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THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER

Admit it. You’re jealous of someone. And you probably don’t know it, but someone is jealous of you.

It may be human nature to be jealous, but it’s a really, really, really bad way to live.
You have your path, and they have theirs. You both bring different backgrounds, styles, attitudes, energies, talent, and drive. There is no way that recipe can ever come out the same.

If you have a writer friend and that friend seems to be doing a lot better than you, let it go. The likelihood is probably that she is selling better than you and that’s why she gets more money. Authors sometimes think that publishing is a ladder of success that everyone can climb equally.

No, it’s not. Just because two authors started at the same time, have published the same number of books in the same genre, and may even have the same publisher does not mean they are entitled to equal recognition or treatment. Because one is almost certainly selling more books. That means it isn’t equal at all. And that easy, obvious, inconvenient little fact is the answer.

I have seen several cases of “joined at the hip” author friendships, where two authors become best friends and swear their friendship will last forever. In every single case, they ended up parting company, sometimes not very amicably. Why? Because one started doing a lot better than the other and that put a serious chink in their relationship. In every single case, the author who wasn’t doing as well never looked in the mirror and asked how he might be contributing to this imbalance. The answer is usually that the person doing well is simply writing better books. Or they are much more adroit and current with social media and keeping their platform strong. Or all of the above. That’s something no one wants to hear (I never promised rose-colored glasses in this blog), but it’s better to face the truth. The truth will set you free and you will be rid of the soul-eating jealousy. What can you do to write better books? What can you learn?

Or maybe you can’t. Maybe you are capable of writing A- books but not A+ books and maybe that’s okay. I know of at least one major bestselling author who always hangs out with the same two author friends. He is a household name. They are not—not even close. But they have all stayed friends, because they all recognize the reality. He has a magic spark that they don’t have and that’s just how it is. Jealousy doesn’t play a part, because they all accept the reality and this is how it was meant to be.

Have you ever seen the movie Amadeus? It’s about Mozart and his then-rival, Antonio Salieri. Salieri is the only one to recognize the depth of Mozart’s genius, but he can’t stand it. He doesn’t understand how Mozart, an otherwise unimpressive individual, could be so gifted, whereas he, Salieri, is good but not great. He is so jealous that he spends his entire life trying to destroy Mozart. Think of that. He is so eaten up by envy that he ruins his own life and Mozart’s instead of enjoying his own considerable success and being grateful that he got to witness a once-in-a-century genius. (Note: most of this is not historically true. It was a play and then a movie, but most of it never happened). It’s a story about jealousy, and I think it should be required watching for all authors.

How can you tell if a book is literary or commercial? Fiction tends to fall into either one of those camps. Sometimes the author thinks she wrote something literary, but publishers see it as commercial. So how can you tell?

Well, there are no hard and fast rules, but we know it when we see it. And so do you. If you are an author, you probably can’t be objective about your own work, but when you read something by someone else, you get a gut feeling of where it belongs.

It has to do with quality, yes. There is always a place for quality. Good writing certainly plays a part. But there is something more—an attitude, a piece of wisdom, a sense of wit—that makes it rise above. Let me give you an example. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is a quality book, and it’s also a very commercial book, even though it is considered a great work of literature. It’s commercial because it’s so easy to read and so entertaining. But it still has that spark, that extra something that moves it into a larger field. It is universal, it has depth, and the character is so real that people used to believe they saw him on the street.

I know a few pages in at the most if what I’m reading is literary or commercial. We love it when something hits that sweet spot in the middle—where it’s wildly readable, but also very high quality, and maybe it doesn’t matter in the end.

What does matter is how will it sell.

I have always found this to be true. When something drags on and on, it loses energy and momentum.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that any sale should be slapdash or hasty. But when everything aligns and everyone has reasonable expectations, things tend to fall into place. That means that the agent needs to know the market and what the book is likely to fetch, and the publisher needs to be aware of the potential the book really has. There are times when they need to look up from their P&L statements for a moment and just consider how much fuel this book has. That’s not a thing that can really be calculated, but they try. It’s just that sometimes they calculate themselves right out of a book they could have published successfully.

