It may not seem like it at first, but this post is about coping with the tremendous, unprecedented pressure to produce and sell that all but the most established authors face these days. Specifically, it's about coping with those pressures on top of other, even larger pressures, particularly when you're an indie author in the early stages of your publishing career. So please bear with me: I'll circle back around to this, I promise.
My favorite mantra for coping with pain, stress and the general asshattery and douchebaggery of others when it occurs is, "It informs the work. It informs the work. It informs the work." Sometimes I have to say it through gritted teeth, but it's true: the most painful and troubling experiences of a writer's life combine to fill a well of personal truth from which the writer can draw to lend authenticity and heft to his fiction. But like a fine wine or artisanal cheese, those experiences usually need to age before they're ready for public consumption.
It's only through the passage of time, and accumulation of new experiences and outcomes, that the writer gains distance, perspective, and a degree of objectivity that enables her to take something deeply personal and channel it into stories and characters that speak to others in a relatable way. And I'm not just talking about fictionalized memoirs here, I'm talking about dealing with the broad themes of loss, pain, denial, longing, failure and all the other negatives that challenge us as human beings, in fiction.
Writers are a sensitive lot by nature, and many of us are living through dire times. Some of you who are reading this post have recently suffered a job loss; some have been out of work for a year or longer. Some are losing---or have already lost---their homes to foreclosure. Some are coping with the loss of a loved one, divorce, a health crisis...or maybe even two or more of these major life traumas simultaneously. Some are just barely keeping the bill collectors at bay while living on a steady diet of ramen noodles and peanut butter. One day, the survivors will look back on these dark times and see them for the growth experiences they were. But not today, and not if they don't survive.
Sometimes people ask me why I'm not producing one or two novels a year, as so many indie authors are advised to do if they wish to build up the kind of back catalog that's necessary to truly make a living as an indie author. Some ask why I'm no longer a familiar face at writer conferences and events. Some wonder why they're seeing more images and updates of my craft projects on Facebook than of my writing projects, and why I just generally don't seem to be "working it" as an indie author, and haven't been for some time. Well, I'll tell you.
I came out of the chute like gangbusters back in 2007, when "self-publish" was still a dirty word. I got my books and myself out there, I launched and nurtured Publetariat.com, I became active with social media, I networked, I got involved with online writer and reader communities, I spoke at writer conferences, I taught workshops, and more. I'd built up quite a head of steam and forward momentum when...
...the bottom fell out of my life.
In early 2010 I learned I had a breast tumor [I'm fine now, thanks for your concern =') ]. Two days later my husband of 18+ years announced he was leaving me. This meant I'd also soon be unemployed since my job at the time was as Office Manager for a business my then-husband and I ran together. I'd left a career in Software Engineering some six years previous to help establish and run that business, so hopping right back into my former professional field wouldn't be possible. Divorce also meant I might soon be losing the only home I'd ever owned, and had recently remodeled, and loved, since I most likely couldn't afford the mortgage payment by myself.
It's been over two years since the bombs dropped on me, and I've come a long way toward full recovery. But I'm not there yet. While the initial shock and emotional devastation are behind me, the fallout from these problems is still poking me with a stick on a daily basis, preventing me from establishing comfortable, secure new routines. In many ways, I'm still in survival mode. Surely all of these experiences will imbue my work with more depth and meaning than it's ever had before. But not today. And not if I don't survive.
Survival is job one, for all of us. If you don't survive, you won't be there to tell your stories when the crisis is over. If the pressures of your daily life are already pushing you to your limits as a human being, before you add the pressures of authorship, you need to step back. Give yourself permission to delay, though not abandon, your dreams. If you don't, drive will turn into despair. Hope will turn into bitterness. The urge to create will turn into an urge to destroy.
For someone in survival mode, every bit of effort, time and money spent is a high-stakes investment, because there's so little of those commodities available to such a person. Where entering a contest, submitting a manuscript, or publishing a new book would've been an event of nervous, but hopeful anticipation in the past, when you're in survival mode these things become acts of desperate need. Rejections that would've been difficult, but manageable, before are crushing to someone in survival mode. Not only is it impossible to create your best work, you lack the emotional wherewithal to understand and accept it when others don't respond well to your sub-par efforts. It becomes a downward spiral of fear, rejection and increasing desperation, all of which serves to further delay your eventual recovery and ability to come at authorship from a place of renewed strength and perspective.
Building a career as an author is a marathon, not a sprint. If you're exhausted as you stand on the blocks, before the starting gun has even sounded, there's no way you can hope to win that race. Do what you need to do to survive, so that someday, you can once again thrive.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
If You Think Amazon Is Gouging You On Delivery Costs, It's Only Because You Didn't Do The Math Up Front
I'm seeing some online noise lately from authors who are outraged at the "delivery costs" being deducted from their KDP book royalties. These authors are posting angry diatribes against Amazon on their sites, blogs and social media accounts, railing against Big Bad Amazon and their sneaky, author-cheating, money-grabbing tactics.
Here's the problem: it's those authors' own fault if Amazon is retaining so much in delivery costs that their books aren't earning a respectable royalty, because those authors OPTED IN for a royalty percentage that includes a deduction for delivery costs in the first place.
When you publish a Kindle book through KDP Select, you must decide whether to choose the 70% royalty or the 35% royalty option. Many non-detail-oriented authors just click that 70% option without considering, or even knowing, the repercussions of that choice.
Two such repercussions are delivery costs and royalty as a percentage of sales price. These are important, because they impact the amount of money you ultimately earn per copy sold.
If you go with the 35% option, your royalty per copy sold is 35% of the retail price you set, period. Even if Amazon elects to discount your book for some reason, you get 35% of the original price you set on every copy sold.
If you go with the 70% option, your royalty per copy sold is 70% of the retail price you set, minus delivery costs, with some caveats. Delivery costs are as follows, per Amazon's current pricing page on the KDP site:
Amazon.com: $0.15/MB
Amazon.co.uk: £0.10/MB
Amazon.de: €0.12/MB
Amazon.fr: €0.12/MB
Amazon.es: €0.12/MB
Amazon.it: €0.12/MB
Obviously, the larger your file size, the higher your delivery cost, and the lower your net royalty per copy sold. In every one of the angry posts I've seen, the book in question was heavily illustrated or formatted, resulting in a huge file size. It would've been a simple thing for these authors to do the math ahead of time based on their books' file size, and if they had done so, they likely would've concluded the 35% option was the smarter way to go for these particular books.
There's a KDP FAQ that explains these details right here, and per another section of the FAQ, the average delivery cost per KDP book is six cents. For a book containing only text and maybe a handful of decorative embellishments, that's a totally reasonable and believable figure. Straight text novels I've published or formatted generally come out somewhere between 240 - 350 KB, so on such a book, the delivery costs are negligible.
Note that you can choose different royalty options for different KDP books, it's not like you must choose one or the other and then it applies to your entire KDP catalog.
