By Pat Browning
Literary agent Michael Larsen’s blog at http://michaellarsen.wordpress.com/
covers topics from storytelling to publishing and everything in between. This week, with his permission, I’m reprinting his Sept. 15th blog -- “Memoirists: Are You Fiction or Nonfiction?”
The husband and wife team of Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada left New York for San Francisco and opened their own literary agency in 1972. They founded the prestigious San Francisco Writers Conference almost eight years ago.
The next conference is scheduled for February 18- 20, 2011. It will feature nearly 100 agents, authors, editors and book industry professionals. Attendees will have access to more than 50 “how to" sessions, panels, and workshops taught by authors. Speed Dating for Agents and Ask a Pro offer one-on-one opportunities to pitch your work directly to publishing professionals.
New this year is a contest for independent and self-published authors. Here’s a quote from contest publicity: “In this new era of digital publishing with eBooks, Print on Demand (POD) books and more, there are now many paths to publication," said Laurie McLean, Contest Director of the San Francisco Writers Conference and Dean of the soon to debut San Francisco Writers University. "While the Holy Grail remains a contract with one of the big six publishers in New York, that goal is getting more elusive than ever for writers. We are offering the indie alternative to get to the big six--and hoping to establish the credibility for indie publishing that the indie film and music industries enjoy today."
Check out The Indie Publishing Contest where you can win a publishing package complete with distribution, marketing and more. Deadline to enter is January 5, 2011. Details at the conference web site:
www.sfwriters.org/
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Memoirists: Are You Fiction or Nonfiction?
By Michael Larsen
William Hamilton once did a cartoon showing an aspiring young woman writer asking a balding, mustachioed literary type: “Are you fiction or nonfiction?”
If you’re writing a memoir (a me-moir to the cynical) you may wonder whether it would be better as a novel. What reasons might there be for making that decision?
Legal Reasons
Publishers are extremely wary about anything that might cause litigation. If you’re going to include unflattering things about living people, they may sue. You can disguise them, but if you’re living in a small town or people will know who you’re referring to anyway, that won’t help.
Personal Reasons
Fictionalizing your past may make it easier to write about. A memoir is constrained by the truth. Writing fiction liberates you to alter your experience as you wish.
Literary Reasons
What are your literary goals in writing the book? If you want to create a legacy for your friends and family, writing a memoir makes more sense. Nonfiction is easier to write because you’re drawing on your experiences and facts you can verify.
But writing fiction liberates you to create whatever combination of character, plot, and setting will have the most impact on readers. And a memoir should read like a novel. Frank McCourt’s bestseller, Angela’s Ashes, which ignited the interest in memoirs, certainly does. You could call it a novel without changing a word. The dialogues he had as a child with his family capture the emotional truth if not the factual truth of what was said.
Like a novel, a memoir has to describe places, characters, and situations so readers will want to keep reading about them. The book needs a story arc that traces your transformation from who you are at the beginning of the book to the person you become after being changed by your experiences. Many novels, especially first novels, are autobiographical, and all novels make use of the author’s experience filtered by the imagination and the needs of the story.
Commercial Reasons
What are your financial goals for your memoir? Will it be more salable as a novel? Will it be more promotable? Will it have more film and foreign rights potential? Will have more potential for follow-up books?
My partner, Elizabeth Pomada, spent quite a while trying to sell Pam Chun’s biography of her great grandfather, The Money Dragon. Finally, we suggested Pam call it a novel, and the first publisher to see it published it complete with photos and trial transcripts. It became a prizewinning bestseller in Hawaii, where it’s set.
I hope these considerations help you answer the question of whether to fictionalize your memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and I encourage you to tell yours. First get it down on paper in the most effective, enjoyable way you can, and get feedback from a fiction or memoir critique group as you write. Then, if you still can’t decide whether to fictionalize it, let your community of readers help you figure out how best to offer your story to the world. If your writing has enough humor, drama, insight, or inspiration, it will find its audience.
Take heart. The hardest part of many memoirs is surviving the research!
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By Pat Browning
Michael Larsen’s blog at http://michaellarsen.wordpress.com/
covers topics from storytelling to publishing and everything in between. This week I’m reprinting “Using OP’s Suggestions For Your Book,” a look at critique groups and how to know if you’re in the right one.
It makes me envious that I have no access to a face-to-face critique group. Trusting your own instincts is fine but it can get a tad confusing at times.
About Michael: The husband and wife team of Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada left New York for San Francisco and opened their own literary agency in 1972. They founded the prestigious San Francisco Writers Conference almost eight years ago.
