Candice Hughes

I just love my local library. Our librarians put together a fantastic slate of authors every year. This year, they wrapped up the lectures with a bang by inviting Lee Child to speak. The substantial auditorium was jam packed, spilling out into the hall, so clearly our librarians made a good choice.

He was witty during his lecture about his publishing career. During the numerous questions, of which I’m sure he’d heard a few many times, he came across as honest and patient, giving thoughtful answers.

One topic that interested me considerably was e-books. The publishing industry has been in an uproar over e-books for the past couple years. Lee Child gave the clearest answer I’ve heard yet about what price e-books should have and why. First, he said consider that his standard hardcover sells for about $28. The cost of printing and shipping the hardcover is about $5. That means the value of the story (content only) is about $23 for those receiving it first (hardcovers come before paperbacks if there are paperbacks).The $23 covers the cost of all the publishing staff (editors, marketers, etc) plus the very important author- everyone who helped create the story and make it visible to it’s audience (I’m adding this bit, Lee Child didn’t go into this detail).

E-books, contrary to popular perception Mr Child said, do have a cost for creation and delivery. After all, someone had to create the computer program used to format and deliver the book. Estimate that cost at $1 per book. That means the e-book cost is $23 + $1= $24 (or the cost of the story plus the electronic formatting and delivery). Obviously at the much bandied price point of $9.99, someone is losing money.

There were many questions about Reacher, but I’m not going to go into all of them here. I do recommend that if you have a chance to hear Lee Child speak, you should take it.

Summer is traditionally a time when people think of kicking back on warm sand under a blue sky with a great book. The Wall Street Journal (this past Friday) published the largest print runs of the season (which clearly indicate what the publishing industry believes large numbers of people will be reading).

Janet Evanovich’s upcoming novel, Sizzling Sixteen, came out on top with a print run of 2.5 million. When you consider that a successful book sells 5,000 copies, the print run for Sizzling Sixteen is astounding. Of course, the article goes on to mention that Janet’s summer 2009 novel in her Stephanie Plum series sold nearly a million copies. Clearly her track records suggests outstanding sales this summer.

I had the pleasure of hearing Janet speak at last year’s RWA National conference. She gave the audience snippets of her journey as a writer that were both witty and touching. She was passionate about writing, thrilled to have many fans, yet humbled by her view from the top. All this as she hobbled around the stage on a broken foot. Imagine what she’s like when not weighed down by an appendage encased in a cement-like block.

Janet’s new book comes out later this month.

As part of my current summer reading, I’ve finally gotten my hands on the third and last Stieg Larrson book. I will be happily devouring it, while despairing all the while that there will never be another one.

I love libraries. I love being surrounded by books. I especially love my local library. They hit a home run this week with a lecture by David Baldacci. I knew right away that other people felt the same way because there was not one single parking space left in the lot. I persevered. Parking in a local business parking lot, I trudged through the cold drizzle. Inside the gorgeous new auditorium, I squeezed into one of the few remaining seats.

David Baldacci came to the podium, looking exactly like the photo on his book jackets. (you might question my mental acutity with this statement, but try sometime matching real celebrities to their photos and see how easy it is). Within a few minutes, he had the audience rolling on the floor with amusing “life of an author” stories. One comment I found particularly memorable, although it was not one of his hilarious anecdotes. That statement was that every rejection of an author’s work is a badge of courage. I also learned that if he sees you reading one of his books, don’t expect him to walk up to you and say “Hi”. (You’ll have to learn the story of what happened when he actually did this one time from him.)

All in all, this lecture was worth the walk through a cold, dark, drizzle. I applaude our hard working librarians for bringing us a wonderful speaker. I also encourage everyone to support their local libraries because they’re the heart of every community.

Bookmarked: Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith and The Dark Tide by Andrew Gross

The memory of the writer’s conferences I attended this summer is being keep alive and well by the large (behemoth, really) stack of books that now rests on my dining room table due to lack of other suitable home.

If I were able to read as quickly as Katherine Neville, who at ThrillerFest said she could finish a novel in a couple of hours, I would have chewed through the stacks quickly. Sadly, let’s just say when it comes to reading I am “differently talented” than Ms. Neville. I have a secret though. My husband does in fact read a novel in hours and knows what sorts of books I like. So (I’m sure you can see where this is headed…) I cheat by letting him pre-screen all the books for me. I prefer to think of this as efficient and effective time use.