Now, back to those caveats. There are other factors to consider before choosing the 70% option, and these are fully disclosed and explained in the KDP royalty FAQ section about the 70% royalty option.
First, if you're selling your book on other sites (even if in other formats) and any of those sites decide to discount your book for any reason, Amazon will immediately discount your book to match the lowest price its 'bots find on the web and base your royalty calculation on that price---NOT the list price you originally set. This is why I generally advise authors who are selling through multiple outlets to go with the 35% option, because they have no control over vendor pricing, and with the 70% option their royalties will be entirely unpredictable because the book's ultimate sales price on Amazon will be unpredictable.
Second, you must set a retail list price between $2.99 - $9.99 for your book. Some authors will balk at the low end, since it excludes 99 cent and $1.99 pricing, others will balk at the upper level because for some books, especially textbooks or technical books, it may be legitimate to charge more than $9.99.
I won't detail everything else one needs to consider before making the choice between the 35% and 70% royalty options, because frankly, if you're the author-publisher, that's your job. And if you don't take the time to research the consequences of your publishing choices, that's nobody's fault but your own.
Here's the problem: it's those authors' own fault if Amazon is retaining so much in delivery costs that their books aren't earning a respectable royalty, because those authors OPTED IN for a royalty percentage that includes a deduction for delivery costs in the first place.
When you publish a Kindle book through KDP Select, you must decide whether to choose the 70% royalty or the 35% royalty option. Many non-detail-oriented authors just click that 70% option without considering, or even knowing, the repercussions of that choice.
Two such repercussions are delivery costs and royalty as a percentage of sales price. These are important, because they impact the amount of money you ultimately earn per copy sold.
If you go with the 35% option, your royalty per copy sold is 35% of the retail price you set, period. Even if Amazon elects to discount your book for some reason, you get 35% of the original price you set on every copy sold.
If you go with the 70% option, your royalty per copy sold is 70% of the retail price you set, minus delivery costs, with some caveats. Delivery costs are as follows, per Amazon's current pricing page on the KDP site:
Amazon.com: $0.15/MB
Amazon.co.uk: £0.10/MB
Amazon.de: €0.12/MB
Amazon.fr: €0.12/MB
Amazon.es: €0.12/MB
Amazon.it: €0.12/MB
Obviously, the larger your file size, the higher your delivery cost, and the lower your net royalty per copy sold. In every one of the angry posts I've seen, the book in question was heavily illustrated or formatted, resulting in a huge file size. It would've been a simple thing for these authors to do the math ahead of time based on their books' file size, and if they had done so, they likely would've concluded the 35% option was the smarter way to go for these particular books.
There's a KDP FAQ that explains these details right here, and per another section of the FAQ, the average delivery cost per KDP book is six cents. For a book containing only text and maybe a handful of decorative embellishments, that's a totally reasonable and believable figure. Straight text novels I've published or formatted generally come out somewhere between 240 - 350 KB, so on such a book, the delivery costs are negligible.
Note that you can choose different royalty options for different KDP books, it's not like you must choose one or the other and then it applies to your entire KDP catalog.
Now, back to those caveats. There are other factors to consider before choosing the 70% option, and these are fully disclosed and explained in the KDP royalty FAQ section about the 70% royalty option.
First, if you're selling your book on other sites (even if in other formats) and any of those sites decide to discount your book for any reason, Amazon will immediately discount your book to match the lowest price its 'bots find on the web and base your royalty calculation on that price---NOT the list price you originally set. This is why I generally advise authors who are selling through multiple outlets to go with the 35% option, because they have no control over vendor pricing, and with the 70% option their royalties will be entirely unpredictable because the book's ultimate sales price on Amazon will be unpredictable.
Second, you must set a retail list price between $2.99 - $9.99 for your book. Some authors will balk at the low end, since it excludes 99 cent and $1.99 pricing, others will balk at the upper level because for some books, especially textbooks or technical books, it may be legitimate to charge more than $9.99.
I won't detail everything else one needs to consider before making the choice between the 35% and 70% royalty options, because frankly, if you're the author-publisher, that's your job. And if you don't take the time to research the consequences of your publishing choices, that's nobody's fault but your own.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Dear Indie Booksellers: Please Take Your Eyes Off Your Classmate's Paper And Focus On Your Own Work
Dear Indie Booksellers:
Whether your operation is brick and mortar, strictly online, or a combo plate of both, you have an important role to fill in the communities you serve. It makes me sad to see shop after shop shuttered, and I miss the ones I used to frequent. So please, know that as both an author and a consumer, I want you to not only survive, but to thrive.
But many of you, those whose daily operational thoughts and actions are totally dominated by fear of being driven out of business by Amazon and the few big chains that are still in operation, need some tough love. As you read this, bear that thought in mind: I'm tough because I love.
Also bear in mind, as you feel the blood rushing to your face and your jaw clenching in anger while you read, there are some distinct advantages to being a small, indie outfit (as you probably know better than I do), and there are indie booksellers that are doing just fine without so much as a glance in Amazon's direction; I will get to that by the end of this post, too. Okay, deep breath; here goes.
Please stop obsessing about, and badmouthing, Amazon and the chains. It's no more attractive to retail customers than attack ads are to voters.
Please stop badmouthing consumers who shop at Amazon and the chains. Most consumers will buy some things from Amazon and the chains, and other things from smaller outfits. There's no better way to ensure they'll start buying everything from Amazon and the chains than to insult them.
Please stop trying to base your marketing and community outreach plans on guilting the public into believing their Amazon and chain purchases are leading to the destruction of reading culture as we know it. Nobody wants to be bullied or guilted into a purchase, consumers know they have a right to make the best choice for themselves based on their specific priorities, and they hold that right pretty dear.
Know that you cannot possibly compete with Amazon or the chains on price; you will almost never win with consumers for whom price is the ultimate, or only factor in a buying decision. But also know: this is not a bad thing. Those consumers were never going to be good customers for you anyway.
Know that if your bookshop is generalist, carrying a smattering of current release books in all the most popular genres and a bit of merch on the side, with few exceptions (e.g. captive audience shops like those in airports), you cannot possibly compete with Amazon or the chains on selection. They have massive, distributed networks of gargantuan warehouses stacked to the rafters with nothing but variety.
Please do not argue that you can order any of the same books one can find on Amazon or through the big chains, because we live in an age of pathological convenience and instant gratification. Most consumers who have already made the trek to the store are annoyed if they must leave empty-handed. Now granted, it's not like in pioneer days when Pa would take the wagon into town for supplies on a weeklong trip that could very well end in death on the way there or back. But consumer expectations and demands have changed.
A consumer who can click his mouse twice to order the same item, at a lower price, and often with no shipping expense and two day delivery, isn't often inclined to wait around in your shop for a few extra minutes while you fill out an order form, then wait a few extra days for your supplier to get the item into the mail and a few more days on top of that for book-rate delivery. Faced with the same choice a few times in a row, it won't be long before the customer stops bothering to come into your shop at all.
