Writing

Mystery Writers of America De-Lists Dorchester

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The National Board of Mystery Writers of America voted unanimously on October 6, 2010 to remove Dorchester Publishing from our list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately, primarily because the company no longer meets two of our key criteria.

First, the initial print run by the publisher for a book-length work of fiction or nonfiction must be at least 500 copies and must be widely available in brick-and-mortar stores (not "special order" titles). In other words, print-on-demand publishers and Internet-only publishers do not qualify.

Second, the publisher must not wrongfully withhold or delay royalty payments to authors. We have been hearing an unusually high number of reports from our members of unpaid advances and withheld royalties on their Dorchester books. 

Dorchester titles will no longer be eligible for Edgar® Award consideration nor will its authors be eligible for Active Status membership for any books published after October 6, 2010. The board made it clear to Dorchester that it is welcome to re-apply once these problems have been cleared up.

 

 

To Speak for the Kindle

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Night Vision,Redskyfinal.jpg Paul Levine's iconic hero Jake Lassiter burst onto the mystery scene with TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, the first in a widely acclaimed series that has since gone out-of-print. Now Lassiter is making a triumphant return — with the out-of-print titles on the Kindle and with a brand new hardcover release entitled LASSITER coming this fall.  So I thought I'd ask Paul what it's like being one of the few authors these days who is both still very active in print and yet diving head-long into the uncharted waters of the ebook biz.

LEE: You're a recent convert to the Kindle… and in the space of just a few months, you've released many of the Jake Lassiter backlist as ebooks, including MORTAL SIN. Have they been successful? What have you learned from the experience?

 The success of the books has startled me.  “To Speak for the Dead” and “Night Vision,” the first two Jake Lassiter novels, both hit number one on the Kindle “hardboiled” and “legal thriller” lists.  So did “Reversal,” my stand-alone Supreme Court thriller.  “False Dawn” and “Mortal Sin,” the next couple Lassiter books, hit number two.

These books were long out of print and originally appeared in hardcover in the early 1990’s.  So, the point for all authors is this: books you thought were long dead have an afterlife.  You can resuscitate your out-of-print and out-of-mind books by electronically publishing them.  Also, and this is BIG: the books gather momentum and grow each month.  This is the opposite of our experience with dead-tree books, which have the same life expectancy as yogurt in the fridge. 

LEE: What are the chances that you'll write an original ebook some day soon?

I have three more Lassiters to put up on Kindle and Smashwords, which then distributes to B&N, Borders, Sony, and the rest.  Then…and I haven’t said this publically before…I’m publishing “Ballistic.”  It’s a loose nukes thriller I’ve adapted from a spec feature script I wrote some time ago.  The script had some close calls, but never was made.  After that, who knows? 

LEE: Do you think releasing the out-of-print Lassiter books will give your traditional, hardcover release next Fall of LASSITER a sales spike? Or do you think it will work the other way around?

Both, I hope! 

But let’s be realistic.  I’m the publisher of the “old” Lassiters, so I can charge $2.99 on Kindle and Kobo etc.  Will those buyers shell out $25 for a hardcover?  Should they?  Remember, too, that I have no control over what Bantam will charge for the e-book edition.  I will plead for as low a price as possible, but we know that won’t be anywhere close to $2.99.

LEE:. Do you think it's wise for unpublished authors to self-publish? What about mid-list authors who have been dropped? Is this the future of publishing…or just an additional revenue stream for authors?

Some smart-alec at the Bouchercon e-books panel said that self-published authors were producing a “tsunami of swill.”  Wait!  That was you.  It’s true, of course, but as you also pointed out, there is some very good fiction being written by otherwise unpublished authors.  It’s so damn hard to break into mainstream publishing now that it’s inevitable that some good writing will be left at the door.  The problem is that way too many writers lack the training or discipline or just plain talent to produce readable fiction.  Separating the wheat from the chaff produces…a lot of chaff.

For mid-list authors who’ve been dropped, it’s a different story.  They have the training, the experience, and some audience.  The Internet can provide a new source of income…and satisfaction.  We write because we have to….because it’s an illness, a fever…not just for the bucks.  If you want to get rich, open a burger joint across the street from a community college. 

As for the future of publishing, I’ll borrow William Goldman’s line about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”

Swain is Rolling the Dice on Ebooks

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Wild Card James Swain has started to put his out-of-print backlist of terrific crime novels — including THE PROGRAM, WILD CARD, and THE MAN WHO CHEATED DEATH – on the Kindle. They represent a sampler of sorts of his three series for readers unfamiliar with his work… which has won wide and enthusiastic praise (I've always liked this rave that he got from The New York Times:  "Swain uses language with such blunt force he could be hammering in nails”).

