Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

The FIRST Thing You Must Fix

This week's completely obvious, often-repeated shibboleth: "The best writers are good editors." In other words, good writers know how to edit their own work.

This self-editing process is bifurcated, however. First, a novelist has to go back and look at the manuscript - and revise, and revise, and revise, before ever submitting. Second, a novelist has to be able to take an agent's and an editor's suggestions and do something with them.

I'm not sure that these skills can be taught, or easily summarized in a blog post. But there's one thing that I can emphasize, and it'll apply to almost everyone who submits their first manuscript to an agent or publisher:

CUT YOUR MANUSCRIPT BY AT LEAST 10,000 WORDS. OR MORE. MAKE IT SHORTER. THEN SHORTEN IT AGAIN.

The vast majority of manuscripts are too long. This isn't to say that they're necessarily "self-indulgent," though some of them are. Rather, length comes from being too focused on what you're doing as a writer and not concerned enough with the reader's experience. You may think, "Oh, I'm setting this up - I'm setting that up - I'm giving necessary background - I'm building character." If it causes the editor's eyes to glaze over, it needs to go. Not just in the early pages of the manuscript, but throughout the book.

A lot of writers are loath to give up a scene in which the description is particularly affecting, or characters engage in witty conversation, or the author philosophizes about a contemporary issue. But these passages will be ripe for the red pencil if it ever gets to the "I'm serious about possibly publishing this book" stage of the game. Why not increase your chances and get rid of all this extraneous "stuff" right from the beginning? 

I know this industry beats up on people. Just when a writer's skin has been thickened a layer or two, out comes a cat o' nine tails to strip another few layers off. First, the pain of working the writing into your schedule. Then, the travails of a critique group in which people may or may not have any idea of what they're talking about. Then one-sentence dismissals from agents, or much-too-honest feedback from those agents who might be interested - IF you can fix things to their satisfaction. Then the pain of rejections when the agent submits - and THEN the editorial process at the publishing house, where the editor (if s/he's the type to pick up a pencil) starts excising favorite paragraphs, pages, or even chapters. And then the torture of sales and marketing... and the worry about whether you'll get a contract for your next book. It's like getting to the seventh circle of hell and then having to start all over again at the first circle.

So - why not avoid (or at least greatly lessen) all those slashing red marks by being proactive about it? You'll save yourself some emotional pain later in the process - and you're more likely to get people interested in your manuscript to begin with.

 

GoodReads: Overrated?

The conventional wisdom among "book people" these days goes something like this: "You can't trust Amazon for reviews. Too many wackos on there, too many people with bad taste and too many people who aren't serious readers. For a better sense of what real readers are reading, and to hear their opinions, which are much worthier than the opinions of those who post on Amazon, go to Goodreads."

All I can say is: Don't believe the hype.

There's a lot of buzz in the office, among the younger professionals, regarding how to harness Goodreads as a marketing tool. Frankly, I don't think that's a good idea and I've been discouraging it - but then I get lectured along the lines of "Agatho, you must be more open to social media, you must be willing to try something new, you must meet readers where they congregate." Yes, all right - I concede the point.

I really haven't spent much time on Goodreads, as I usually look to Amazon for a sense of what's resonating and why. Of course, reviews have to hit a critical mass on Amazon for me to parse public reaction, figuring out what worked and for whom, and what didn't work and why. Somehow I've come up with the number 50. Up to 35 or so reviews, authors can get friends/family/colleagues to stack the deck in their favor. When you hit 50 reviews, though, you can be sure there will be some 1- and 2- star reviews in there ... and I think there's an interesting phenomenon on Amazon, too: People who don't like a book seem much more willing to say something negative about when others have already done so.

I'll admit that I've sometimes scratched my head over Amazon reviews, marveling (not in a good way) at some of the things people have said. So, going over to Goodreads, I expect the level of discourse to be somewhat different. And it IS different, but not necessarily, I think, in a good way.

Here's what I'm thinking after spending a few hours on Goodreads. I'm going to generalize here, so please keep that in mind before you jump down my throat. I think the Goodreads community sees itself as the Kirkus of the Internet. As self-defined "serious readers," they seem to subscribe to belief that a book is bad until proven otherwise. So, yes, it seems that the overall ranking of a book on Goodreads tends to be lower than the overall ranking on Amazon. (I chose ten books at random, from different publishers and with varying degrees of success/public awareness, and this was true for all ten of them.)

There's another problem, too. You can't rate a book on Amazon without saying something about it, no matter how short. But Goodreads is filled with rankings and no accompanying explanations. Not good.

Of course, I am most interested in how my own company's books have fared on Goodreads. Overall, I don't think the quality of the reviews is any better than the quality of the reviews on Amazon. First off, I counted six reviews in which reviews said something completely wrong. Not misleading, not slightly off the mark, but downright wrong. And I don't mean subjectively wrong - I mean objectively, proveably wrong. One said she doesn't like books written in the present tense: The book she was reviewing is NOT written in present tense. One said that she prefers a first-person narrator, and the book would have been better if the lead character had told the story. The point of view in that particular book IS first-person.  One of the reviews gave away some key plot twists (one would think that self-appointed "good readers" would know better), and another recounted plot "events" that do not happen in the book that is being reviewed.

I really believe, when all is said and done, when the reading public has spoken, that just about every worthy book published today will end up with a 3-star ranking. That's as it should be - It's impossible to publish a book everyone likes. (For example, I find the Harry Potters so incredibly tiresome and would have rejected the first book by page 50. Fortunately, I can't kick myself over this because I've never worked in that market and never saw the manuscript.) However - and I can speak only for myself and my own acquisitions and publishing philosophy - I'm not looking to publish books for the elite. You know what I mean: the books that get reviewed in the New York Times and talked up on NPR; the books that people like to buy, leave on their coffee tables, and then place on a shelf, unread, a few months hence. I'm looking for manuscripts that the "average person" will enjoy and recommend to friends - because I am looking for commercial success (i.e., a lot of books sold). So maybe the good folks who review for Goodreads are not my target audience. 