But also know: this too, is not necessarily bad for you. Consumers for whom convenience is the thing were never going to be good customers for you anyway, you're better off without them.
In the great retail deli counter of booksellers, you're prosciutto; please stop trying to be bologna.
Look around: bologna's cheap and plentiful, you can even buy it at 7-11 and some gas stations. But people who have a taste for prosciutto know it costs more than bologna and isn't as easy to find. Prosciutto lovers are also generally willing to pay a premium for the best quality, and will typically feel the same way about buying other, related items, like cheese and wine. Figuratively speaking, prosciutto lovers are the customers you want, and they want you right back. Does the high-end deli or wine shop try to compete directly with 7-11? Of course not. The high-end place doesn't even deign to acknowledge the existence of 7-11, because it doesn't consider itself to be in direct competition with 7-11. Neither should you consider yourselves to be in direct competition with Amazon or the chains.
Do, and offer, what the 400-pound gorillas can't: passion and specialized knowledge not only of the products you carry, but the communities you serve. I've noticed that most of the successful, healthy indie retailers in any community I've ever called home have one thing in common: they specialize, and whatever it is they specialize in, everyone from the store owner right down to the stock boy is an absolute geek about it.
While all of the stores I'm about to talk about are brick-and-mortar with an adjunct website, strictly online indie booksellers can mimic many of their winning strategies. Where a brick and mortar store has an author reading, you can have an author chat or post an interview. Where the brick and mortar store has an in-store book club meeting every week, you can have an online book club. Where the brick and mortar store staff can wax eloquent on areas of expertise to customers in the store, you can post your specialized knowledge and analysis online, in a blog.
Dark Delicacies, a Burbank bookshop, specializes in all things gothic, horror and supernatural. It's the go-to shop for books, knick-knacks, toys, author readings, and even some clothing and accessory items that fit that description. If you're looking for a onesie with a zombie on it, this is the place to go. It's a fun shop to visit, and filled with so many enticing items that it's near impossible for fans of this type of fare to walk out without buying something. And if you want to know anything about horror/goth books, horror/goth movies, goth art, goth style, dark music or the like, the staff's near-encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm can't be beat. Sure, you can find many of the same items on Amazon at a lower price, but nobody goes to Dark Delicacies for the prices. Burbank is an entertainment biz mecca and it borders on the North Hollywood Art community, so Dark Delicacies is smack in the middle of its target demographic: unconventional people with unconventional tastes. No Amazon or monster chain store can cater so effectively to a specific market sector.
Hennessy & Ingalls Art & Architecture Bookstore in Santa Monica does for art and architecture books and related merch what Dark Delicacies does for goth and horror. The thing about art and architecture books is, they're generally in a larger format and more expensive than other types of books, will often have special features that don't come across in a screenshot, and it's hard to make a purchase decision without actually being able to look at them in person first. Santa Monica is an upscale community that's home to a lot of entertainment types (actors, directors, etc.), so while H & I certainly doesn't want to gouge its customers, it doesn't have to worry much about setting price points high enough to earn a decent profit on each sale. It's become a real destination for students and lovers of art and architecture, well worth the drive for those not in the immediate area, and it serves its clientele very well.
Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop, located not far from my own neck of the woods, caters to schools, parents, and teachers in particular. Its selection of toys is easily dwarfed by a Toys R Us, but every toy in Mrs. Nelson's is educational, and many of them are hand-crafted imports and award winners. Its selection of childrens' and young adult books is likewise outgunned by Amazon and online chain booksellers, but that doesn't matter. Just like at H&I, many of the books at Mrs. Nelson's are large format picture books, popup books, and books that incorporate some kind of craft or game activity; these are all types of books you generally want to check out in person before making a purchase decision. The young adult selection at Mrs. Nelson's is always better than that at any local brick-and-mortar chain store, as is Mrs. Nelson's selection of books for teachers.
But here again, it's the friendly, enthusiastic staff that puts Mrs. Nelson's head and shoulders above any mere chain store or Amazon. If your kid has to do a book report on a biography, just tell the friendly staffer at Mrs. Nelson's what grade your child is in, what her reading level is, and what her interests are, and you'll be directed to a variety of choices that not only meet the requirements of the assignment, but any of which your child will actually enjoy reading. Any time an entire grade level at a local school is going to be reading some classic or other, Mrs. Nelson's hears about it well in advance from its teacher and school administrator connections and will have plenty of copies on hand when they're needed.
Mrs. Nelson's has a calendar jam-packed with events and talks for kids, parents and teachers, some free and some fee-based (like the craft workshops), but probably the best events of all are the live readings from authors of beloved childrens' books. The authors are always gracious enough to stick around afterward, signing books and meeting the kids who so love their work, and in cases where the author is also an illustrator, you can often find signed prints of illustrations from their books available for sale at these events. I've picked up a signed print from David Shannon's wonderful "No, David!" at a reading there.
Nothing at Mrs. Nelson's is cheap, either in terms of construction or pricetag. But I and plenty of other locals are happy to pay a little more for the higher quality and true community involvement on offer there.
Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath offer more advice to indie booksellers here.
So you see, it can be done, and it can be done well. I'm not saying it's a simple thing to switch from a generalist store to a specialty shop, but I guess I am saying your survival may well depend on it. I want you to succeed, truly. I want a community dotted with Mrs. Nelson's, Dark Delicacies and Hennessey & Ingalls, and I think plenty of other people do, too.
Whether your operation is brick and mortar, strictly online, or a combo plate of both, you have an important role to fill in the communities you serve. It makes me sad to see shop after shop shuttered, and I miss the ones I used to frequent. So please, know that as both an author and a consumer, I want you to not only survive, but to thrive.
But many of you, those whose daily operational thoughts and actions are totally dominated by fear of being driven out of business by Amazon and the few big chains that are still in operation, need some tough love. As you read this, bear that thought in mind: I'm tough because I love.
Also bear in mind, as you feel the blood rushing to your face and your jaw clenching in anger while you read, there are some distinct advantages to being a small, indie outfit (as you probably know better than I do), and there are indie booksellers that are doing just fine without so much as a glance in Amazon's direction; I will get to that by the end of this post, too. Okay, deep breath; here goes.
Please stop obsessing about, and badmouthing, Amazon and the chains. It's no more attractive to retail customers than attack ads are to voters.
Please stop badmouthing consumers who shop at Amazon and the chains. Most consumers will buy some things from Amazon and the chains, and other things from smaller outfits. There's no better way to ensure they'll start buying everything from Amazon and the chains than to insult them.
Please stop trying to base your marketing and community outreach plans on guilting the public into believing their Amazon and chain purchases are leading to the destruction of reading culture as we know it. Nobody wants to be bullied or guilted into a purchase, consumers know they have a right to make the best choice for themselves based on their specific priorities, and they hold that right pretty dear.
