Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

Is Your Self-Confidence Helping Your Career?

Over the last few months, I have been dealing with a fair amount of "attitude" on the part of writers - mostly, but not exclusively, of the unpublished variety.

First, I expressed interest in a manuscript and emailed the writer with some questions. He answered snippily, telling me that I was to take his manuscript as is, as he wasn't willing to make any changes. Because the manuscript had potential but was average at best, I simply deleted his response. Then, while attending a conference, I encouraged a writer who had a terrific idea and asked her to send me the manuscript. (Note: This was a writer who does not have an agent, or who did not have one at the time we spoke.) Her response: "If I'm going to give it to a small publisher, I might as well publish it myself." Finally, I spoke with an author whose first book was a moderate success but whose work in progress is far below the standard set by the first book. Author's response to me: "Well, this is what I want to do."

Excuse me?

Listen, I feel your pain. I understand your frustration. This is an unpredictable - and often downright flaky industry. There are plenty of frauds out there who don't know what they're doing and who sell you a bundle of dreams while taking your money. But, to take the above experiences in order:

#1 - If you queried me about publishing your book, doesn't that mean you want to work with a professional editor and publisher?

#2 - If you don't have an agent, and a convention has paid for a reputable small press editor (i.e., me) to attend, don't you think you might want to at least explore the possibilities, in the EXTREMELY LIKELY case that you can't find an agent to take you on and you DON'T get signed by Knopf?

# 3 - If the advice I've offered has helped make your first book a success, why would my advice suddenly become useless as you're writing your next book?

What it all comes down to, I'm sorry to say, is the idea that vanity publishing/self-publishing is the path to all writer's goals. I've ridden this hobby horse before, and I know it's controversial, so I won't get into that - as I'm not going to change anybody's mind about it, and nobody is going to change mine.

But I'm trying to make a specific point here: EVERY WRITER NEEDS AN EDITOR. I know these blog posts at Mysterious Matters would be better if I had someone read and comment on them before I hit the "publish" key. And sometimes when I read earlier posts, I fixate on all the ways they could have been better, if I'd asked for some feedback from someone I respect.

All of the above scenarios have one truism at their core: "I, the writer, know best. I don't need professional guidance in terms of my career or manuscript. If nobody out there wants my piece of perfection, then I'll publish it myself and make all the money."

My friends, that is the approach of a narcissistic amateur. Your book isn't about YOU. It's about whether READERS want to buy it or not.

Every professional - including every professional writer - knows that he or she cannot do it alone. If your manuscript keeps getting rejected, it's for a reason that almost any of us who work in this industry could summarize in one sentence. Are you really going to grow in your craft by thinking that there's nothing anyone can teach you?

It's true, when I get query letters in which the writer tells me about his or her membership in a writer's group, I sometimes roll my eyes - because who's to say whether the people in the group have good taste or not? BUT: this signals to me that the writer wants to be commercially successful. S/he wants to understand how readers perceive the work and whether s/he is accomplishing her goals. In essence, the writer is saying: I want this to be the best it can be, and I can't do that alone.

And to those people I say: You are the successful novelists of tomorrow.

(Enraged readers may now commence to send me nasty emails about painting all vanity published authors with one brush; regale me with tales of 50 Shades of Gray and professional publishers not knowing their asses from a hole in the ground; etc.)

My Kingdom for a Voice

Sometimes I forget what I really love until I see it.

Most devotees of crime fiction read for story (plot) and character. That's the baseline. If you don't have that, you don't have anything.

But there are plenty of (choose one: good - likable - interesting - conflicted - complicated) characters out there, and at the end of the day, there are only so many plots. You can find lists all over the Internet of the six or seven plots, and some distill this list to two: "Someone goes on a journey" and "A stranger comes to town."

So that leads us to those other factors that make for a fine read. There's that all-important "good writing," so easy to require but so hard to define (though I've tried here on Mysterious Matters). Pacing is important, too; and I am always drawn to manuscripts that seek to do something new, different, brave, innovative. 

And to that list let me add something that always makes me stand up and take notice: VOICE. And there's nothing that knocks my socks off like a voice that jumps off the page and punches me in the face. Such books are rare; sadly, we're not seeing many really fresh voices in our genre these days, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. (In fact, I just ordered a few recently published books that have a lot of potential in this area, or at least it seems to me based on the Amazon previews.)

