Agent Impossible by Teresa Kennedy

    Okay, I’ve got a lot of great clients who seem to be hitting what I like to call “the agent wall”. The agent wall means that you, as an author, have done your homework, queried a host of likely author’s representatives with a thoroughly professional query letter, proposal, pitch and sample, only to hit the wall. Polite, form rejections that tell you nothing, nondescript feedback, or no response at all. The situation for authors is SO bad it even has its own internet joke.
Q:“How many literary agents does it take to change a light bulb?”
A: “We apologize, but we are not changing any new bulbs at the moment. Have you considered the benefits of living in darkness?”
    Most untried authors hold the dream of the right agent, making the right six figure deal with a prestigious publishing concern and going on to a host of film options, translation rights, software licenses and action figures. While there’s nothing at all wrong with the dream, it’s about as close to publishing reality as the 99 percent is to the one percent controlling Wall Street. To make matters worse, there are a whole lot of literary agents out there with the same dream, trying to score the big deal, which makes them even more reluctant to take on any untried material.
    If you see the world from the agent’s point of view, the formula is pretty simple: “I will have to put in X amount of hours, trying to sell property Y. Assuming I get an offer, I will take the typical commission of 15 percent over the life of the book. If I can reasonably expect a book to garner an advance of Z plus any royalties that may or may not accrue, is that a reasonable return for my time and energy?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is no.
    Naturally agents have various ways of coping with that reality, just to give them reasons to get out of bed in the morning. The first type works in volume. They will acquire lots and lots of projects in order to come up with an extensive client list that will make them look important. But a closer look at their sales usually reveals a fairly lackluster record. They’re working the odds. The more projects they have, the greater their chances of a sale—any sale. Like a gambler working the slots, those small payouts aka your advance, aren’t a jackpot, but they give them enough hope to feel like a player.
    The second type of agent is more idealistic. They want to believe. Their dream is to get the books they really believe in, into the needy and grateful hands of the book buying public. There’s just one catch—they usually want you to rewrite it to their specifications. Idealistic types are almost always frustrated writers, or worse, editors who have grown disenchanted with corporate life. They inevitably want to get all up in your creative process, because you, the lowly author, are just another writer, but they are the “professional.” When a writer objects to this sort of behavior, they are inevitably accused of being “difficult”, “egotistical,” or just plain “trouble.”
    As it’s really easy for an amateur author to be intimidated by this sort of grandstanding, you can spend a lot of time languishing in rewrites that is time better spent with the agent making actual submissions. And any time you suspect that an agent is re-manufacturing your book to meet their idea of the market, it’s best to move on.
    The third type of agent spends the majority of their time selling the importance of having an agent. Rather than selling their clients’ books, they are busily promoting their own. This type usually has loads of well-meaning advice about being a writer, finding a literary representative and what’s trending in the industry (much of it for sale). They present themselves as an authority, and will not hesitate to assure you that your future as an author is doomed without proper representation. They will urge you to read their tweets and Like them on Facebook and buy their latest revised and updated guides. What they don’t tell you is that it’s just as hard to find an agent with those guides than without them.
    Now, it’s not my intention to tar all literary representatives with the same brush; a good agent, like a good spouse, is indeed more precious than rubies. But just as in a marriage, the agent/ author partnership means you’re looking for Mr. or Ms. Right, not the first somebody who actually answered your email. After all, good partners work together to attain mutually beneficial goals. So what are you really looking for when you’re looking for an agent?
    Make your wish list. I’ve included a few qualities that I consider essential, add your own. Good agents are people who can go the distance. How long have your candidates been in the business? The agent is your salesperson. How well do they sell themselves and their services? A good agent is a true facilitator. Is this someone with whom you can communicate, compromise and who respects you? Or do they ignore you, evade your questions, argue when issues arise, or dish attitude? How about that prenuptial agreement? If they require a contract, what exactly are the terms? Remember, the agent is supposed to be working for you, the author. If they’re not and your relationship ends, read the fine print before you sign anything. Finding a good agent can be a lot like falling in love. The rush of enthusiasm, the dreams for the future—all those promises. But even the best honeymoons come to an end and reality kicks in. So finally, ask yourself. Do I actually like this person? Or do I just like having an agent?
    Finding the right agent can seem like an impossible task and it’s true that there are a lot of agents out there who can seem like downright impossible people. But at the same time, though good, honest and reputable agents abound in this industry, even the best of them can’t accomplish the impossible. So just as when you’re looking for a marriage partner, it’s important to adjust your expectations accordingly.

