury, for instance, and John D. Macdonald. Some, like these two, became famous later, most did not. In fact, I suspect that a great number of pulp writers published less than a handful of stories in their lifetimes.

The advent of the e-book is changing all that, yet I can see similarities between some of the stories I look at on Smashwords and those in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories. For one thing, most of them are, well, ghastly. The fact that many of the authors in 100 Ghastly Stories do not have full-length books tells me that they were beginning writers who never made it. But the writing tells me the same thing--poorly thought-out plots, thin characters, and abrupt endings are the products of writers who don't know any better. The same is true with most of the e-book stories I read or sample, but with one difference: the paper-published stories have been gone over more closely by a professional editor and proofreader. Many of the e-book stories or novels or poems or whatever have not been gone through at all, except maybe by the author's brother--who is generally less educated than the author. But like I said in my last post, it is the duty of everyone who reads e-books to let the author know about silly misspellings, bad grammar, incorrect descriptions, or even stupid dialogue.

Although I am still halfway determined to get many of my novels into print via agents and editors, I am taking steps to make sure that all of my work--which includes 10 novels, three books of short stories, five books of poetry and more--will all be available as e-books before I die. That will ensure, to hopefully a greater extent than those writers whose only story was published in Weird Magazine sometime in the thirties, that my work--all my work--will be available to whoever is willing to search for it.

Hats off, then, to the editors of 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories, for doing their homework and bringing back to life so many forgotten authors. I only wish that electronic book publishing had been available for writers like Edith Lichty Stewart, Otto E. A. Schmidt, or Harold Ward, who continue to haunt the existing issues of pulp magazines and horror reprints, but nowhere else. What of the hundreds of stories that they wrote that ended up in an attic--or in the fire on a cold night? I wish I had them now.