And I just finished a book - Liza Cody's MONKEY WRENCH - whose voice made me gasp with pleasure. If someone had tied me up and forced me to make my Top 10 list of breathtaking narrative voices, Liza Cody would have been on my list. There was a time when I regularly gushed about Cody's first Eva Wylie book, BUCKET NUT - the first of a trilogy starring Eva Wylie, the professional wrestler who goes by the name "The London Lassassin."  But it had been a while since I thought consciously of Liza Cody. Then, I was talking with my wife, who recounted a tale in which someone "threw a monkey wrench into the works." That got me thinking. "Monkey wrench, monkey wrench, great title for a book... wait, there's already a book with that title... a book that I love..." And then I remembered that while I've read BUCKET NUT a dozen times (and often recommend it to aspiring writers), I realized that I haven't reread the other two books in the triology (MONKEY WRENCH and MUSCLEBOUND). And so... I opened MONKEY WRENCH again and found myself immediately drawn into its vast pleasures of language.

For those of you who don't know Eva Wylie, she is the adult daughter of a former prostitute who is bound and determined to take the world of wrestling by storm. And she's a mystery. Is she a person of low functioning intelligence, or a person of high intelligence with some sort of personality disturbance or learning disability? These books were published, I think, at a time when the world wasn't quite aware of Asperger's Syndrome (if, indeed, that's how Eva would be classified today). Eva narrates these books in first person. She just wants to be left alone (like Romulus Ledbetter in George Dawes Green's The Caveman's Valentine, another triumph of voice), but she's forever getting sucked into the problems of others. Watching Eva muscle her way through these books - simultaneously spot-on AND clueless in her perceptions - is a marvel to behold. On every page of MONKEY WRENCH I found a delight: whether a word, a sentence, a scene, or an insight. This is fabulous and brave writing with a voice to bring down the house. 

As I finished the book and prepare myself to read the third of the trilogy, I find myself sad that there are no more. Cody stopped her series after the third book; and I wonder if this is one of the reasons that Eva remains as fresh today as she was in the early 1990s. Cody didn't stretch Eva Wylie to death; my guess is that she realized that the perfect conception of Eva made her a credible heroine for three books, and that more than that might have taken a marvelous creation and turned her into a joke. So, for all who have not met Eva Wylie -- run, run to the nearest bookseller and treat yourself.

And a publishing aside: I was reminded that Cody was published in these glory days by Mysterious Press. What a publishing house! I would have given my eye teeth to work there back in the day. That legacy inspires what I do every day.

First, Give No Offense

For the record, I intend the title of this post ("First, Give No Offense") ironically. I think.

Let me tell you what led to this train of thought, as it's easier to talk about it via a specific example before I get into the theory/philosophy behind it. I try never to give away details of manuscripts I have read or am working on, so the following story is adapted but does, I think, get at the point I am trying to make.

So, I'm reading this manuscript quite happily, and there's a very difficult character. The question is: Is he just sort of a "skooch" or does he have some sort of deeper emotional or behavioral issue, such as Asperger's or a personality disorder. One way this difficult side to his personality comes out is his frustration with what he considers the "weird" ways that people spell their names. He insists on calling people by the literal pronunciation of their names. So, he meets Jacqui, and he calls her "Jack-WEE" or "Jack-WHY."  He meets a Carole, and he calls her Ca-ROLL.  He interacts with a Geoff whom he calls "Gee-OFF." Often he harangues them, telling them that their parents were desperate for attention for their children. "Oh no," he says to Carole. "No Carol for YOUR parents.  No, their precious little baby was UNIQUE and singularly wonderful! So Ca-ROLL with an E, if you please."