Life isn’t always going to be that easy to always deliver a quick sale, but sometimes it is. I love those times.

All negotiations are psychological. You can’t really get around it. The ideal is for everyone to walk away happy. They achieve this by exaggerating their expectations and then compromising.

If I’m expecting to get say $100,000 for a book and they offer $100,000, I should be happy, right? Wrong. The opening offer is always just that—the start of a journey. I know there is a very good chance they will go up, and they know it too. If I took that amount, I would walk away feeling like I could have gotten more if I had only bothered to ask. Conversely, if they offer $100,000 and I take it, they are going to walk away feeling disgruntled, figuring that I accepted it so quickly that they probably could have offered less.

Let’s walk through this.

A publisher calls with an offer. The offer is $75,000. Now, I know that this is an opening offer and there is more there. I suspect that their real number is $100,000.

From my end, I know that my real number is also $100,000. So do I come back asking for 100K? NO! If I want 100K, I have to ask for more. So I ask for $125,000. Now maybe they’ll come back with the 100K. They probably will. But I have to be prepared for anything. Let’s say they come back with $85,000. What would I do? I would sigh and express my disappointment. I would tell them that the author is going to be disappointed. They may go up again, or they may not. If they don’t, that gives me leverage to push for all kinds of other things—retaining audio and foreign rights, a refusal of joint accounting if there is more than one book, better royalties on various editions, bestseller or performance bonuses, and a host of other things. I would ask for all those things no matter what, but if I don’t get the money I wanted, they become stronger pieces of leverage.

That, in a nutshell, is how it works. But that is just the nutshell. There’s a lot more to it. I didn’t even mention competition, which changes the landscape considerably. I’ll write about that another time. This time, I’m just explaining the bare basics. I should always ask for more than I expect to get. They should always offer less than they expect to pay. That way we will meet in the middle and everyone walks away happy.

It may seem elaborate, but without that dance, we will never know for sure. A good negotiation is a win-win.

This is a true story. Every word.

I had an author who became more and more successful. As her success continued to grow, she turned into a raving prima donna. She had once been liked by everyone; now she was barely tolerated. She didn’t scream or demand things. No, that was not her style. But she let everyone know, in subtle but distinct ways, just how little she thought of us. We were the people who had made her a star, but now we weren’t good enough for her.

That happens. If you are reading this and you think it’s about you, think again. Many authors turn into prima donnas. It’s not unusual. Agents and publishers are used to it. We don’t like it, but we’re used to it.

When it was time to negotiate a new contract for this particular author, she asked if the publisher would pay for her husband to accompany her when she went on tour. Touring may sound glamorous, but it’s hard, and it’s lonely. Still, publishers don’t generally pay for things like spouses joining a tour, and she didn’t really expect them to say yes.

They didn’t. Life went on.

Then, about a year later, I was having a drink with one of the publishing execs and we talked about this author. I reminded her that the author had asked for her husband to go with her on tour. The publisher waved that aside. “Oh, we could have paid for that,” she said. “We just didn’t want to because we can’t stand her.”

What is the moral of this story?

Behaving badly is never a good idea. You may think that you can do whatever you want and be as obnoxious as you want, especially as your career blossoms, but there may be consequences. The publisher will do nothing to hurt the books. They want to make money on the books. But that doesn’t mean they are obliged to make your life easier, especially when you have made their lives difficult.

The moral is to be polite, respectful, and sincere, always. Those things will never let you down. Sure, you can still get mad and demand things and try to get want you want. But do it like a professional adult.

I never want to see something that doesn’t know what it is. On the very first page, tell me what kind of book this is and how many words it has.

1. I have written a commercial science fiction novel about a clan of aliens who take over the earth. It is 32,000 words long.

