The New Year Brings New Opportunities

By Mark W. Danielson

Happy New Year! What’s not to like? Optimists put 2010 behind them and look forward to new opportunities. Pessimists grumble about politics and taxes. Call me an optimist; I always look forward to new beginnings, and 2011 looks promising. Two of my older books should be out on Kindle. With any luck, I’ll have a new book published. Attending the San Francisco Writer’s Conference will be a new experience. And transferring two books from my head into computer documents is my goal. Still, I won’t fret if none of these things happen because we also plan to move back to Texas. The move means new opportunities and more people to meet. All we need to do is sell our Colorado property.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve done my share of grumbling, and 2010 provided plenty of opportunities for that. Forget the politics, my personal computer issues led to buying a new one, and along with it came an operating system that wasn’t compatible with my existing printer. Then the new printer had its own quirks. And while I’ve preached about backing up documents, I still don’t always do it. Recently, the new Word program sent a final document to the planet Beakabah instead of my hard drive. That’s right – lost in space. Too bad I didn’t save it to my flash drive before closing it out. Once my ranting was over, I found an earlier version of the document and made the changes as best I could recall. I can’t say the final version is better than the one I lost, but it certainly wasn’t any worse. Needless to say, I saved the replacement document in several forms. Lesson learned – until the next time.

It’s still too early to worry about taxes and I can’t seem to have any impact on ending the war in the Middle East, but I do remain optimistic. Each year flies by and puts me closer to my mandatory retirement from airline flying, but retirement also means I can concentrate on my writing, painting, and other fun things. And along the way, I’ll find more inspiration for writing books and magazine articles. So, welcome January – you’ve given me a new year to celebrate, and along with it, the motivation to create. A positive attitude allows me to better enjoy the wintry months ahead. Before I know it, leaves will spread and flowers will blossom. Birds will chirp outside my window, and if I’m lucky, my new computer/printer combo will work like they’re supposed to.

Happy Musings everyone.

Are You Fiction Or Nonfiction?

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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Face of a Thriller

I recently finished reading Face of a Killer, a well-written thriller by Robin Burcell, whose progress I have watched over the years via posts on various Internet lists. She worked in the San Franciso area for more than two decades as a police officer, detective and hostage negotiator. An FBI-trained forensic artist, Robin used that talent with her character Sydney Fitzpatrick in this book, written after producing four Kate Gillespie mysteries..

An FBI agent and forensic artist, Sydney is called on to reconstruct the face of a mutilated rape-murder victim and finds herself entangled in another murder case, that of her father killed more than two decades ago. She visits the death row inmate about to die for the murder and has doubts about his guilt.

A photo sent to her by a friend of her father's, who then commits suicide, adds more complications. When attempts are made on her life, Sydney begins to mistrust a fellow agent she had formerly lived with. The plot moves rapidly as people and events from years ago resurface, and it appears some hidden government group may be responsible for her problems.

In an Author's Note, Robin mentioned that her fictional rogue international financial institution was modeled after the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), target of the biggest banking scandal in history back in 1991. It was called the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals" by the feds. After its closure, a "black network" division was allegedly still in operation using Mafia-like tactics, extortion, kidnapping, even murder, by some accounts.

Robin has some great characters and does an excellent job in keeping the excitement at a high level. I highly recommend Face of a Killer.

Chester Campbell

Mystery Mania

"The S Theory of Storytelling"

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
****

A Veteran Agent Looks at the Book Business

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.


***
“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!
***