As I read through that particular section I thought: Oh no. As sure as I am sitting here, some women readers named Carole are going to take offense. I mean, nobody likes having their name mocked and intentionally mispronounced - again and again. Will these Carole readers get ticked off at the book, put it aside, give it bad reviews, tell their friends how bad it is? I've learned this lesson the hard way: A number of years ago I published a book in which the villain was fat. I could not believe the number of people who were offended by that. They also put other characters' words into the author's mouth. So, for example, characters in this particular book sometimes spoke of the fat villain disparagingly, and some reviews indicated their tacit belief that by "allowing" other characters to describe the villain in these terms, the author was endorsing or approving of those words. Another key lesson was learned when our publicist looked up the photo of a particularly vicious reviewer (who, at the time, was a bit of an opinion leader in various forums) to discover that said reviewer was obese.  Hmmm... draw your own conclusions.

Reading a manuscript with the idea of trying to make it as inoffensive as possible becomes a habit, and you'd be amazed at how often the alarm bells start to go off. Some examples I can think of in manuscripts: an offhand remark about black men (uh-oh), a disparaging remark about "tree huggers" (eek), a whole chapter on overprotective parents who need to get lives of their own (sweet Jesus!), political commentary about Tea Party members and their general level of stupidity (oh boy)... and so on. We even have to be careful about referring to people as "crazy," as that term is loaded and can push some buttons.

I think such writing - while far from "pleasant" or "lovely" - can add a level of edge to a manuscript. If we're going for verisimilitude in crime fiction, then certainly we can't expect every manuscript to be all sweetness and light (which is kind of ironic, if you think about it, given that 90% of our books deal with murder). But I do find myself editing out any sort of comments, lines, or paragraphs that could conceivably give offense to any particular group of people. The exception is an over-the-top villain who is so bad, and so clearly evil, that saying such things is considered par for his or her particular course. Even then, one must proceed with caution.

So, overall, I guess I'm saying to all those aspiring writers out there: Find ways to make your characters flawed while giving as little potential offense as possible.I think.

 

 

Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making

As I get through another couple of weeks' worth of submissions, I think: Someone needs to tell these writers what they are doing wrong as they seek commercial publication on the road to popular success. Here's a list of the mistakes you may be making: I've been seeing them a lot lately.

1. You can't describe your book in two provocative sentences. You have limited time to grab a reader's (editor's, agent's) attention. If I can't get excited about reading your book from your brief description of it, you're sunk. 

Bad: The Feverel Inheritance is a story of family betrayal, revenge, and the country estate that people are willing to kill for.

Better: The Feverel Inheritance, a story of family betrayal and revenge, is told by identical twin narrators with very different personalities, each putting her own spin on the story.

Best: The Feveral Inheritance, set in the incestuous, material world of the Hamptons, features identical twin narrators engaging in a game of psychological warfare in their quest to grab hold of the family estate - and each other's husbands.

See what I mean?

2. You're not considering a national readership. Certainly there is a market for regional books: city-type books for urban women, for example. But most publishers are looking for books that can hit everywhere. I'm finding that a lot of manuscripts have a polarizing element to them that will limit acceptance. A good example: the demonization of city living or country living. I can't tell you how many times I see this phenomenon: Urban writer presents the city as the bastion of culture and diversity, while presenting the country or the suburbs as lifeless, dead places populated by idiots and inbred wackos. There are lots of readers in this country who don't live in cities, and they don't want to be insulted by a novelist. The same holds true in reverse: Country-based writers portray the country as a haven of fresh air and morals, while presenting the city as a filthy, immoral place. Again, do city readers really want to have their lifestyle choice insulted?

3. You're not balancing plot and character.  I say it all the time: Genre fiction is the intersection of plot and character. These should be in 50-50 equilibrium, though I'd say you can get away with 60-40 on one side or the other. But if you're not telling a good story, and if you don't have at least a few likable characters, you've sunk your manuscript.

4. You haven't thought through readers' reactions to what your characters do and the choices they make. Readers can and do have visceral reactions to characters' actions and choices, and they can be really unforgiving. Suppose, for example, you have your male protagonist cheat on his wife early in the book. That is going to be a very, very hard thing for many people to get past. And yet I see this type of mistake all the time. 

Another good example comes from one of the worst books I've ever read - a book I love to hate and gleefully place in my "Ten Worst Mysteries Ever Published" list. This particular book had a pregnant protagonist who constantly put herself in danger. As I read, I kept thinking, "Does this woman care not one ounce for unborn child?" Then I went to look up the reviews and saw this same reaction throughout the many, many 1-star reviews. Readers didn't see the protagonist as brave or intrepid - they saw her as hateful and self-absorbed. Not exactly a prescription for a best-seller.