Know that you cannot possibly compete with Amazon or the chains on price; you will almost never win with consumers for whom price is the ultimate, or only factor in a buying decision. But also know: this is not a bad thing. Those consumers were never going to be good customers for you anyway.
Know that if your bookshop is generalist, carrying a smattering of current release books in all the most popular genres and a bit of merch on the side, with few exceptions (e.g. captive audience shops like those in airports), you cannot possibly compete with Amazon or the chains on selection. They have massive, distributed networks of gargantuan warehouses stacked to the rafters with nothing but variety.
Please do not argue that you can order any of the same books one can find on Amazon or through the big chains, because we live in an age of pathological convenience and instant gratification. Most consumers who have already made the trek to the store are annoyed if they must leave empty-handed. Now granted, it's not like in pioneer days when Pa would take the wagon into town for supplies on a weeklong trip that could very well end in death on the way there or back. But consumer expectations and demands have changed.
A consumer who can click his mouse twice to order the same item, at a lower price, and often with no shipping expense and two day delivery, isn't often inclined to wait around in your shop for a few extra minutes while you fill out an order form, then wait a few extra days for your supplier to get the item into the mail and a few more days on top of that for book-rate delivery. Faced with the same choice a few times in a row, it won't be long before the customer stops bothering to come into your shop at all.
But also know: this too, is not necessarily bad for you. Consumers for whom convenience is the thing were never going to be good customers for you anyway, you're better off without them.
In the great retail deli counter of booksellers, you're prosciutto; please stop trying to be bologna.
Look around: bologna's cheap and plentiful, you can even buy it at 7-11 and some gas stations. But people who have a taste for prosciutto know it costs more than bologna and isn't as easy to find. Prosciutto lovers are also generally willing to pay a premium for the best quality, and will typically feel the same way about buying other, related items, like cheese and wine. Figuratively speaking, prosciutto lovers are the customers you want, and they want you right back. Does the high-end deli or wine shop try to compete directly with 7-11? Of course not. The high-end place doesn't even deign to acknowledge the existence of 7-11, because it doesn't consider itself to be in direct competition with 7-11. Neither should you consider yourselves to be in direct competition with Amazon or the chains.
Do, and offer, what the 400-pound gorillas can't: passion and specialized knowledge not only of the products you carry, but the communities you serve. I've noticed that most of the successful, healthy indie retailers in any community I've ever called home have one thing in common: they specialize, and whatever it is they specialize in, everyone from the store owner right down to the stock boy is an absolute geek about it.
While all of the stores I'm about to talk about are brick-and-mortar with an adjunct website, strictly online indie booksellers can mimic many of their winning strategies. Where a brick and mortar store has an author reading, you can have an author chat or post an interview. Where the brick and mortar store has an in-store book club meeting every week, you can have an online book club. Where the brick and mortar store staff can wax eloquent on areas of expertise to customers in the store, you can post your specialized knowledge and analysis online, in a blog.
Dark Delicacies, a Burbank bookshop, specializes in all things gothic, horror and supernatural. It's the go-to shop for books, knick-knacks, toys, author readings, and even some clothing and accessory items that fit that description. If you're looking for a onesie with a zombie on it, this is the place to go. It's a fun shop to visit, and filled with so many enticing items that it's near impossible for fans of this type of fare to walk out without buying something. And if you want to know anything about horror/goth books, horror/goth movies, goth art, goth style, dark music or the like, the staff's near-encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm can't be beat. Sure, you can find many of the same items on Amazon at a lower price, but nobody goes to Dark Delicacies for the prices. Burbank is an entertainment biz mecca and it borders on the North Hollywood Art community, so Dark Delicacies is smack in the middle of its target demographic: unconventional people with unconventional tastes. No Amazon or monster chain store can cater so effectively to a specific market sector.
Hennessy & Ingalls Art & Architecture Bookstore in Santa Monica does for art and architecture books and related merch what Dark Delicacies does for goth and horror. The thing about art and architecture books is, they're generally in a larger format and more expensive than other types of books, will often have special features that don't come across in a screenshot, and it's hard to make a purchase decision without actually being able to look at them in person first. Santa Monica is an upscale community that's home to a lot of entertainment types (actors, directors, etc.), so while H & I certainly doesn't want to gouge its customers, it doesn't have to worry much about setting price points high enough to earn a decent profit on each sale. It's become a real destination for students and lovers of art and architecture, well worth the drive for those not in the immediate area, and it serves its clientele very well.
Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop, located not far from my own neck of the woods, caters to schools, parents, and teachers in particular. Its selection of toys is easily dwarfed by a Toys R Us, but every toy in Mrs. Nelson's is educational, and many of them are hand-crafted imports and award winners. Its selection of childrens' and young adult books is likewise outgunned by Amazon and online chain booksellers, but that doesn't matter. Just like at H&I, many of the books at Mrs. Nelson's are large format picture books, popup books, and books that incorporate some kind of craft or game activity; these are all types of books you generally want to check out in person before making a purchase decision. The young adult selection at Mrs. Nelson's is always better than that at any local brick-and-mortar chain store, as is Mrs. Nelson's selection of books for teachers.
But here again, it's the friendly, enthusiastic staff that puts Mrs. Nelson's head and shoulders above any mere chain store or Amazon. If your kid has to do a book report on a biography, just tell the friendly staffer at Mrs. Nelson's what grade your child is in, what her reading level is, and what her interests are, and you'll be directed to a variety of choices that not only meet the requirements of the assignment, but any of which your child will actually enjoy reading. Any time an entire grade level at a local school is going to be reading some classic or other, Mrs. Nelson's hears about it well in advance from its teacher and school administrator connections and will have plenty of copies on hand when they're needed.
Mrs. Nelson's has a calendar jam-packed with events and talks for kids, parents and teachers, some free and some fee-based (like the craft workshops), but probably the best events of all are the live readings from authors of beloved childrens' books. The authors are always gracious enough to stick around afterward, signing books and meeting the kids who so love their work, and in cases where the author is also an illustrator, you can often find signed prints of illustrations from their books available for sale at these events. I've picked up a signed print from David Shannon's wonderful "No, David!" at a reading there.
Nothing at Mrs. Nelson's is cheap, either in terms of construction or pricetag. But I and plenty of other locals are happy to pay a little more for the higher quality and true community involvement on offer there.
Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath offer more advice to indie booksellers here.
So you see, it can be done, and it can be done well. I'm not saying it's a simple thing to switch from a generalist store to a specialty shop, but I guess I am saying your survival may well depend on it. I want you to succeed, truly. I want a community dotted with Mrs. Nelson's, Dark Delicacies and Hennessey & Ingalls, and I think plenty of other people do, too.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Requiem For The Romantic Ideal Of Authorship
Well, my last post (If You're Not Ready To Invest, You're Not Ready To Publish) drummed up a lot of...sentiment. A surprising amount of that sentiment was negative, and I think it's because an awful lot of us fiction writer types grew up believing in the romanticized ideal of what it means to be an Author. That's Author, with a capital "A".