The agency web site is full of helpful information for writers, and it’s great for browsing. Check it out at http://www.larsenpomada.com/
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Using OP’s Suggestions For Your Book
By Michael Larsen
Your book is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. --Samuel Johnson
If you want to write a book that is both good and original, the right critique group will help you. My previous post answered novelist Pam Chun’s question about critique groups, but Pam, author of When Strange Gods Call, had another question about them: How do you decide if the group has workable ideas for your book?
The short answer: Trust your instincts. If you think the ideas will strengthen your manuscript, try them. If they consistently don’t help you, you’re in the wrong group.
Your Book as a Frigate
Emily Dickinson was right: A book is a frigate. It’s hammered together with thousands of pieces of wood. Changing a piece at one end of it may affect the other end of the ship and make it less seaworthy.
An editor once said to me that a good writer always knows when an editor is right. But the more effort an idea will take, the surer you want to be about its effectiveness. Thinking through how an idea will affect the rest of your ship will help you decide if it’s worth pursuing.
The more effort trying an idea will take, the more reluctant you may be to try it. Yet you may not realize the value of the idea until you do, because its value may not be the idea itself but what it leads to.
One of the joys of writing is discovery: trying something that sparks a new idea that illuminates or transforms your work. If you don’t let your ship explore the high seas of creativity, you won’t discover the treasures your imagination has waiting for you to find. Let the spirit of play inspire you to explore new possibilities.
Getting Past Sweat Equity
The more you’ve done on your manuscript, the more committed you may feel to it, although your sweat equity may make you less able to judge its value. How far along you are with your manuscript, how many drafts you’ve already done, your patience, and your determination are also factors that may influence your decision to try an idea.
Jacqueline Susann did each draft of her novels on different colored paper. But computers make it easy to experiment and to keep track of your drafts by just numbering them in your header. It also simplifies making use of a previous version if you decide it’s stronger.
You will spend your life trying things, not all of which will work. You must trust your instincts and your common sense. Ultimately, it’s your book, you must decide how best to write it and whose advice to follow. As you mature as a writer, you will become better able to decide whether to set sail for parts unknown.
Three Ways to Keep Making Your Group More Effective
•In the rapidly evolving world of publishing, you have to keep learning if you want to keep earning. You want to belong to a group whose members are committed to keeping themselves and each other up to date on industry news and trends.
•Have an annual get-together or retreat in a new setting to discuss how to improve the group.
•Some writers don’t like to read while they’re writing, because they’re afraid of being influenced by other authors. But one way to increase the value of your group is to make it a reading group as well. Discussing what writers can learn from favorite books and successful authors will improve your work and your ability to help others.
Talking about books—about writing and publishing as well as books the group discusses--can be a good way of auditioning each other before starting a group. It will give you a sense of how compatible members’ tastes are with yours, how perceptive they are, their ability to help you hone your craft,
their commitment to learning and growing as writers.
A critique group will enable you to be a better, more knowledgeable writer. It will also be a source of enduring relationships. For the sake of your craft and career, join or start one as soon as you have something to share.
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By Pat Browning
Michael Larsen’s blog at http://michaellarsen.wordpress.com/
covers topics from storytelling to publishing and everything in between. This week, with his permission, I’m reprinting his “The S Theory of Storytelling,” a short, sweet summary of what it takes to write a compelling story.
The husband and wife team of Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada left New York for San Francisco and opened their own literary agency in 1972. They founded the prestigious San Francisco Writers Conference almost eight years ago.
The next conference is scheduled for February 18- 20, 2011. It will feature nearly 100 agents, authors, editors and book industry professionals. Attendees will have access to more than 50 “how to" sessions, panels, and workshops taught by authors. Speed Dating for Agents and Ask a Pro offer one-on-one opportunities to pitch your work directly to publishing professionals.
The web site at www.sfwriters.org/
is kept updated.
The agency web site is full of helpful information for writers, and it’s great for browsing. Check it out at http://www.larsenpomada.com/
This entry on Michael Larsen’s blog was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010
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“The S Theory of Storytelling” by Michael Larsen
Forcing Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction Readers to Turn the Page
“The first page sells the book.” –Mickey Spillane
Agents, editors and book buyers only read far enough to make a decision. If they don’t like what they read on page one, they won’t turn the page. Book buyers may not read the second sentence of a book in a bookstore. This leads to “The S Theory of Storytelling” for fiction and narrative nonfiction that writers want to read like novels:
Style
Story
Setting
Someone
Something
Something Said
or Something Else
on page one must be compelling enough to make agents, editors, and book buyers turn the page.