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement By Ed Bott | January 19, 2012, 1:32pm PST

Summary: Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

I read EULAs so you don’t have to. I’ve spent years reading end user license agreements, EULAs, looking for little gotchas or just trying to figure out what the agreement allows and doesn’t allow.

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program.

Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

I’ve downloaded the software and had a chance to skim the EULA. Much of it is boilerplate, but I’ve read and re-read Section 2B, and it does indeed go far beyond any license agreement I’ve ever seen:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

• (i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
• (ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or
• service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including

without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it.

Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it. Updated to add: By “it,” I am referring to the book, not the content. The program allows you to export your work as plain text, with all formatting stripped. So you do have the option to take the formatting work you did in iBooks Author, throw it away, and start over. That is a devastating potential limitation for an author/publisher. Outputting as PDF would preserve the formatting, but again the license would appear to prohibit you from selling that work, because it was generated by iBooks Author.

One oddity I noticed in the agreement is that the term Work is not defined. [Update: Yes, it is, as I noticed on a fourth reading. It's in an "Important Note" above the agreement itself: "any book or other work you generate using this software (a 'Work')." Of course, that uses the term "work" recursively.] It’s capitalized in the relevant sections of the EULA, and it clearly is the thing of value that Apple wants from an author. Leaving that term so poorly defined is not exactly malpractice, but it’s sloppy lawyering.

I’m also hearing, but have not been able to confirm, that the program’s output is not compatible with the industry-standard EPUB format. Updated: An Apple support document notes that “¦iBooks uses the ePub file format” and later refers to it as “the industry-leading ePub digital book file type.” But iBooks Author will not export its output to that industry-leading format.

My longtime friend Giesbert Damaschke, a German author who has written numerous Apple-related books, says via Twitter that “iBA generates Epub (sort of): save as .ibooks, rename to .epub (won’t work with complex layouts, cover will be lost).” Even if that workaround produces a usable EPUB file, however, the license agreement would seem to explicitly prohibit using the resulting file for commercial purposes outside Apple’s store.

As a publisher and an author, I obviously have a dog in this hunt. But what I see so far makes this program and its output an absolute nonstarter for me.

I’ll be writing more fully on this issue after I’ve had a chance to use the program and to inspect the EULA under a microscope.

Oh, and let’s just stipulate that I could send an e-mail to Apple asking for comment, or I could hand-write my request on a sheet of paper and then put it in a shredder. Both actions would produce the same response from Cupertino. But if anyone from Apple would care to comment, you know where to find me.

Taken from "The Ed Bott Report"

Building Character by Teresa Kennedy

There’s an old joke which goes: “There are two kinds of people in the world—those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.”

There’s a similar line of thinking when it comes to novels and novelists—there are those that think the plot should drive the character and those who think the character should drive the plot. Conventional wisdom dictates that character-driven fiction tends to come under the umbrella of “literary” fiction, while plot -driven works tend to be oriented to a specific genre or category.

Regardless of what you’re writing though, all successful fiction depends upon your ability to create memorable characters in memorable situations. In order to become really engaged in your story, the reader needs to care. And because we share a common humanity, it’s a pretty safe bet they will care first about your characters and second, about what happens to them as the plot unfolds.

