(no subject)

[alg]

Good morning! I have been awake since six am, and wow! It is a beautiful day. I have the windows open, and there is a wonderful cold breeze blowing in. My bedroom window faces Manhattan, which means it faces the water, even though I can't see the water, and I get wonderful breezes -- although when it's freezing outside and the wind chill is, like, negative seventy-million, it's not so much fun.

(All I want this morning is a cup of coffee and a Danish. Wow, how bad do I want a Danish? Pretty badly. Instead I had a crescent roll. Not quite as good, but what's a girl to do?)

I want to thank again everyone who provided me with links and stories on Monday -- that was awfully nice of you guys and I really appreciate it! I am well on my way to recovering (especially now that my dentist has called in a new prescription for me, and I have much stronger painkillers, phew).

Now that I can focus for longer than 500 words, I am ready to write more about demystifying publishing.

I am really glad that these entries are helping y'all. And I am flattered that so many people are reading them -- I know I tend to be pedantic and long-winded, so it's amazing to me that you guys can get through these entries. *g*

I do want to remind you that these answers are by no means universal. Remember the first rule: Don't be an idiot.


Publishing is Hard!

Writing is an art, but publishing is a business -- and here are a few basic suggestions on how to navigate that business. Complete with explanations of various departments within a publishing company, and how they all work together to make your book. And, of course, my witty and charming commentary!




Thanks for reading; I hope this has helped at least some of you!

Comments

[handworn.livejournal.com]

It's a good point about everyone considering themselves a judge of art, but there have often been books (SF/F, mainly) I've had which I've hidden from some people in my life because I was embarrassed by the lurid badness of the covers.

How much, in your opinion, would it change things if the book-distributing and bookselling oligopolies were broken up, with resulting less pressure for tutu'd elephants?

[alg.livejournal.com]

This is a tough question.

Anyone can make a bad cover for a book. A small press who doesn't do a lot of business with booksellers like B&N, a large publisher who does. Anyone.

And anyone can truly believe in their heart that their bad cover is beautiful.

Most of my experience is in the romance section and my own opinion on this is based on anecdotal evidence. When covers are too "experimental," even if we can convince the chains (B&N, Borders, Walden, etc.) to carry the book and put it face out, we still do not get the same sales.

People are attracted to covers for many different reasons, but mostly because the cover of the book tells them what is inside. It is, I am told, a fact of the industry that if there are wings or a dragon on the cover of a book, it will sell.

I consulted pnh about this, because he is the head of SF/F at Tor, and has been for many years, and is widely regarded as one of the top SF/F editors in the world. Here is what he said (quoted with permission):

The fact is, the strongest force operating here isn't Evil Big Publishers or Evil B&N or Evil Wal-Mart; it's consumer conservatism. If anything, B&N is notably skillful at second-guessing the exact contours of consumer conservatism, because they don't have any particular aesthetic ax to grind; they just have a strong idea of what works and what doesn't, based on a VERY LARGE DATA SET.

He also noted that the William Goldman rule ("Nobody Knows Anything") is always in effect -- we don't, as a general rule, know if people buy books because of the covers, in spite of the covers, or without even noticing.

So my answer is.... I don't think so, but there's really no way of knowing for sure.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Well, not to contradict pnh, whose word seems pretty authoritative, but I'd take B&N's dataset with a grain of salt. That is, it may only suggest that this is what B&N has found works, within the assumptions they've made and industry practices they've established. Obviously I have no data contradicting it, but I haven't seen any attempt by Waldenbooks, say, to determine what characteristics are making customers buy the books they do. That is, they've never asked me. (I, obviously, am the last word on customer preferences.)

I'd tell them that the cover factors in very little for deciding to buy books or authors I don't know. (I admit I don't read romances.) Title a bit (the less cliche'd, the better), blurb about the central shtick even more, but those two I can entirely forget about if when I flip it open and read the first page or a page at random, the writing simply sucks me in. I may, though, simply be less ruined by TV less visually oriented than many people.

I certainly don't object to there being a dragon on the cover if there's a dragon in the story, or that the dragon is gaudy, or even if the dragon's, or anyone's, appearance doesn't match the description in the story. If it's a historical, I don't require accuracy in period clothing. It would simply be a lot to coordinate, it seems to me.

It's the fact that a heroine who fights with a sword, in ellen_kushner's upcoming The Privilege of the Sword was shown on the cover with unbound hair flowing to her knees. (Oh, no, tripping on it is no problem in a fight.) Or the fact that sometimes the cover doesn't appear to relate to the story at all, like marthawells's The Element of Fire.

The things you're asked to suspend your disbelief about in a work of fiction usually seem to be presented early. Which is why, I'm told, you can't establish that magic exists, two-thirds of the way into the story. (That very sin, for example, ruined the movie The Green Mile for me.) And for me, anyway, it's possible to be asked to believe too much. I guess my view is only that it doesn't help when the cover sets off your bullshit detector before you even start; for me, it leaves less "belief" currency for the writer to spend.

But I suppose I'm a minority, that way, at least according to industry practice and research. :-)