Let me tell you about one book we both enjoyed., Dark Time, Mortal Path by Dakota Banks. First, I should say we read an advance review copy so I don’t know if it’s for sale yet. Getting these copies is a GREAT perk of attending the conferences! Mortal Path is about a human forced to work for a demon. (I love demons so much, I have one in my book too so that was an instant connection!) The pacing in this book is spot on. I definetly wanted to keep turning pages. The female protagonist is a kick butt type of gal, which is another big plus for me as a reader. Finally, the book ends on an absolute cliffhanger. The book is marked as number one in a series so the ending did it’s job of making me want to look for the next book. Which makes me wonder at advice I received somewhere that writers should never end their novels on a cliffhanger. Well, the cliffhanger ending worked for me in this book so I’m wondering now about the advice. If you enjoy paranormal/fantasy thrillers, you may want to look for a copy of Mortal Path Book 1.

Last Sunday I arrived home from the RWA National Conference.  This was my first national conference for RWA. All I can say is “Wow!” The flavor of this conference differs substantially from any other I’ve been to in several ways. First, attendees are overwhelmingly women. Second, everyone I met was extremely open, friendly and supportive. In some ways, I felt as though I was sitting around a fire eating cookies in fuzzy slippers with college buddies. (But these were women I’d only met minutes earlier!) Yet the conference still maintained a strong intellectual current with top notch workshops.

One workshop I (and some of my friends) enjoyed was given by Donald Maas. By posing questions to the audience on characters and motivations, he challenged all of us to think about and rework our stories on the fly as he walked us through his process. The workshop was based on his new book. I’m betting he’ll sell lots of copies of the book!

Another workshop that I found eye-opening was on Intellectual Property and was given by Amanda Brice and Jennifer Williston (both attorneys) with input by Nora Roberts. Nora discussed a situation where her novels were plagiarized. Amanda and Jennifer then did a mini-skit acting out an author/attorney discussion of potential legal “hot spots” with a hypothetical novel. They touched on plagiarism and copyright law. A copyright for fiction provides multiple rights including reproduction, distribution, adaptation and performance. Authors should understand all these rights. Authors also need to be cautious that they don’t infringe on the rights of other authors or entities when they create their own works. Some uses are clearly allowed or not allowed under the law. However, others fall into a grey zone. For example, exactly how much is too much in taking ideas, concepts or text from another work? Copying a few lines from another copyrighted work might be alright depending on how core the lines are to the work but copying pages is not acceptable. Another grey zone is parody. A parody must make commentary on the work being parodied. Many authors have been tripped up by this aspect of copyright law. Any situation that falls in the grey zone has to be settled in court if the parties can’t agree on their own.

After learning so much at RWA and ThrillerFest, I am hard at work giving a final polish to my words. But that’s the most exciting aspect of writing- you’re never done learning! Very soon novel 2 will be sparkling and ready to step out!

CraftFest and ThrillerFest is over for another year. This year’s meeting was as enjoyable as last year’s. I am continually astounded by how generous leading authors are with their time in teaching up and coming authors the tricks of the trade. Today I will highlight a few tidbits that stuck with me from the conference.

Andrew Gross gave tips for how to keep readers turning the page. One tip was to focus on the essentials of each scene. Don’t get bogged down in unnecessary description, explanation or character definition. Short focused chapters also help. With that said, there is also a spectrum of “pace focus” in thrillers. Some authors voice will call for more description/characterization/atmosphere than others. Writers through exploring their work will find their comfort level in the spectrum. But at the same time writers must realize that the more the book focuses on atmosphere, etc, the more the pace will be slowed down. Readers will gravitate toward authors whose pace is comfortable for them as well.

James Rollins advised writers to set a target number of pages to be completed each day and do it. I find myself that if you focus on a large project in it’s entirety, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So I agree with his focus on daily small goals to achieve a larger goal.

On marketing of thrillers, attendees heard from Robin Cook about his innovative “prequel” movie that was released in installments before his recent novel (Foreign Body). (Note, this is not an inexpensive undertaking so you may not want to try this at home!)

That’s the wrap up for ThrillerFest. I better get to work on my target pages!

Today, there was a strong focus on structure and plot. I’ll give a brief recap. Start your thriller with action, preferably involving the main character. Move quickly to the inciting incident (within at least the first 50 pages if not the first few pages). From the inciting incident, you need to move toward turning point 1. After the action of turning point 1, a brief respite is needed. Then build to your next turning point followed again by a release from the action. Continue this pattern with each turning point making the stakes higher and higher until you reach the climax of the story. There is generally a short release or denouement after the climax, which some authors may prefer to to be quite brief while others like it longer (several pages or a chapter).

Lisa Gardner also gave a wonderful presentation on how to edit your first draft. She recommends a note card method of laying out scenes on note cards to visualize what happens in your novel. This facilitates seeing what needs to be cut or changed.