I thought this would be a good time to catch up with him and get his views on his career, the publishing industry and the new world of ebooks…

LEE: Your early books — like GRIFT SENSE, FUNNY MONEY, and SUCKER BET — are all set against the world of gambling and cons. Were you writing about what you know?

JAMES: Yes, I was. I’ve been a magician since I was a kid, and used to hang out with guys in New York who cheated in private card games. They’d come into Tannen’s magic shop and blow our minds with their skill. In the late 1970s, I was visiting Las Vegas, and saw a guy switch a card while playing blackjack. It was amazing how skillful he was. I later told a magician friend of mine named Mike Skinner who lived in Las Vegas and knew a thing or two about cheating. Skinner proceeded to tell me how the casinos got ripped off all the time by cross roaders, which is a hustler’s term for people who cheat casinos (it refers to parking your horse at the cross roads in a town in case you need to make a speedy getaway). I started researching the subject, and met a number of famous cheaters, and collected their stories. Twenty years later when I started writing the gambling books, I had a wealth of information to work from.

LEE: You branched off into other series… was that a creative decision (to stretch yourself as a writer), a marketing decision (to broaden your brand) or were sales of the Valentine series tapering off?

JAMES: It was a fluke. The Valentine books were doing just fine, and had been sold in many foreign markets and also to Hollywood. I’d written nine of them, with two more set to be published –WILD CARD and JACKPOT. I needed a break, and wrote a book called MIDNIGHT RAMBLER, which is about a down-and-out ex-cop who helps police departments in Florida find missing people. I didn’t tell anyone about RAMBLER except my wife – it was my little secret, just to see if I could do something else. When I was done, I showed it to my agent, and he called me up, and started yelling how good it was. He showed it to my publisher, and they reacted the same way. The next thing I knew, I had a new contract and a new series, and the Valentine books were put on hold.

LEE: How did you feel about that? Was it hard to see those books put on the shelf?

JAMES: It was gut-wrenching. I loved those books, especially the last two. But it’s difficult to argue with your publisher when they’re throwing money at you. I bit my tongue and accepted it.   The Program

LEE: What's your take on the state of publishing today? If you'd written GRIFT SENSE today, would it get published? Do you think it would receive the same kind of enthusiastic support and wide notice you got back in 2001?

JAMES: To be honest, I didn’t get much support when GRIFT SENSE was published. I paid for my own tour, and did most of my own marketing. The book was purchased by a lovely editor at Pocket Books named Emily Heckman, who was let go before the book came out. There wasn’t much support for it in-house.

The support I did get was from the mystery field, which pushed the book heavily. For example, Otto Penzler gave the book to a customer named Anthony Mason, who’s a newscaster for CBS Sunday Morning. That led to be being on the show a year later, which was a huge break for me.

In 2003, I went over to Ballantine Books, and my editor there purchased GRIFT SENSE and FUNNY MONEY (the 2nd book in the series) from Pocket. Ballantine got behind the books, which led to much of the success I’ve had.

So to answer your question, I really think that publishing today isn’t much different than it was ten years ago when I started. The avenues of distribution have changed, as have the ability to market yourself over the Internet, but at the end of the day, it’s still about hard work and catching some lucky breaks.

LEE: You've recently released a bunch of your books on the Kindle (and other e-formats). What prompted you to do that? And would you ever consider writing an original book directly for the Kindle, bypassing publishers altogether? If so, why?

JAMES: My decision to release books as ebooks was brewing for a while. The two Valentine books I mentioned earlier had reverted by contract back to me. I also had a thriller called THE PROGRAM which my agent had been shopping around, then had to pull when I got an offer from Tor to do a new series. So I had these three terrific books sitting on my laptop, which bothered me no end.

Then I bought my wife an iPad, and to my surprise (and hers), she fell absolutely in love with it, and started reading 4-5 ebooks a week on it. That got me thinking that maybe I should take these books I had, and release them as ebooks.

The turning point was hearing Joe Konrath speak at the Mysteries To Die For conference in Sarasota this past summer. Joe answered every question I had about the process, and gave me the confidence to put these books out. Will I ever write an original book directly for Kindle? The answer is yes. I’m working on a new Valentine novel right now, and plan to release it in the spring of 2011.

LEE: You've gotten some terrific blurbs from authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly and Randy Wayne White. How important do you think blurbs from other authors are in selling your work to booksellers and readers? Have blurbs lost their punch or are they even more necessary today to rise above all the clutter out there?

JAMES: Blurbs are very important. They set you apart from the rest of the crowd. They can also tell the reader what they’re in store for. I’ve never released a book without one.

Paul Levine: The Mentalist

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Mystery writer Paul Levine stumbles on a crime-in-progress in his neighborhood and plays detective in this very funny blog post. Here's a snippet:

When the cops arrived ten minutes later, I told them the guy was late 30's, 6-1, 190 pounds, bleached spiked hair and spoke with a Russian accent. The car, I suggested, was possibly stolen. Maybe owned by a woman who was a life insurance broker in Orange County. She might need assistance walking, and it's possible her initials are "L.F."