Very often, writers rely on characterization   to create a character, when it’s only half the job. As readers, we can wade through a whole lot of information--where Bob lives, what he had for breakfast, what he wore to work, whether he needs to lose ten pounds or hates his wife’s new perfume and tells bad jokes--and still not know anything about him, much less engage with him on some kind of emotional level. And while characterization is certainly important, you haven’t really built a character until the writer uses each of those outer qualities to somehow illustrate the inner life of the man. That means those cold scrambled eggs, his expanding waistline, underpaid job and the lingering smell of that hateful perfume all need to reveal something about how Bob feels about himself and his world.

Plot driven fiction can also give a character short shrift if it relies on situation alone to determine the outcome of the story. Becky may be a young mother and a promising law student unwittingly caught up in an international conspiracy, but nobody is going to care unless being in that situation somehow changes Becky forever. Placing her  “in danger” is simply not enough. It may be that she overcomes incredible obstacles, catches the villains and keeps the world safe for Democracy, but it isn’t going to mean a thing unless she learns something about herself in the process. Maybe the experience changes her priorities, maybe she learns the good guys aren’t always good and that they don’t always win—but whatever her revelation, Becky has to be the one to resolve the plot for the reader in such a way that they are satisfied with the outcome. Otherwise she’s just a person that things happen to—not a person who makes things happen.

To build real, believable and memorable characters, an author has to go the extra mile. It helps to know what makes people tick, but even more important is your willingness to really become those characters, body mind and spirit. It means setting aside your own opinions and judgments and even a really good outline when they depart from the script. It means feeling their pain and sharing their joy, and experiencing their conflicts in sometimes excruciating detail.  And for an author that can be both exhausting and incredibly rewarding. As the great actress Meryl Streep has said (and it’s certainly as true for a writer as an actor,) “To take someone in a really precarious position and truly inhabit their mind and soul is a very dangerous thing to do."

But the results can indeed, be memorable.

Is Kindle's Good News Bad news for Authors? by Teresa Kennedy

The recent announcement that Amazon has opened new Kindle stores in Italy and Spain has been met with lots of excitement in the Kindle community, but it begs the question of just how good Kindle’s expansion in foreign markets is for the independent authors who publish with them.

According to PC magazine :

“The new stores have a total of more than 900,000 titles in various languages, including many international best sellers, the company noted. Amazon also announced that independent authors are free to use Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to make their works available in the Italian and Spanish Kindle Stores.”

A further breakdown of the numbers indicates only 22,000 titles are available in Spanish in the Spanish store, while only 16,000 titles are available in Italian in that country’s Kindle store. So if, as an independent, your book isn’t available in either of those languages, your chance of significant sales in those or any other country where Amazon has a Kindle store are pretty slim.

Further, you’re competing with international bestsellers; that means titles whose translation rights have already been sold throughout the world, usually through an agent or larger publishing enterprise.

It’s no secret that foreign rights sales can make significant money for an author, often much more than the original version. And the global nature of today’s economy means that rights sales are booming. The problem is that within the area of foreign rights, there’s a significant scramble going on for territory. In exchange for translating your work, publishers want exclusive rights to publish in their territory. And if an English language version of your book is readily available in their local Kindle store, chances are they’ll not only pass on ebook translation rights, but on print rights as well. That spells a potentially significant loss of revenues for authors, especially independents.

Too many aspiring authors, anxious to get their work “out there” have only a dim understanding of just what rights they’re giving up in signing Kindle’s direct publishing contract, and unfortunately, many independent houses now insist on “worldwide” rights as a means of skirting the whole issue.

It’s an area of the industry that raises a lot of questions, and most of those questions don’t have any easy answers. But make no mistake, Amazon’s wholesale distribution practices and new Kindle stores are for the good of Amazon, not individual authors. Most important is for authors to be aware of their rights, and to find publishers and representatives willing to protect them in the global marketplace. Negotiate in your own best interests. Ask if your agent or publisher has contacts or partners in the foreign rights community. We certainly have those contacts at Village Green, but many don’t.

NEVER sign away world rights unless you have to. Some agents cave on it just to make the deal and some publishers will try and convince you that translation and subrights are just not an issue unless you have a track record. But that’s just not true. If you’re in it for the long term, the potential for foreign rights sales is just as important for your first book as your last one.