What I *do* like about Goodreads is this: As far as I can tell, it hasn't yet been overrun by self-marketers, the way DorothyL has and, to a certain extent, the way Amazon has. (I'm sure many of you have heard about the "scandals" in which people promise to post a review on Amazon in exchange for monetary compensation.) But my assistant subscribes to some Yahoo groups in which the vanity-published are actively talking about ways to get their work known via Goodreads, so a flank attack may indeed be in the works...

 

A Second Question for Writers and Readers

Next week, I promise, I will get back to the "fun" stuff about manuscripts, crime fiction, things I've read and liked, things that should never have been published in the first place, etc.  For now though, I have one more question, as a follow-up to last week's question.

This time I would love to hear not only from writers but also from readers, whether casual or voracious, hobby-based or professional (librarians). I feel as though the future of our industry lies in having these conversations - We've been insular for too long. Looking back to my earlier employment at one of the Big Six, I realize I spent much of my life dodging people - would-be writers, agents I didn't like, people who managed to get to me despite gatekeepers and all the other apparatus we erected to keep the public out.

It was done so as not to be overwhelmed - and to be able to "focus." Now, though, I feel as though I can't just sit here and pronounce, because the market is making itself heard and we have to listen to it.

So, this is the question I would like to pose:

What can we publishers do better? What can we do to get attention for books and writers?

Now, I ask that responses (click the Comment button below) follow a few general guidelines:

-They aren't diatribes against traditional publishing today.

-They are serious about suggesting new ways of doing things.

-They make financial sense. I'm sure many will suggest advertising more, but we know that doesn't work. There will be suggestions about sending more authors out on tour - we know that doesn't cover its costs, either. Then again, I can't really expect the average reader to know these sorts of things, so suggest away and we'll see what we can come up with.

I started thinking about this as a result of an email conversation with a favorite writer of mine, someone who sadly has not published a new book in over a decade. I said in that correspondence, "If I knew what to do to sell more books and break more authors, I would do it."  The conventional wisdom isn't holding any more (not that there was ever a guaranteed formula), so maybe now is the time to try something new, bold, daring....

 

 

 

A Second Question for Writers and Readers

Next week, I promise, I will get back to the "fun" stuff about manuscripts, crime fiction, things I've read and liked, things that should never have been published in the first place, etc.  For now though, I have one more question, as a follow-up to last week's question.

This time I would love to hear not only from writers but also from readers, whether casual or voracious, hobby-based or professional (librarians). I feel as though the future of our industry lies in having these conversations - We've been insular for too long. Looking back to my earlier employment at one of the Big Six, I realize I spent much of my life dodging people - would-be writers, agents I didn't like, people who managed to get to me despite gatekeepers and all the other apparatus we erected to keep the public out.

It was done so as not to be overwhelmed - and to be able to "focus." Now, though, I feel as though I can't just sit here and pronounce, because the market is making itself heard and we have to listen to it.

So, this is the question I would like to pose:

What can we publishers do better? What can we do to get attention for books and writers?

Now, I ask that responses (click the Comment button below) follow a few general guidelines:

-They aren't diatribes against traditional publishing today.

-They are serious about suggesting new ways of doing things.

-They make financial sense. I'm sure many will suggest advertising more, but we know that doesn't work. There will be suggestions about sending more authors out on tour - we know that doesn't cover its costs, either. Then again, I can't really expect the average reader to know these sorts of things, so suggest away and we'll see what we can come up with.

I started thinking about this as a result of an email conversation with a favorite writer of mine, someone who sadly has not published a new book in over a decade. I said in that correspondence, "If I knew what to do to sell more books and break more authors, I would do it."  The conventional wisdom isn't holding any more (not that there was ever a guaranteed formula), so maybe now is the time to try something new, bold, daring....

 

 

 

One Question for Writers

Reading some of the comments here, I would like to pose a question to the writers/aspiring novelists who read this blog. 

If you respond, not only will I see your comments, but other agents, editors, and publishers will, too. I know that several of these Esteemed Personages read this blog at least occasionally.

So here is the question:

*Writers say they want honest feedback on their ideas and their manuscript. But do you REALLY want honest, no-holds-barred feedback?

Here's the reason I ask. In the past, I used to get polite thank-you notes from those whose manuscripts I did not accept. I still do, but I also get responses telling me how wrong I am and how sorry I'll be. And this is even after I've gone out of my way to say something nice or positive about the manuscript.

What might real, honest, unexpurgated feedback sound like?  Thinking about a few manuscripts I've read lately, it might sound like this:

• Your book is competent, but there's nothing exciting or interesting about it. The market's too tough, and too filled with established people who deliver the goods, for this manuscript to have a chance.

• The premise of this book is downright silly.

• I'm sorry, but you really don't write well. Sentences are clunky, dialogue is wooden. In a genre dominated by some really superb writers (Michael Connelly, Laura Lipmann, et al.), how can I publish your manuscript and have any confidence that it will sell?

• I know that mixing genres is probably fun to do as a writer, but you should write this stuff for yourself and friends, or maybe self-publish it, because it's almost impossible to find a market for so-called "cross-over books."

• I'm sure you find your protagonist interesting, but s/he's actually quite boring. I don't want to spend 300 pages with him/her, and I don't think readers would, either.

 

Please hit the Comment button below and give me your thoughts.