 

The Joys of 1-Star Reviews

I recently read a (published) book that I found awful. It was a book I rejected a number of years ago, and the intervening years had not improved it.Trite, poorly written, terribly plotted... and with about 100 four- and five-star reviews on Amazon. And yet, among the raves, a couple of dozen one- and two-star reviews were interspersed. These were the reviews that made me think: Ah, I am not alone. There are other astute readers who saw what I saw, felt what I felt.

I think all of us who toil in this business have been enraged by one-star reviews every now and again. I advise all writers to prepare for them, to avoid reading them until they are emotionally ready to do so (which, in some cases, is never), and to hold their tongues and avoid whipping off an angry response. It's an unpleasant fact of the creative life that by putting work out there, you are opening yourself up to criticism from anyone who feels like giving it. Getting uptight about bad reviews is akin to Hollywood celebrities punching out the paparazzi. You want the fame, you want the recognition, you want the sales - you have to put up with it.

Of course, some of this is easier said than done, particularly when you are dealing with reviews that spread misinformation, mislead others, and/or seem based on a personal vendetta. So, I thought I would offer some of the joys of one-star reviews.

1. They give your book credibility. I think many of us have seen books with (say) ten reviews on Amazon, all five-star.  I think most savvy readers know that most or all of these five-star reviews are from friends and relatives. Once you get a few 1- or 2-star reviews in there, you know that the world at large has started to read your book, and that not everyone liked it. That's OK... reading fiction is a subjective experience. I personally gravitate toward reading 3-star reviews first, as I find that those reviews often offer pros and cons about the book. Those reviews often also have an objectivity about them that I respond well to.

2. They show that you've challenged your readership.  If I had to make a list of the top three things that bug me about modern publishing, this would be one of them: In our effort to publish books that will be all things to all people, we homogenize them and remove the elements that (in previous generations) made for provocative reading. Think about the reasons one often sees for a one-star review:

• The political point of view made me sick!  This is a goddamned liberal/conservative book written by a jerk/idiot/right-winger/left-winger. 1 Star!
• I didn't like the main character.  I want someone just like me as the protagonist. I didn't agree with the choices s/he made and I am really irritated that s/he chose Suitor #1 over Suitor #2.  1 Star!
• This book made me uncomfortable. It raised questions about serious issues like teen pregnancy/same-sex marriage/war/the environment. I just wanted a fun read, and instead I got all this heavy stuff. 1 Star!
• This book was too light. I like books with heavy characterization and intricate plots. This cozy was downright silly, with not fully developed characters. 1 Star!
• The book was all right, but it would have been better if it were told in third person rather than first person. I don't like 1st person narratives. 1 Star!

Now imagine that you are a publisher and you attempt to publish only those manuscripts that will pre-empt all of the criticisms in the bulleted list above. What do you end up with?  Pablum. Schlock. Defanged, milquetoast, dull-as-dishwater books by committee.  And, my friends, I think you would agree that we are seeing a lot of that these days. (I spent a few hours at a local B&N yesterday. Don't get me started on the books displayed on the tables near the door.)

3. They make the good reviews that much sweeter. I remember my philosophy class at university many years ago, and the idea that we can know something only by its opposite. So, a few 1-star reviews make that thoughtful five-star review all the sweeter.

Case in point: A few years ago, one of my authors sent me a review that had been published in a small literary journal - not the type of publication that would normally review a mystery or suspense book. This particular book was one of my problem children: I loved it and published it enthusiastically, knowing it was going to be a tough sell because it was so challenging. And we did get our share of 1-star, puzzled and angry reviews. However, the author was over the moon with delight about this particular review, which amounted to a rave. The author said to me, "Agatho, with all the reviews I've had on this book, I feel that this reviewer is the only one who actually understood what I was attempting to do, who heard what I was trying to say."