For more good reasons to keep your eye on amazon, read the following:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2YvNBX/blog.taleist.com/2011/12/01/why-you-cant-afford-to-take-your-eye-off-your-amazon-sales

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-06/e-book-pricing-sales-restrictions-to-be-probed-by-eu-antitrust-regulator.html

 

Quantity and Quality by Teresa Kennedy

Yes I know, we all love our gadgets. Computers, smartphones blogs, texts, tweets and social networks have us connected in a way that we’ve never been before.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever would have finished a manuscript without the advent of the personal computer. Word processing takes a good deal of the drudgery out of writing, changing those names, correcting the typos, not to mention doing the research. Knowledge truly is power and the ability of our machines to put whole worlds of knowledge at our fingertips is really awe inspiring.

The problem being that all that information and social networking can keep writers and editors both awfully busy. We live in a world of more or less instant results and it’s that same point-and-click mentality that can really wreak havoc on the creative quality of our work.

As much as the world would like us to believe that creativity is somehow inextricably linked with productivity, quite the opposite is true. An author can write one book or fifty, yet we are continually urged to greater and greater amounts of output, to make more sales, gain more fans and build our networks.

But a good novel just isn’t about how many words it contains, or how fast the author wrote them. Some books take longer than others to write. Programs that insist you can write a novel in a month if you just produce X amount of words per day can be a valuable exercise in discipline, but they don’t necessarily result in quality books, any more than being able to draw that lady on the matchbook makes you a great artist.

I once had an author whose manuscript I had edited text me a corrected scene from her smartphone. She was so obsessed with keeping to her schedule, she wanted immediate feedback in order to proceed to the next “correction.”

Ambition is great of course, but sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing is to really take some time to track your own creative process. Where is your inspiration coming from? Chances are, your best ideas arise out of what I like to call “mental free time.” Day dreaming, night dreams, staring off into space, meditation, exercise—whatever it takes. Turn off the phone and (gasp!) even the computer--long enough to detach from the clamor of modern life and find that space of not-thinking, not-doing and not-worrying too much about how to make that scene come out.

As much as writing is a conscious process in the sense that it necessitates applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, typing away and getting that darned book finished, the creative process is largely unconscious, mysterious and full of wonder. The unconscious provides a rich, nearly inexhaustible resource, where ideas flourish and dreams are real. It’s a place where so-called writer’s block doesn’t exist and your characters take on a life of their own. Truly, I think every writer lives for that creative moment when the story begins to tell itself and the actual writing becomes almost secondary. It takes some work to get there, but it’s a magical moment, indeed.

So we have to make the effort to connect with that creativity. It’s in each of us, always. But for most of us, that means disconnecting from our technology, at least long enough to remember that productivity isn’t everything. It’s isn’t the quantity of the words on the page, it’s the quality of the ideas those words represent.

Voice: What Is It?

    I had an author I’ve been working with query me as to just what it meant when we talk about the writer’s voice. She’d been doing a lot of internet reading on the subject, and not surprisingly, discovered lot of conflicting information.

    At its simplest, the term “voice” means that everyone's writing needs to be different from everyone else’s. And the process of developing a narrative voice all boils down to a question of choices. Every writer makes choices --about the story they choose to tell, their topics, their choice of words, the details of character and scene; and how they begin, or end, their book. All those different choices in turn determine the collective effect their story has on the reader.

    While it’s often referred to  “tone” or “mood" or even “style,” your narrative always tells the reader something about your personality and the entirely unique way you see the world. That means your writing choices need to be conscious ones. The problem arises when you discover choices aren’t always made consciously, but rather are the result of idioms and idiosyncracies that have a way of creeping where they don’t belong. Readers are extraordinarily perceptive creatures. They can feel a writer hesitate, or struggle through a passage that isn’t quite there yet.

    When it comes to strategies for developing a more authentic voice though, there are a few rules to follow. 