Your book will compete with the growing number of ways consumers can use their free time and discretionary income. So every word you write is an audition to get your readers to read the next word. Every line you write must convince your readers to read the next line.
Assume you have only one sentence to convince browsers to keep reading. Every page you write must arouse enough interest to keep readers turning the pages. And you face that challenge on every page you write except the last one.
“The last page sells the next book.” –Mickey Spillane
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By Pat Browning
Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada give literary agents a good name. The consummate professionals, they are experienced, generous, active in all aspects of the book biz – and they’re accessible. Larsen’s blog at
http://michaellarsen.wordpress.com/
covers topics from storytelling to publishing and everything in between.
A recent blog recaps The New Yorker’s article by Ken Auletta on publishing money’s migration to the Web. Some startling figures: 70% of 100,000 print books produced each year don’t earn back their advances; Amazon’s 3,000,000 Kindles generate 80% of e-book sales.
The husband and wife team of Larsen and Pomada left New York for San Francisco and opened their own literary agency in 1972. They founded the prestigious San Francisco Writers Conference almost eight years ago.
The next conference is scheduled for February 18- 20, 2011. It will feature nearly 100 agents, authors, editors and book industry professionals. Attendees will have access to more than 50 “how to" sessions, panels, and workshops taught by authors. Speed Dating for Agents and Ask a Pro offer one-on-one opportunities to pitch your work directly to publishing professionals. The web site is at:
www.sfwriters.org/
The agency web site is full of helpful information for writers, and it’s great for browsing. Check it out at http://www.larsenpomada.com/
========
“Following The Money: Publishing 2010”
Michael Larsen’s blog post Thursday, May 6th, 2010.
Reprinted here with his permission.
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“Publishing exists in a continual state of forecasting its own demise; at one major house, there is a running joke that the second book published on the Gutenberg press was about the death of the publishing business.”
This is from a must-read article by Ken Auletta about the iPad in April 26th issue of The New Yorker. It includes numbers that follow the money in publishing as it migrates to the Web. They also provide a perspective on the business and where it’s going:
P-commerce
* Six publishers produce 60% of books sold.
* 70% of the 100,000 books that industry produces a year don’t earn back their advances.
*On a $26 book, authors receive $3.90 in royalties, 15% of list price on a hardcover book. Publishers make a $1 profit.
* More than 50% of revenue at Random House comes from backlist books.
* Since 1999, the number of independent bookstores declined from 3,250 to 1,400.
(On the other hand, the San Francisco Bay Guardian just gave a Chain Alternative Award to the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, which has two new members this year.)
* Independents have 10% of sales, chains about 30%, big-box stores like Wal Mart, 45%, which pressures big houses, like Hollywood studios, to produce blockbusters.
* Publishers have to run two businesses at once: a traditional publishing business and an electronic business.
E-commerce
* Marcus Dohle, the Chairman and CEO of Random, said “The digital transition will take five to seven years.”
* There are 50,000,000 iPhones in the world, which O’Reilly Media vice-president Andrew Savikas calls “a great customer base” for book apps.
* Most publishers are giving a 25% royalty on e-books.
* Amazon’s 3,000,000 Kindles generate 80% of e-book sales, which Amazon achieved, in part, by selling at a loss.
* When Amazon customer can choose between a paperback and an e-book, 40% of them choose the e-book.
* Kindles users buy 3.1 as many books as they did twelve months ago.
* An Apple adviser who used Netflix to download movies compared bookstores to video stores ten years ago.
* Three behemoths–Apple, Amazon, and Google–are competing, so one of them can’t dictate terms.
* Author Solutions works with 90,000 authors.
What these numbers suggest is that publishing is going through a transformation. Old and new media companies will in time establish a business model that works for them and makes money for writers.
What these numbers can’t capture is the article’s engaging, rough-and-tumble portrait of predators at play or the importance of
* publishers in discovering and developing new authors
* independent bookstores in launching them
* writers who keep the whole enterprise afloat by sitting in front of their computers creating the art that makes commerce possible
Former Random House editorial director Jason Epstein said: “When I went to work for Random House, ten editors ran it. We had a sales manager and sales reps. We had a bookkeeper and a publicist and a president. It was hugely successful. We didn’t need eighteen layers of executives. Digitization makes that possible again, and inevitable.”
Author Lee Foster says “This will be a golden age for content creators.” You will create your future as a writer with your head, your heart, and your fingertips. Three cheers for content, whatever form it takes!
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