Yes - yes - yes. I would never publish a book without knowing consciously what the author is trying to do or say. This is not to imply that every book has a serious purpose: The goal might be, simply, "I want to take people away for a few hours and give them a heroine they'll love." But the best writers know what they are trying to accomplish; and the more serious the writer, the more often there will be more to it than that. For the book I'm talking about, the writer was challenging readers to examine their own assumptions on a few matters - and this reviewer saw that and responded to it. For the author, and for me, this helped us continue to think about the book as a minor triumph rather than the not-so-successful (commercially) book that it was. Of course, we are an independent publisher and can look at books this way from time to time (though we wouldn't want it to happen too often). 

This gets at the different review journals and what they mean. A good review in PW means that the book has a good chance of succeeding, and merit is not necessarily a part of that success.  A good review in LJ means the book will likely appeal to the typical reader who patronizes libraries. A good review in Kirkus means the writing is good and the book will likely pass muster among difficult critics. A good review in the New York Times means someone, somewhere, has tapped into the network.

4. They can make us feel superior.  I don't advocate developing a sense of superiority over reviews as a general course of action, but occasionally - being able to laught at the foolishness of certain reviews can help the development of perspective. When a review is written in all lower-case - composed in sentence fragments - when it reviews based on the first ten pages - These are all reasons to think: This is America: The Stupid are allowed a voice, and they are exercising their right.

5. Sometimes they're right. There are a lot of good books published, and a lot of bad ones. Well-written, cogently argued one-star reviews can help readers spend their money in better places. 

 

It's All Subjective

I can never fully understand the ebbs and flows of queries. The last couple of weeks have been fertile. As I've been reading through them, I've found myself doing what I usually do: dismissing some immediately, examining others, asking for a full manuscript or two.

A lot of industry professionals say this, but I think it bears repeating: The fact that I've rejected your query does not necessarily mean it isn't good. Sometimes it means that, yes. But many times it means the book isn't right for me. Here are the some of the reasons I've done rejections over the last couple of weeks:

1-Book was a historical mystery. I usually don't see historicals as an easy sell to readers.

2-Book focused on a cold case. I don't like books that open with cold cases. For me, they lack immediacy and drive. It's hard enough to get readers interested in something that's happening here and now; digging way into the past is even more of a stretch.

3-Writing was good, characters were weak. This particular manuscript had a lot of potential but I had to reject it on the basis of the flat and/or stereotypical characters.

4-Protagonist is amoral or immoral, or appears to be so. Readers need someone to like, to root for. And over the years I've been amazed by the reasons that readers will turn against a protagonist, for fairly small infractions or moral hiccups. Even in the hardest-boiled books, the best protags have strong moral centers and a desire to do justice or help the downtrodden.

5-Book required too much suspension of disbelief. This one is really tricky. Genre fiction is fiction - strange things happen that wouldn't happen in real life - but the question for any writer is: What can you really get away with before the book breaks with reality too much for readers to continue accepting it?

6-Manuscript had no "hook." The manuscript I'm thinking about was well written, well plotted, and had good characters. But it was so... standard. It was competent, which is an interesting word. So much of what I see is incompetent, so competence is lovely. But it isn't enough.

And, finally, the rejection that pains me the most:

7-I liked it, but I don't think reviewers will. Too quirky, too off the beaten path, too much of an uphill climb to get readers (and reviewers) to give it a fair shake. 

 

 

Independent Publishing and The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

An early mentor of mine once said, "Focus on what YOU are doing, and don't worry about the rest of the world." What he was saying was: Look for good manuscripts and publish them. Everything proceeds from that.

He was mostly right, of course. But I don't think we can be good editors/publishers if we're not aware of what's out there, what's selling, what isn't, and so forth. Many of us take this too far: When acquiring books, we're so fixated on what's selling NOW - how do we find the next Harry Potter? the next Hunger Games? - that we are dismissive of new, interesting, different works. At least, that's how it had become when I left corporate publishing a while ago; and the situation hasn't improved over the last decade.

This is where independent publishers come in. Like everyone else who toils in this business, I walk a line between worrying about our future and thinking, "Of course we have a strong future: WE are what publishing is all about. WE don't have to go in front of editorial boards and get a dozen people to sign off on our multi-million-dollar acquisitions. WE are part of a rich intellectual history."