What is wrong with that picture? Two things:

1. There are no novels that are 32,000 words. You may have written a novella, but this can’t be considered a full-length novel.
2. Aliens taking over the earth is not exactly new. What have you done that is fresh and different?

I do charity critiques every month. I recently read chapters of a critique entry that was quite good, but I couldn’t tell if it was a novel or a memoir. It should tell me on the title page.

TITLE by John Doe

A memoir

That’s all you need, but it matters. A lot. How can I properly evaluate something if I don’t know what it’s supposed to be?? It drives me crazy when I don’t know. Don’t think I am somehow supposed to know because of my expertise. No one knows but you.

I was at a conference and an author was presenting a question to a panel of publishers. She wanted to know if more self-promotion on her part would increase her print run.

They looked confused. They had no idea what she was talking about.

That’s because she was asking a question without using the proper lingo, which made her come across as a rank amateur.

Let’s back up. When a book is about to be published, the sales team goes out to sell it to the accounts. Naturally, they push it as hard as they can. They offer discounts and incentives. They do whatever they can to get that number up. The accounts order what they want, and the books are shipped. The amount that is shipped is often referred to as “what they got out”. The publisher does not send more than what was ordered, because it would just come right back. Booksellers can send back whatever doesn’t sell. Once the books are on the shelves, all kinds of promotion and publicity may occur, and the books will sell however they sell. The amount of books that sell vs. the amount they got out is called the sell-through. If you get out 100,000 books and sell half, you have a 50% sell-through.

The print run refers to how many books are actually printed. They try to keep that close to the real number they will get out, and may print a little more. That decision is made by someone in Operations. The publisher doesn’t know or care what the print run is, because they know it will be based on what they got out. That’s the number they want to know. And even more than that, they care about the sell-through. A strong sell-through is a green light to do more. That is why they would never ship more than what was ordered. A poor sell-through is deadly. For that reason, they may undership what was ordered, hoping for reorders. If they need to go back to press, that is a very positive sign. It shows that things are moving.

So, when someone asks if self-promotion will increase the print run, they are asking the wrong question. A better way to phrase it would be “If I do more self-promotion, is that likely to increase what you get out?” Now you’re talking business.

The answer is that of course more self-promotion may help to sell more books, which is the goal. But trying to connect self-promotion to the print run doesn’t really sound like anything.

Back at that panel, but publishers did eventually figure out what she was asking. But if she had asked the question using the lingo they could understand, it would have been a lot easier and she would sounded much more professional.

 

If you are a writer, there is a good chance you work at home. You probably have your workspace set up and you do your best to write as much as you can. Right?

Not so much. When people know that you work at home, they think that means you are endlessly available. So while you are struggling with getting just the right word for a complex sentence, they think nothing of dropping by to ask about the replacement part for your vacuum cleaner. I never want to talk about vacuum cleaners in the best of times, and certainly not when I’m working.

You could be working diligently, filling up those pages, but it’s going to be hard if you are constantly interrupted. The phone rings. It’s your child’s school asking you to bring snack the next day. A text pops up. The bank is letting you know about a wire transfer. Your sister-in-law wants to know if her anniversary party should be next weekend or the weekend after.
What do all these things have in common?

They are not important when you are working and they are irritating. And ALL of them can wait.

How do you get around this?

Simple. Have set working hours, just like people who work in an office. You work in an office too, even if that office is your kitchen, and you want your work time to be respected. How to resolve this?

Stick to your work hours and demand that everyone else stick to them too. Put your phone in the other room so that you won’t be bothered by it. Out of sight, out of mind. If someone knocks on your door, either don’t answer it or tell them politely but firmly that you are working and cannot be disturbed.

I once had an author who used an answering machine. When people called, this is what they heard: “Hi, this is Martha. I’m writing right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll call you right back.” Click. That was it. She demanded respect for her work, and she got it.