All those years of being something of a sensitive but clever and observant outsider would finally pay off, as we spent hour upon hour filling page upon page with our sensitive and clever observations. We'd spend the requisite one to three years toiling in obscurity, fielding numerous rejections from editors, agents and magazine publishers. We'd have Meaningful Experiences and while many of them would be painful, they would ultimately inform the work, thereby bringing us closer to that inevitable day when our breakthrough theme, character or plot would finally materialize, ready to catapult us past the less clever, less sensitive and less observant droves of poseurs and wannabes, right to the front of the Next Big Thing line. From there, getting an agent, a contract, a book tour and bestseller would be just a matter of time and checking off the right boxes in the right order.
Then we would purchase and move to a gorgeous, costly yet unpretentious, picturesque writerly sanctuary, like a beach house, ranch house, mountain house, or for those truly committed to maintaining their outsider status, a yurt. Someplace where we could sit on a pier, or rock, or deck, gazing pensively into the center distance, clutching a steamy mug of coffee and ruminating on this thing we call life and how to shape it into our next pithy yet accessible and entertaining opus.
We'd never compromise our artistic vision for sales---we weren't screenwriters, for God's sake---and readers would thank us for it. It would just so happen that our zeitgeisty insights would strike a chord with the general public. More bestsellers and movie adaptations would predictably follow, along with awards and accolades, all of which we'd publicly accept with deep humility and self-deprecating humor even though inside we'd be thinking things like, "Take THAT, Inland Valley Writers Critique Group!" and "Was there ever any doubt?" And so on and so forth, impressive body of work, et cetera, college speaking tours, lifetime achievement award, blah blah, culminating with a glowing and worshipful obituary in every major outlet following our peaceful death of natural causes while we slept. But even then, our work would live on, CHERISHED FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!!
Ahem. Sorry about that, got a little carried away.
What a drag then, to be setting off on that yellow brick road to Authorship at a time when the publishing industry is in crisis, formats are in flux, the hermit lifestyle is no longer compatible with mainstream authorial success, your platform seems to matter almost as much as your writing, book review sections are an endangered species (as are the print magazines and newspapers that used to run them) and anyone can publish anything. No wonder everyone's pissed. We thought that so long as we had the talent and a drive to create, the rest would take care of itself. Or at least, once we'd caught the right editor or agent's attention, other people would take care of the rest for us.
It was a nice dream while it lasted, but now it's time to wake up. This is a time of unprecedented opportunity for authors and would-be authors, but it's also a time of unprecedented competition and change.
If you're in it purely for the art or the satisfaction of telling stories publicly, it's never been a better time to be you. No gatekeepers stand in your way any more, you can publish at will.
But if you're in it to make a living, to substantially supplement a day job income, to build a large and appreciative audience (whether or not you're turning a profit), or have any kind of impact on the culture at large, your talent and drive to create are merely prerequisites. For you, craft is only the beginning. The work is only part of your work now, and sometimes, it's not even the most important part (like when you're planning a launch campaign). It's nothing like the romantic ideal you imagined, and it blows.
So go ahead: be angry for a while. Rail at the injustice of it. Have many animated discussions with like-minded individuals about how art and commerce were never meant to mix, how marketing is fundamentally incompatible with the pure and noble drive to create. Eloquently hold forth at the bar or coffee house about how Hemingway, Cheever and Salinger were never expected to give even a passing thought to promotion, and how the purity of their work was surely preserved as a result.
Then get back to your manuscript. And your blog. And your website. And your social media sites. And your continuing education in the art and business of publishing. Because actually, it's never been a better time to be you, the writer with commercial aspirations, either. You've got more tools and information at your disposal than any previous generation of writers. It's never been easy to make it as a mainstream, commercial author, the romanticized ideal of authorship has never been true. Maybe it's difficult now for different reasons, but work and sacrifice were always going to be part of the equation.
All those years of being something of a sensitive but clever and observant outsider would finally pay off, as we spent hour upon hour filling page upon page with our sensitive and clever observations. We'd spend the requisite one to three years toiling in obscurity, fielding numerous rejections from editors, agents and magazine publishers. We'd have Meaningful Experiences and while many of them would be painful, they would ultimately inform the work, thereby bringing us closer to that inevitable day when our breakthrough theme, character or plot would finally materialize, ready to catapult us past the less clever, less sensitive and less observant droves of poseurs and wannabes, right to the front of the Next Big Thing line. From there, getting an agent, a contract, a book tour and bestseller would be just a matter of time and checking off the right boxes in the right order.
Then we would purchase and move to a gorgeous, costly yet unpretentious, picturesque writerly sanctuary, like a beach house, ranch house, mountain house, or for those truly committed to maintaining their outsider status, a yurt. Someplace where we could sit on a pier, or rock, or deck, gazing pensively into the center distance, clutching a steamy mug of coffee and ruminating on this thing we call life and how to shape it into our next pithy yet accessible and entertaining opus.
We'd never compromise our artistic vision for sales---we weren't screenwriters, for God's sake---and readers would thank us for it. It would just so happen that our zeitgeisty insights would strike a chord with the general public. More bestsellers and movie adaptations would predictably follow, along with awards and accolades, all of which we'd publicly accept with deep humility and self-deprecating humor even though inside we'd be thinking things like, "Take THAT, Inland Valley Writers Critique Group!" and "Was there ever any doubt?" And so on and so forth, impressive body of work, et cetera, college speaking tours, lifetime achievement award, blah blah, culminating with a glowing and worshipful obituary in every major outlet following our peaceful death of natural causes while we slept. But even then, our work would live on, CHERISHED FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!!
Ahem. Sorry about that, got a little carried away.
What a drag then, to be setting off on that yellow brick road to Authorship at a time when the publishing industry is in crisis, formats are in flux, the hermit lifestyle is no longer compatible with mainstream authorial success, your platform seems to matter almost as much as your writing, book review sections are an endangered species (as are the print magazines and newspapers that used to run them) and anyone can publish anything. No wonder everyone's pissed. We thought that so long as we had the talent and a drive to create, the rest would take care of itself. Or at least, once we'd caught the right editor or agent's attention, other people would take care of the rest for us.
It was a nice dream while it lasted, but now it's time to wake up. This is a time of unprecedented opportunity for authors and would-be authors, but it's also a time of unprecedented competition and change.
If you're in it purely for the art or the satisfaction of telling stories publicly, it's never been a better time to be you. No gatekeepers stand in your way any more, you can publish at will.
But if you're in it to make a living, to substantially supplement a day job income, to build a large and appreciative audience (whether or not you're turning a profit), or have any kind of impact on the culture at large, your talent and drive to create are merely prerequisites. For you, craft is only the beginning. The work is only part of your work now, and sometimes, it's not even the most important part (like when you're planning a launch campaign). It's nothing like the romantic ideal you imagined, and it blows.