So I am always delighted when I am reminded that other publishers (besides myself!) are doing brave publishing. I was made aware of Diana Wagman's The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets several months ago, prior to publication, by a Library Journal piece. And I should say right here (and I hope the good people at LJ are reading this) that LJ is a wonderful advocate for independent publishers. They read and review the books of independent publishers, in furtherance of their mission to bring information about great books to libraries. I'd not heard of Wagman's publisher, Ig, which is an independent house based in Brooklyn, New York. After reading Care and Feeding, however, I'm adding Ig to my list of publishers whose personnel I'd love to meet.

Care and Feeding is the type of the book that would have received instantaneous rejection from agents and the big houses. Why?  I think it might be classified in a category that scares the bejesus out of most publishers: strange. Plot in a nutshell: Deeply disturbed carpet salesman, who grew up in a traveling circus, keeps a 7-foot, 180-pound iguana named Cookie in his house, falls in love via the Internet with a lying girl (shades of Manti T'eo, here), and decides to kidnap her mother to teach her a lesson. As the plot unfolds, Diana Wagman explores the inner lives of the cast, deconstructs Los Angeles, and offers a heroine who isn't willing to just sit back and be kidnapped without fighting back. In that way, this is a feminist book. And it is certainly nice to see a female character who isn't about to let herself get killed without exploiting every chance she gets to escape.

Is it mainstream? No. Is it predictable, with a foregone conclusion that is telegraphed from the first chapter? No. Is it brave, interesting, different, provocative, clever? Yes. And I believe that there are plenty of readers out there who don't want pablum, who like a challenge... The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets is for these brave souls, who don't need Hollywood-style action, who appreciate good writing, who like like to be shaken up instead of reading formula. And, as is the case with many off-the-beaten-path books, I suspect that half the people who decide to read it as a result of seeing this post will like or love it, while the other half will want my head on a platter. To me, that is the very essence of good publishing.

Of course, I'm a critic as much as I am a publisher, so I cannot argue that the book is perfect. The biggest problem for me was structural. For much of the book, Wagman is careful with her structure: one chapter, one person's point of view, with POV changing from chapter to chapter as the author explores the different characters. But things get muddy in the second half of the book, with POV shifting within chapters, which makes for a disconcerting read. There's also a tendency to interpolate events from the past that derail the action of the present, but I can live with that.

Ig's done a nice job with the book, from acquisitions through publishing and marketing. They managed to get a New York Times review (perhaps by offering sacrifices at Stonehenge, or tapping deep into that arcane network of connections that lead to NYT reviews and wedding announcements) and have been in the right places at the right times. My one complaint is that the typesetting is a little sloppy, here and there. This is a problem throughout the industry; I'm seeing typos everywhere these days, and the size of the house doesn't matter. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to typesetting, though, and I believe we independents need to be absolutely uncompromising in our standards for setting type and publishing a printed book. There's the old saying that a woman has to be twice as accomplished as a man to be perceived as half as good; I think independent publishers have to create printed works of quality that exceeds that of our corporate cousins. It's the only way we'll get people to take us seriously. 

Read the first chapter on Amazon and see if it's the right book for you. Keep in mind, though, that the first couple of chapters don't quite exhibit the strength of the overall writing, which is overall very strong but takes a few chapters to kick into gear.

Time for a Reality Check

Recent events and conversation have caused me to take a step back and consider a few things. Nothing I haven't thought about before, but it helps for me to remind myself of certain eternal truths. So I thought I'd share them here.

1. This industry is not a meritocracy. That's the hardest truth to swallow. And I don't mean just writers - I mean editors, publishers, agents, publicists, etc. I think we have the same bell curve that most industries do: some really bad people, a lot of decent or average people, some stellar people. Think about the ramifications of this statement. Average editors/publishers may not be particularly good about recognizing good writing or books that are likely to take off, which means books get signed for all the wrong reasons. Average or below-average agents mean that works aren't represented well, correctly, or enthusiastically. In sum: Life, and publishing, are not fair.