    First and foremost, care about what you’re writing.That may sound fatuous, but face it, if you don’t care, your audience won’t either. You may have the most brilliantly conceived dystopian horror fest ever to hit Microsoft Word, but if you’re not into that sort of thing, your readers will know. Writing is not manufacture; there’s a subtle interaction between author and reader that happens somewhere between the lines. If you’re faking it, you will be found out.

    Express yourself honestly. Be yourself on the page. If everyone felt the same way about everything, we’d all tend to do and say and think the same things. But our feelings about things are what make us unique. Beginning writers very often reach for a tone or style that they believe is more “literary” than how they would normally express themselves. Some try to imitate the style of authors they admire. While there’s nothing wrong with experimenting with different styles, the key is consistency. If chapter twelve sounds like it was written by an entirely different writer than chapter two, you might be in trouble. If you want to be true, you have to start by being true to yourself.

    The stronger your feelings, the better. Do your own attempts at comedy actually make you laugh? Do you actually come to tears when you kill off a character? If they do, chances are you’re in the zone required for a really authentic voice.

    Be original. One can argue that there’s nothing new under the sun, but to say that something is original is simply to say that we haven’t seen it done quite this way before. There’s a difference about it that is ultimately the result of the confidence and willingness of the author to convey a sense of personality on the page. When a reader finishes a book by a favorite author, they frequently feel as though they’ve gotten to know that person. While it isn’t entirely true, that quality of intimacy is an important ingredient in developing an original and unique voice.

    Match your tone to your audience. A white paper on global warming isn’t going to have the same tone as a young adult rite of passage. A romance is not a mystery. I can’t say it often enough, but the voice you choose for your writing must match not just your purpose, but your audience. They want to get to know you, so it only stands to reason you should get to know them.

Double Standards by Teresa Kennedy

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.
- Yogi Berra

     Publishing puts you in touch with all kinds of interesting people, but never so much or so many as when you advertise that you are seeking novel-length submissions.

    Call it a sign of the times, but in the past few days, Village Green’s website has received a number of queries, almost none of which would be considered appropriate were we a more traditional venue. I get queries that demand references before I even see their book; I am asked whether we have ever infringed on an author’s copyright and I even had one note insist that no “reputable” publisher would charge for editorial or promotional services.

    Babes in the woods, poor dears.

    As a niche publisher and something of a hybrid in an ever-changing industry, we offer a full range of services both for those wishing to self-publish (whether electronically, or in print) and those wishing to pursue more traditional publishing outlets. Those services include development and editorial; design services, pre and post publication support, agent and submissions help, book reviews and publicity services.

In addition, we are also seeking to build a select list of titles for our own catalog. But just because a book isn’t right for our list doesn’t mean it can’t find success elsewhere.

    The interesting thing about many of the queries we get lately, is that they all seem to be informed by an overriding suspicion that as a relatively new company and an industry hybrid there is something inherently suspect about us. That we charge reasonable and entirely appropriate fees for our services seems to make us doubly so.

    We started this company with one mission—that was to see deserving authors published. As a 30 year veteran of this industry, both as an author and editor, when a former editorial client invited me in, I began the venture with eyes wide open. I’m not going to get rich at this; I’m not going to get famous, and it’s going to take time.

    Part of the illusion that pervades the unpublished author community these days is that those realities just don’t apply. Further, any and all publishers must now somehow justify their existence, as though we were all just one more evil corporation waiting to abuse the unsuspecting.

    And yet I ask you, if you were trying to get your book published with Doubleday or Random House, would you insist on seeing your editor’s resume before you made changes? If an agent recommended further editorial help before taking you on, would you consider them a rip-off? When you call a cab to get you to your destination, do you demand the cabbie produce his license to drive?

    Look, I know this isn’t an easy business, but that’s no reason to approach a prospective publisher with a chip on your shoulder. That’s one sure way to get nowhere.

    Whether writing is your passion, your art or your hobby, in the end publishing is a business. Businesses make money, and sometimes the best money is an investment in yourself.