So go ahead: be angry for a while. Rail at the injustice of it. Have many animated discussions with like-minded individuals about how art and commerce were never meant to mix, how marketing is fundamentally incompatible with the pure and noble drive to create. Eloquently hold forth at the bar or coffee house about how Hemingway, Cheever and Salinger were never expected to give even a passing thought to promotion, and how the purity of their work was surely preserved as a result.
Then get back to your manuscript. And your blog. And your website. And your social media sites. And your continuing education in the art and business of publishing. Because actually, it's never been a better time to be you, the writer with commercial aspirations, either. You've got more tools and information at your disposal than any previous generation of writers. It's never been easy to make it as a mainstream, commercial author, the romanticized ideal of authorship has never been true. Maybe it's difficult now for different reasons, but work and sacrifice were always going to be part of the equation.
Monday, April 16, 2012
If You're Not Ready To Invest, You're Not Ready To Publish
This post is about the alarming sense of entitlement I'm seeing out there among indies and would-be indies now that we've become empowered to publish. I'm sure I sound like a broken record (or damaged MP3) by now, but apparently I need to keep saying this:
Anyone who wants to launch a new business like a restaurant, widget manufacturer, accounting practice or pool service expects to invest a certain amount of start-up capital, both in terms of actual cash and sweat equity. Neither is dispensable. Yet plenty of would-be indie authors seem to think it's unfair for me, and even the book-buying public, to expect them to invest anything more than the sweat equity part of the equation. They expect the public to be able to look past a cut-rate cover, ignore the typos, bad grammar and the many other substantive flaws that can be eliminated by a good editor, and see the excellent story within. These indies are wrong, and they're hurting all of us by lowering the collective bar.
In a recent Facebook exchange, one indie author directed this to me:
Not all self published authors can afford to hire out for pro services. If that were the case, why not go with a vanity publishing company and all their promises.To which I responded, in part:
...if we self-publishers wish to compete head-to-head with mainstream books, we have to be willing to invest what it takes both in terms of effort and money. Hiring a pro editor and cover designer yourself is a far cry from going with a vanity press, which will usurp your rights and take a cut of your royalties. A pro edit, file conversion and cover design shouldn't cost most self-pubbers more than about $400-$600, if you check the freelancer listings on Smashwords---and many can beat even those prices by shopping around and calling in favors. Yes, it's a lot of money, but compare that to how many thousands of dollars a mainstream publisher invests in every book *it* acquires and releases. If we want a seat at the poker table, we have to be willing to invest at least a small stake.Another commenter replied:
I work as a handyman. I'm barely making it. $400 to $600 is half a months' wages for me. How would you suggest I scrape together enough to pay someone to edit my book and another someone to design a cover for it?My response was:
I'm sorry to say this...but the realities of launching and running a business are what they are, and I have often advised would-be indies NOT to publish until they can afford to do it right. The vast majority of authors, mainstream and indie alike, do not earn enough from sales of their books to live on. Virtually all of us still need day jobs.
The fact that the content is gold won't matter if all the reader notices is typos, bad grammar or spelling mistakes, and an amateurish cover. For years us indies have been saying all we want is the opportunity to compete against the mainstream on a level playing field---but that means we have to be willing to do (and spend) what it takes to compete. I'm all for DIY when the person has the skills, and for trading favors and doing whatever else one can to shave costs. But it's unrealistic to think one can go up against multi-million dollar publishers without spending even a few hundred dollars.
Hopeful Olympians pay for quality equipment, coaching and travel. Hopeful artists pay for quality supplies, professional framing and gallery space. Hopeful filmmakers pay for quality cameras and professional editing, or at least time in a professional editing bay to do it themselves. The fact that it's much easier for a rich hopeful to afford the necessities of his craft or sport than it is for a poor one doesn't make those things any less NECESSARY for the poor hopeful.
People DO judge a book by its cover, as I've learned firsthand. The cover for my novel Adelaide Einstein is much less slick than the one for my novel Snow Ball, and Snow Ball outsells Adelaide month in and out despite the fact that Adelaide has nearly three times as many positive reviews. I can complain all I want about how unfair it is that more readers won't give Adelaide a chance, but that won't sell more copies of the book.
And ebook fans DO post negative reviews based solely on bad editing and poor formatting. I've found most ebook fans to be very welcoming to indies, and even willing to cut them some slack to an extent in acknowledgment that we're not backed by a Big 6 publisher. But when poor formatting or bad editing gets in the way of their enjoyment of the content, they stop reading and let others know about it.
Remember: publishing was never meant to be fair. It's a business. Mainstream-published authors have the luxury of a whole staff of businesspeople standing between their delicate, artistic sensibilities and the harsh realities of commerce, but they pay for it pretty dearly in reduced royalties and the loss of control of their work. We indies have to be willing and able to play both sides of the net, art AND commerce, ourselves.
If you're not willing, or you're not able, you're not ready to publish.
UPDATED TO ADD: having seen comments on this post here and elsewhere, I'm kind of shocked that this is such a controversial stand to take. I mean, if I wanted to go into business making and selling any other product, and openly admitted I had no money for quality control (editing), packaging (cover design) or marketing (author platform) for the product, that I didn't have the skills to do all of those things myself at a level comparable to a professional, and I don't know anyone who'd be willing to offer those services to me for free, everyone would just say, "Well, maybe you need to wait till you've saved up some money, then."
But for some reason, to some people, when the product in question is a book, it's somehow a special case. To those people, suggesting the author delay publication till he can make his product---a book---the best it can be is elitest. I'm not saying that only the rich should be able to publish, not remotely. I strongly encourage controlling costs, acquiring as many skills as possible so you can do a professional job of things yourself, calling in favors and comparison shopping for services. And I'm not saying those who don't do these things should be barred from publishing.
All I'm saying is, if you're going to step into the spotlight and invite the scrutiny of a paying public, doesn't it make sense to put your best foot forward? If "good enough" is inadequate when it comes to the quality of your storytelling and characterization, why is it acceptable when it comes to the quality of your book's presentation?
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Amazon vs. Apple And The Agency 5: Let's Get The Facts Straight
Given that anyone who reads my blog is an author, publisher, or otherwise involved in the book business, I don't think I need to trouble myself with recounting every detail of how the U.S. Department of Justice came to charge Apple, Inc. and publishers Macmillan, Penguin, Hachette Group, Simon and Schuster and HarperCollins with collusion to fix ebook prices. But judging by the many hysterical, righteous articles and editorials I'm reading in the wake of antitrust charges being filed and three of the five named publishers promptly settling out of court, there's plenty of inaccuracy and flawed logic out there that needs to be addressed.