2. Bad reviews mean your book is being read.  In a recent post I expressed some frustration regarding bad reviews that seemed vindictive, that appeared to have a not-so-hidden agenda. But if you look at the social media sites where readers post reviews, you'll often see a pretty wide variety of rankings, from 5 stars all the way down to 1. People seem to be freaking out about bad reviews lately - and I admit I had a conniption about one of them recently, myself. (Why are we all so hysterical about this topic lately?)  But now that I have had time to cool down, I am reminded of what we have always told ourselves and our authors: Bad reviews happen. Deal with them. And count on readers' good judgment to be able to separate good, honest reviews from reviews written by idiots, people with an agenda, and so on.

3. A bad review doesn't mean a book is bad.  A good review doesn't mean a book is good.  Think of phenom books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I know several people, whom I respect, who hated it. I know a few people who ate up the Shades of Gray series.  Reviews have to be placed in context. Publishers Weekly is the industry organ; its reviews are often based on how it thinks the book will be received, or how well the book will do, rather than on the quality of the book. (Case in point: I just read a truly, truly terrible book that received a starred and boxed review in PW.) Library Journal is geared toward the average American, the average library goer, who is not necessarily sophisticated or looking to be challenged. More than the other review engines, Kirkus cares about writing and has low tolerance for stupidity. Blurbs are usually done by writers for friends or as favors and often have nothing to do with the quality of the book. Savvy readers know this.

4. It's all subjective. It really is. A couple of weeks ago I read a good manuscript. Good setting, good writing. Objectively, there was nothing wrong with it. But I couldn't get excited about it. Couldn't see myself gushing. It was a heck of a lot better than that starred, boxed PW book mentioned in point #3 above. But I didn't want it; it didn't excite me. Someone might feel differently; a book I rejected a couple of years ago was recently published to quite good sales (but far from critical consensus). Do I regret letting it go? No. 

5. There's not a lot of money here. There really isn't. A lot of people are convinced that getting a book contract is or should be like hitting the lottery. It isn't.  Consider this: I know the editor of the awful book in point #3.  I know the details of the advance. And I know this about sales: 30,000 books shipped, 18,000 returned. That's net sales of 12,000 units.  Let's say author makes $2.00 per book. Is author going to feed his or her family, and pay the rent, on THAT? This business is like any other. The more successful you are, the more money you make.   

Author Goals and Reader Expectations

You know, the recent spate of articles about "puppetry" on Amazon might be making me a little paranoid.

In 2012, I published a book that was by all criteria a "hit." Excellent reviews, including stars in three of the big industry publications (PW, LJ, Kirkus), good sales, positive reader response.  

Just recently I noticed a bunch of 1-star reviews crop up on Amazon. And, interestingly, for this particular book, the first two reviews on Goodreads had been 1-star.

When you work in this industry long enough, you learn to take reviews cum grano salis.  You can't please everyone, which is why we put so much stock in publications with serious, qualified reviewers (like those mentioned above; and yes, for a long time, a good review in Kirkus has meant something, because that publication has high standards).

Still, something wasn't quite sitting right with me about all of this, so I called a friend of mine who keeps more on top of breaking news, and some of the bizarre things that happen in this industry, than I do. And here's what I am told: That some vindictive writers who have been rejected by publishers, whether large or small, begin a campaign of smearing those publishers' books on Amazon and elsewhere. The way to discover this, apparently, is to look for these people's other reviews. If you look for them and can find no other reviews, you have likely found a "puppet" who created an account to smear you.

So I checked those really bad reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and - hmm.  Each of those people (except for one, and more on that later) wrote exactly one bad review, and it was for my book. So, apparently, false identities can be created not only to prop up a book with 5 stars, but also to try attempt to ruin publishers.

I find all of this too much to take in, but I suppose it is the "brave new world."

I don't know whether it's all true or not, but if it is, I can't even tell you how disgusted I am. The editors here respond to every single query we get, and we are never rude. We try to say something encouraging; and even if we can't, we wish writers the best of luck with their work. We don't take joy in swiping at people, and I can't tell you how many times we've passed on really good work because our house really is NOT the best place for the book. We give strangers our time every single day, and to think that we (not to mention our hardworking authors) somehow deserve this sort of smear campaign is stomach-turning. Of course, it may not be true at all. I certainly hope that is the case.