Another bonus, I now have a nice sized stack of books from ThrillerFest to add to my “to read” pile so I can see I’ll be kept busy this summer!

Happy writing and reading!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on pitches recently. You need to pitch to sell your novel. What makes the perfect pitch? Having an attention grabbing hook is key. The hook is a short (1  sentence) summary of the essence of your novel. After the hook, you want to give your audience (either agent or editor) a feel for your characters- who are they and why would they do what they do in the novel. Additionally, you want to summarize the essential plot of your story from beginning to end in paragraph or two of content. The pitch lasts three to eight minutes generally.

Three to eight minutes might seem like a long time if you hate public speaking. (Regardless of whether you pitch one or five people or more, I consider a pitch public speaking. It differs substantially from an everyday conversation where there is a lot of back and forth and generally lower stakes like locating the nearest highway ramp or finding out if a seat in a theatre is taken).

On the other hand, you may feel three to eight minutes will be a breeze. A few minutes- how hard can it be? My advisor once told me, “I can give an hour talk, but I don’t have time for a ten minute talk.” As I began giving presentations myself, I understood how accurate he was. The shorter the presentation, the more critical each word is. Distilling ones thoughts down to a concentrated nectar and then presenting this nectar intact and with style is tough.

The only thing that works for me is the brute force slog. Get the words on paper and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. After a long time, the words seem to flow naturally. They carry passion and elegance. When a presentation is perfect, it seems to take no effort at all. The words just flow out as though the speaker just stopped in for coffee and just had to put his/her two cents in. But we who present know differently.  We know the secret. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

ThrillerFest is coming up soon and a lot of writers are wondering if they should pay the fairly substantial fee to attend. Last year I attended the CraftFest and AgentFest portions of the ThrillerFest conference. Based on my experience, I recommend that any writer who focuses on the thriller genre should attend this conference if possible.

CraftFest emphases basic writing techniques as well as pointers for selling your manuscript. Lectures at CraftFest are given by well-known authors, agents and editors. If you you want to learn or brush up on technique, you will benefit from this portion of the conference. You will also have the chance to network with industry professionals.

I highly recommend AgentFest. I don’t know of any other opportunity to pitch to 40 top literary agents at once. That said, the agents do not accept every manuscript pitched to them. Expect that some will say no based on suitability of your novel to their interests. What you will get at AgentFest is experience in pitching and the chance to meet agents who might be interested in your work. I recommend researching the agents before pitching to them. Select those most likely to be interested in your specific story. That will make the experience better for you (the writer) and for the agent. If you haven’t finished at least one full draft of your novel, I recommend not pitching. It’s hard to pitch if you don’t know what happens in the story. (Unless of course you have several published novels that sell well but if that is your situation, you could likely contact agents outside the pitch room.)

To attend AgentFest, you must attend CraftFest.

Good Luck and Happy Pitching!

For anyone who has missed it, Elisabeth Sifton has an essay in The Nation this week (The Long Goodbye? The Book Business and its Woes). Her experience in the industry spans decades giving her a rare perspective. She expresses frustration and sadness at the many changes in the industry, particularly the consolidation and transformation to what she describes as a poorly functioning profit-focused model. She declaims the lack of interest of those running publishing companies in their products and product generators (books and writers). Her essay is well worth reading.

I know so many people who are passionate about books. A good number of these people are young- just the sort of readers the industry needs because they have many years of book buying ahead of them. I’ve seen tweens drooling over catalogues of books at libraries. They aren’t shy about putting in requests for book orders with their librarians. Recently when I commented on how teens/children may soon be reading text books on the Kindle, one groaned and told me he certainly didn’t want his books on one.

Books as objects have a special power. Think of magic books like in Harry Potter. Would it work to have a magician’s blog? How about books so controversial they’re banned. I have an early edition Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The cover is stamped, “Not to be introduced into the British Empire.” Woolf’s book provoked thought and discussion. It served it’s purpose. How does one ban a web site or a blog for offending sensibilities? Except for the most egregious offenders, few web sites or blogs are removed. Electronic words are more accessible and more pervasive yet Web sites and blogs simply have less psychological power than books in my opinion- even though all are based on words and all attract readers and discussion. Somehow being intangible dilutes the power of the words. Imagine holding up a print out of a blog as one shouts about its seditiousness. Or maybe one would bring a laptop on the podium and (shudder) display it with PowerPoint?

While I welcome and embrace electronic media (I am a true techie at heart), I think books retain their magic. Why, I wonder, can’t electronic media and books continue to live in harmony? Each will serve it’s purpose.