FALSE
1. Before Apple and the Agency 5 publishers established their Agency Pricing plan, Amazon was hurting publishers' bottom lines by offering their Kindle-format bestsellers at a discount price. Publishers had to do something to stop Amazon from doing this, so they could earn enough money to cover their expenses and still earn a modest profit.
FALSE
Prior to Agency pricing, publishers sold their Kindle-format books to Amazon under the same basic wholesale terms they used to sell their hard-copy books to Amazon. Publishers set a suggested retail price for the public, but sold each copy to Amazon at a lower, wholesale price that generally constituted 60% of the suggested retail price. That percentage is standard across the industry for all booksellers, and is fixed regardless of the price at which a given book, digital or hardcopy, actually sells.
This means that if the publisher set a suggested retail price of $20 for a given Kindle book, Amazon had to pay the publisher $12 per copy sold. Even if Amazon elected to sell those books at a discounted retail price of say, $9.99, it still had to pay the publisher $12 per copy sold. Most of the mainstream Kindle bestsellers Amazon was selling at $9.99 were being sold at a loss to Amazon, but publishers still earned the same cut as they would if Amazon hadn't discounted.
2. If Amazon is allowed to offer mainstream bestsellers as a "loss leader" product, it will soon have a monopoly over ebook sales in general and will then demand that publishers accept a lower cut on each copy sold---and in fact, they are already starting to do this with their 2012 vendor contracts with publishers.
FALSE
While it's true that Amazon's 2012 vendor contracts do charge higher prices for on-site promotion than in prior years (though specific details of the new contracts have not been publicly disclosed), no one is claiming Amazon is demanding any decrease in the publishers' usual 60% cut. It's unclear whether publishers can opt out of the on-site promotion, but still offer their books for sale on the site.
3. Amazon has already driven most of its competition out of business through predatory pricing tactics.
FALSE
While it's true that Amazon operated at an annual, multimillion dollar loss for its first five years in business (as detailed in the documentary film series, Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet, 1998), during which time it was primarily a bookseller, the primary reason for its losses had to do with the usual business startup expenses, plus Jeff Bezos' very ambitious growth and expansion plans for the burgeoning e-tailer. Amazon spent immense quantities of cash on advertising and setting up a nationwide network of fulfillment centers in those early years.
Amazon also invested heavily in making its customers' buying experience the best it could be. Recall that Amazon launched at a time when online shopping was far from typical, and most consumers viewed online stores with suspicion, fearful that their credit card and other personal information couldn't possibly be kept secure online. A second obstacle to overcome was consumers' habit of instant gratification: why buy online, which is essentially no different from mail-ordering, a product one could buy in any local store? Amazon had an answer to both issues.
First, it could afford to offer products at a lower retail price because its overhead costs were much lower than those of a brick-and-mortar store. Warehouse space is cheaper to buy or rent than retail space, and fewer workers are needed to run a fulfillment center than to staff a retail store; much of its processes could be automated.
Of course, a lower retail price is meaningless if the difference is made up in shipping expense, and the customer has to wait for his purchase to arrive in the mail to boot. Amazon's answer to these two problems was to frequently offer free shipping, and (for its first couple of years in business) to ship every domestic order out via Federal Express, regardless of whether or not the customer opted to pay for expedited shipping, as a standard practice. Remember that?
These were strategic moves aimed at establishing the internet as a safe place to shop, and Amazon as a trusted retailer in the minds of consumers. Of course Amazon also wanted to become a preferred retailer in the minds of consumers, but that's true of any retailer. If its mail-order business model is simply more financially efficient and convenient for customers than brick-and-mortar shopping, that's more the natural outcome of a major technological and cultural shift than the result of any targeted, purposeful attempt to drive all competitors out of the marketplace. As plenty of others have observed, I'm sure the buggy whip manufacturers were pretty angry when automobiles became the standard mode of transportation, too.
4. Amazon is now in a position where it can strong-arm publishers into whatever pricing and sales terms it wants, slowly bleeding those publishers to the point where they can no longer survive.
FALSE
Publishers are no more dependent on Amazon for their survival than computer manufacturers are dependent on Best Buy for theirs. Publishers are free to enter into direct competition with Amazon by pulling all their titles from the site and selling them exclusively through their own online stores and selected brick and mortar outlets, such as Barnes and Noble, Target and airport stores. Computer and other manufacturers have long offered direct sales to consumers through their websites, and there's nothing stopping publishers from following suit, other than a reluctance to alter their failing, bricks-and-mortar-centric business model.
Certainly, a considerable amount of effort and capital investment would be required to set up an online sales outlet where none exists today for most publishers, but the realities of remaining competitive in a changing marketplace are what they are. The fact that publishers dragged their feet and dug in their heels rather than adapt to changing market forces can hardly be blamed on Amazon. The internet moved their cheese, not Amazon.
As to slowly killing off publishers, it behooves Amazon NOT to bleed its primary suppliers dry. Amazon has been launching its own publishing initiatives, but unless it succeeds in luring most major authors away from every major publisher, unless it starts buying up competing presses (a mistake the major publishers have made in spades and have probably now come to regret), it will always be one among numerous publishers.
Finally, consider the digital music example set by Apple with its iPod and iTunes. Apple undoubtedly dominates the digital music market, but it has not bled any labels dry or begun gouging the music-loving public. Tower Records, Licorice Pizza and The Wherehouse have disappeared from the music retail landscape, but I don't recall anyone accusing Apple of any kind of orchestrated campaign to cause their demise. Again, it's a simple case of consumers voting with their wallets.
5. Publishers have to play ball with Amazon if they want to offer their books in digital form, because the Kindle is the dominant e-reader platform.
FALSE
The Kindle is the dominant e-reader platform, but it can read formats other than Amazon's own proprietary .azw file type. It can read .mobi files natively, for example. Publishers are free to sell non-.azw format ebooks directly through their own websites, and Kindle owners would still be able to read those books on their Kindle devices. It wouldn't be as convenient for customers as downloading books directly to their Kindles from Amazon, but this is the same situation as loading digital music files that weren't purchased from iTunes onto an iPod: it can be done pretty easily, though it does require transferring files to the device.
Furthermore, if publishers really wanted to ensure the Kindle couldn't dominate the e-reader landscape they could do so, by offering customers the one thing the ebook reading public has most wanted from the beginning that they aren't already getting from Amazon: a cross-platform, DRM-free ebook format that can be read across multiple devices. They could invest in the development of cross-platform e-reader software users could run on devices they already own rather than having to buy a Kindle, Kobo Reader, Sony Reader or Nook, but here again, there's a reluctance on the part of publishers to take risks, expand their business model, innovate and compete.
BOTTOM LINE: Amazon has achieved a dominant position in bookselling and e-tailing through aggressive, risky and costly startup efforts. Unlike most CEOs who hold the title today, Jeff Bezos took and held the long view through some very lean and nerve-wracking years. If his ultimate goal for Amazon is to become and remain the #1 company in its sector, then all he's guilty of is the same thing that can be said of ALL CEOs.