Now, about that other 1-star review. I checked out the reviewer's other 45 or so reviews. I counted: 42 of them were 1-star.  What? In each case, the reviewer took two or three sentences to trash the book. I have to ask this person: Why do you read? Is it to escape and enjoy, or to hate?  Because, from your reviews, it certainly seems like the latter.

So, from there, I went to look at some of the poor reviews of recent best-sellers, the names we all know (and whom many people enjoy to a greater or lesser extent). I'm estimating that in a majority of the cases, the reader was completely out of sync with what the book sets out to accomplish (what I call authorial intent). There were reviews that complained about Alexander McCall Smith books not having enough of a mysterious plot - hence 1 star; reviews that complained about Andrew Vachss being too dark and disturbing - hence 1 star; reviews that complained that Laura Lippman's book was too "female" oriented and chick-litty - hence 1 star; reviews that complained that the latest Stephanie Plum was outlandish, because who really thinks a woman can be a bounty hunter? - hence 1 star.

You get the point I am trying to make. Now, I KNOW and ADMIT that the covers of our books often try to sell them as something they are not. Well-chosen blurbs can put lipstick on a pig, and there's always that delightful ellipsis to get rid of inconvenient or unpleasant words from a review. But with the writers listed in the paragraph above, I think it's pretty clear what you're getting; so why on earth would ANYONE choose to buy and/or read a book that is clearly NOT TO THEIR TASTE? I just don't get it. I could live to be 100 and I'd never have enough time to read everything I WANT to read. Why on earth would I waste precious time reading something that I want to HATE?  Do these same people buy albums (oops, showing my age - I should say CD's) by singers whose voices they cannot stand? Do they go to Chinese restaurants to indulge in their hatred of Asian cuisine? Do they attend Broadway musicals so that they can rant about how unrealistic and silly they are?

I think most writers make it pretty clear what they're up to in the first three pages of their books. Amazon's Look Inside gives you those three pages (and more) for free. And browsing in bookstores is free... So why choose a book that you KNOW you will not like?

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I don't know why this business can be so unrelentingly NASTY. You rarely hear Hollywood actors trashing one another. Most musicians talk about singers/groups that they like and admire, not acts they loathe and detest. But there's something about this whole writing/book thing that makes some people vicious. I mean, think about it: A publisher rejected them, so they seek to destroy not only the publisher, but also the authors published by that house? I'm sorry, there is only one word for that: SICK.

And there, in a nutshell, is the other side of the story of all those "puppet" 5-star reviews.

Crime Fiction and the G-Word

I usually avoid politics here on Mysterious Matters, mostly because I revel in intelligent discussion, and political topics can turn even the most intelligent people into raving lunatics. So, as you read (IF you keep reading) please keep in mind that the following has no hidden agenda.

The topic is guns.

With the rash of highly publicized shootings, from Gabrielle Giffords through Aurora, Colorado, through Newtown, Connecticut, I am thinking a lot about violence in crime fiction. Specifically, I'm thinking about guns. We see a lot of guns on the printed page, lots of vigilantes, lots of lone-wolf protagonists (and villains) whose gun is their best friend. 

What is our responsibility with regard to guns and gun violence in the genre? 

On the one hand, we never hear that the latest gun spree was motivated by too heavy an immersion in books. Hollywood, yes; video games, yes; but not books or printed fiction. Thank God.

On the other hand, how much responsibility do we have, as industry, in terms of the way we portray guns? I think we use guns, in our books, almost as regularly as they're used in feature films and TV shows. Perhaps they don't make the impression in books that they do on the silver screen, because we can't hear the shots and see the blood. Should we be encouraging writers to develop other methods of self-defense for their protagonists, such as judo or jujitsu?  This could lead to some clever, original pots - what could writers come up with if they couldn't have their characters use guns as weapons? 

Of course I am not suggesting that we impose any such rule. Writers would balk at having their creativty stifled, and rightfully so. Then there's the "realism" argument, too: How can an author write a good hardboiled tale without guns? But I am thinking more and more that I'd like to read some stellar crime fiction that doesn't have gunplay. Because the gun scenes in what I've been reading lately have been reminding me a lot of Newtown.

I'd love to hear from readers on this. Do you consider violence level when you are selecting a book to buy and read? What about guns - would you purchase a book that include a silhouette of a hero holding a gun on the cover?