Your work time is your work time. Period. Even if you throw out everything you wrote that day, it is still your work and it’s as important as anyone else’s work. Writing is isolating, and it’s hard. It requires serious concentration. Sometimes it is very challenging.

Would you call your spouse, who is a surgeon, in the middle of a difficult operation to ask where the can opener is? No, you wouldn’t. Maybe your spouse is saving a life, and that’s more important. But writing may be saving your life. Isn’t that important too?

If you have written a science fiction romantic thriller, you may have written a hot mess. Publishing falls into different types of books. Ask yourself which area in the bookstore your book will be shelved. If you don’t know, the publisher won’t know either. That’s how it works. You have to know. Study that area, read a lot of books in that area, and know exactly what you’re going for. This can be less true if you write something literary, but even that has to have some kind of draw. There is such a thing as a literary thriller, a literary science fiction novel, and a literary romance (calling all Brontes). But when you mash them all together, it can become a problem. If they don’t know what to call it, they don’t know how to publish it. Why can’t it just be a good novel? Well, it can, if you are really good. But short of that, you’re a lot better off if you know what to call it. Or maybe you wrote something brilliant that crosses boundaries, challenges the old school, and breaks new ground. That’s great and maybe you’ll start a new trend. But in general, know where your book fits into the market. Imagine that you are the publisher. How are you going to publish this book? Is it just “fiction”? Then it might get lost, unless it is brilliant. Brilliance occurs and we all welcome it. There is always a place for excellent writing, clever plots, relatable characters, and vibrant settings. But go easy on yourself.

What is a plot? You think you know what a plot is, but chances are you don’t. I say that because I have seen plenty of good writers who can write wonderful characters, evocative settings, use gorgeous language, and write according to what the market demands. Just one teeny problem. They forget to include an actual plot.

Here is what a plot is not:

It’s not a series of episodes. Episodes do not add up to anything in particular. It’s like a situation comedy that is just that–a situation. Every week they come up with a plot against the situation as a backdrop.

It’s not and then she did this and then she did that. That’s not a plot, it’s a journal.

It’s not the true story of something that actually happened. That’s a biography. If you write about someone who really lived and their life isn’t that interesting because they are never challenged or have something at stake, you don’t have a plot. I once read a novel about the wife of Daniel Boone. It seemed to be a good subject, but then I realized that Mrs. Boone had a dull life. She spend much of it waiting for her husband to appear. He was away for months or years at a time, exploring things. Maybe HE had a plot, but she did not.

Any of those things could be the germ of a plot, if they added one all-important ingredient that will keep us turning those pages. If Mrs. Boone’s life had been beset by a serious challenge–say the man who lives next door is always trying to worm his way into her life and she’s not interested. He wants something she doesn’t want to give.

Let me put it this way.

Let’s say you have a story comprised of scenes or episodes about a mother and son who escape the Nazis during WWII. They go through all kinds of hell–hiding, running, escaping. That is dramatic and real, but it’s episodic. We’re going from one episode to another. But then they become separated and we don’t know how they will survive or if they will ever see each other again. When you add that element, you suddenly have the missing piece—a plot! Now we have something to worry about other than their general survival. No matter how much you may veer into other stories, the overarching story is will they or won’t they ever find each other. Without that question, you have a series of unrelated scenes about what happens to them along the way. Which would you rather read—the unrelated scenes or the one with a plot?

When you apply this principle to just about anything, you have a real story with a real plot. You have a dramatic question that needs to be answered. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be will Susie get a date to the prom. It can be will Ted make it on time to an all-important job interview. It can be will the ant succeed in getting the crumb into the anthole. It can be will the atom merge with another atom to form a molecule. I could go on and on. Make us care. Make us wonder. Make us wait.

This technique is called “tension” or “conflict”. Something has to be at stake. A story without tension is not a story. It’s a ramble.

A good storyteller understands these tools and uses them wisely. It comes more naturally to some than to others, but the good news is that it can be learned. Not right away and not all at once, but if you apply yourself to the craft, it will happen.