Perhaps if publishers and competing retailers had been a little more forward-thinking, and willing to take the same risks, they would now be reaping similar rewards. Since they weren't, they are reaping a bitter harvest of resentment and fading market share instead. It's still not too late for publishers to turn the situation around, but their time, money and effort would be better spent on R&D than M&C*.
*(moaning and complaining)
Sunday, March 11, 2012
"Coincidentally" Is Never Good Enough
Think about the plot of your most recent novel, or work in progress. If you had to summarize the plot, at any point in your recap, would you find yourself saying the word, "coincidentally"? Or the phrase, "it just so happens that..." If so, there's something wrong with your plot, your characters, or both.
I was recently with a young friend who was watching the movie, Zookeeper. In the beginning of the movie, the somewhat shlubby but kind and sincere protagonist asks his super hot, super shallow girlfriend to marry him, in a carefully orchestrated, horseback-riding-on-a-beach at sunset scenario. She not only turns him down, but tells him she'd actually been intending to break up with him because he's just a zookeeper and she can't accept it. Apparently she wants a more worldly and wealthy guy. At this point, I tuned out for a while to focus on something else.
My other task done, I came back to the movie, where a wedding reception was in progress. Shlubby guy was there with his smart, gorgeous co-worker. Hey, do you suppose he'll end up realizing she's a better match for him than the super hot, super shallow girl at some point before the end? I could write a whole different post on predictable retreads of tired rom-com cliches, but that's not the topic for today.
I asked who was getting married, and my young friend explained it was the shlubby guy's brother. Suddenly, the super hot, super shallow girlfriend was doing an elaborate dance with some other guy at the reception. I asked what she was doing at the shlubby guy's brother's wedding. My young friend explained that the super hot girlfriend was one of the bride's closest friends, so she was invited to the wedding and came with her new fiancee.
"So," I asked, "it just so happens that the super hot girl who dumped this guy in the first scene was one of his brother's fiancee's best friends? Isn't that kind of a HUGE coincidence?" She replied, "Yeah, you just have to go with it."
Actually, you don't. And neither do your readers. It was obvious not only to me, but to an 11 year old girl, that the only reason the super hot girlfriend was a friend of the bride was so that she'd be in the wedding reception scene, making shlubby guy jealous and prompting him to his next ill-advised round of hijinks intended to win her back.
It's possible that I missed a flashback in which it was shown how the brothers began dating these besties, but even if there was, it would be very tacked-on and serve only as an excuse to get the super hot ex to the wedding---where of course, there were lots of wacky, slapstick physical comedy set pieces.
Wouldn't it have made much more sense to have shlubby guy run into the ex and her new man somewhere in public, or at a gathering in the home of a mutual friend? After all, if they met at some point in the past they should run in similar circles, or still have one or two friends in common. Of course, this wouldn't have allowed for the presence of the giant ice sculpture and aerialist equipment that played crucial roles in the shlubby guy's public humiliation, but those also had "coincidentally" written all over them. Seriously, who hires a Cirque du Soleil -type aerialist to perform at a wedding reception?!
If the only reason a character DOES something, or IS something, is to set up a later scene, the writer is sacrificing plot and character integrity for the sake of his own convenience, and straining the reader's credulity.
Some might say that Zookeeper also features talking animals, and therefore it's asking too much of the writers to expect much in the way of plot or character integrity. But look at the movies The Golden Compass, Stuart Little, Ratatouille, Cars and Finding Nemo. Talking animals, cars and fish DIDN'T strain credulity in the least in these films, and it's specifically because the writers paid very close attention to plot and character integrity. It's possible to be fantastical and comic, and even a little slapstick, without resorting to the "coincidentallys". If anything, the harder it is for your characters to get where they need to be, the richer your plot (and characters) will be by the end of the tale.
I was recently with a young friend who was watching the movie, Zookeeper. In the beginning of the movie, the somewhat shlubby but kind and sincere protagonist asks his super hot, super shallow girlfriend to marry him, in a carefully orchestrated, horseback-riding-on-a-beach at sunset scenario. She not only turns him down, but tells him she'd actually been intending to break up with him because he's just a zookeeper and she can't accept it. Apparently she wants a more worldly and wealthy guy. At this point, I tuned out for a while to focus on something else.
My other task done, I came back to the movie, where a wedding reception was in progress. Shlubby guy was there with his smart, gorgeous co-worker. Hey, do you suppose he'll end up realizing she's a better match for him than the super hot, super shallow girl at some point before the end? I could write a whole different post on predictable retreads of tired rom-com cliches, but that's not the topic for today.
I asked who was getting married, and my young friend explained it was the shlubby guy's brother. Suddenly, the super hot, super shallow girlfriend was doing an elaborate dance with some other guy at the reception. I asked what she was doing at the shlubby guy's brother's wedding. My young friend explained that the super hot girlfriend was one of the bride's closest friends, so she was invited to the wedding and came with her new fiancee.
"So," I asked, "it just so happens that the super hot girl who dumped this guy in the first scene was one of his brother's fiancee's best friends? Isn't that kind of a HUGE coincidence?" She replied, "Yeah, you just have to go with it."
Actually, you don't. And neither do your readers. It was obvious not only to me, but to an 11 year old girl, that the only reason the super hot girlfriend was a friend of the bride was so that she'd be in the wedding reception scene, making shlubby guy jealous and prompting him to his next ill-advised round of hijinks intended to win her back.
It's possible that I missed a flashback in which it was shown how the brothers began dating these besties, but even if there was, it would be very tacked-on and serve only as an excuse to get the super hot ex to the wedding---where of course, there were lots of wacky, slapstick physical comedy set pieces.
Wouldn't it have made much more sense to have shlubby guy run into the ex and her new man somewhere in public, or at a gathering in the home of a mutual friend? After all, if they met at some point in the past they should run in similar circles, or still have one or two friends in common. Of course, this wouldn't have allowed for the presence of the giant ice sculpture and aerialist equipment that played crucial roles in the shlubby guy's public humiliation, but those also had "coincidentally" written all over them. Seriously, who hires a Cirque du Soleil -type aerialist to perform at a wedding reception?!
If the only reason a character DOES something, or IS something, is to set up a later scene, the writer is sacrificing plot and character integrity for the sake of his own convenience, and straining the reader's credulity.
Some might say that Zookeeper also features talking animals, and therefore it's asking too much of the writers to expect much in the way of plot or character integrity. But look at the movies The Golden Compass, Stuart Little, Ratatouille, Cars and Finding Nemo. Talking animals, cars and fish DIDN'T strain credulity in the least in these films, and it's specifically because the writers paid very close attention to plot and character integrity. It's possible to be fantastical and comic, and even a little slapstick, without resorting to the "coincidentallys". If anything, the harder it is for your characters to get where they need to be, the richer your plot (and characters) will be by the end of the tale.
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