The cops gave me sideways glances. Like who the hell was this guy, "The Mentalist?"

I explained. The license plate holder is from a dealer in Anaheim. In the front seat, there's a blue handicapped parking sticker and a hardcover book. Married Lovers by Jackie Collins. Men don't read her. The personalized license plate is "LF CLU."

"Her name might be Lois Fenstermacher," I suggested, helpfully. "And she could be a Chartered Life Underwriter."

The cops weren't impressed.

TIED IN Ties Up More Raves

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Tied In Cover 6-22-2010

Author/blogger Ed Gorman, founding publisher of Mystery Scene Magazine, has given TIED IN an incredibly flattering review.  He says, in part:

I say this without a whit of exaggeration: TIED-IN edited by Lee Goldberg, and written by Lee and other members of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, is the most fascinating, entertaining and honest book about the writing life I've ever read. […] we see the pleasures and frustrations of this particular craft. And in the process we see what life is really like for professional writers.

[…]TIED-IN is rich with humor, lore, wisdom about the writing life

Thank you so much, Ed! And Mark Baker, one of Amazon's top reviewers, has also given TIED IN a rave. He says, in part:

We get a look at every kind of tie-in imaginable. There are the books based on TV series, as covered by Donald Bain (author of the Murder, She Wrote books), Tod Goldberg, and William Rabkin. Max Allan Collins discusses his two most frustrating novelizations of movies. Is writing for a YA crowd harder or easier? You'll get the answer from Aaron Rosenberg. Writing a novel based on an entire season of episodes, novels based on comic books, and writing novels set between movies are all discussed. […]My respect for tie-in writers has really grown as a result of reading this book. One of the repeated facts is their short deadline. We're talking weeks to complete a book. And that's with multiple people telling them how the book should be written. This isn't easy work.[…]if you enjoy reading about the adventures of your favorite screen characters, this is a book you need to check out. You'll love getting a peak behind the scenes at how authors create these further stories.

Thanks, Mark!

Grease is the Word

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Reading TIED IN brought back fond memories for UK blogger/author/gamer Jonny Nexus of his favorite tie-in of all time: the novelization of GREASE.

This might sound like a bizarre choice, but you have to understand that the novel is so much more than the film. The film’s fun, I’ll not deny that. But it’s a musical, not perhaps frothy, but not that deep either. How the hell do you take an ever-so slightly camp and over-the-top musical and turn it into a novel?

Well in this case, [Ron]De Christoforo took a minor character from the film, Danny’s best mate Sonny, and turned him into the engaging narrator of a gritty but fun, first-person novel. He also gave Sonny a girlfriend, Marsha, who joined the Pink Ladies, so that she could later tell Sonny things that had happened when the girls out of the boys’ sight. As for the songs, at least one that I recall (Greased Lightning) was re-imagined as an impromptu rapping sessions, with the rest just left out altogether.

Some novels draw you in, making you feel like you’re peeking into another world. That was how it was for me, with Grease: a young teenager in early 80s Britain feeling like he’d learned what it was to be a slightly older teenager in late 50s USA. It was full of detail: Polar Burgers, the pre-chain dump of a fast-food restaurant they used to eat at; the ‘57 Chevy pickup Sonny borrows from his cousin so he and Danny can go and visit Sandy; the zip gun Doody makes in shop that all the others laugh at.

It’s my favourite tie-in novel of all time. But more than that, it’s just one of my favourite novels.

I loved it.

 

Another Ruthless Interrogation

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Hank Phillippi Ryan interrogates me today at the Sisters-in-Crime blog. Here's an excerpt of what she beat out of me:

HANK: When you watch TV now, or read a book—can you just relax and, maybe, enjoy? Or is your editor-writer brain always assessing? What do you see as the flaws and gaps and missteps? The successes?

LEE: With a mystery, no, I can't just read or watch. I am always very aware of the construction of the mystery.

But you're not supposed to be passively entertained by a mystery. You are expected to track the clues. Part of the fun is that the mystery is there to be solved, and if the author (or writer/producer) has played fairly, then you can and should participate along with the detective.

If a movie is really good, I can stop looking at the construction of *the story* and just be swept up in it. But if the movie is flawed, it pulls me out, and I start seeing the work/structure/component parts and then it's hard to be entertained by what I am watching. I begin to watch it like a producer watching a director's cut and thinking about what he's got to go into the editing room to fix…

 

Mysteries, Margaritas, and a Grilling

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There’s a long Q&A interview with me over at the Mysteries and Margaritas blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Mary: You write books and you write screenplays. I’ve heard they are completely different animals. Do you find it hard to do both? Or in your mind do they complement each other?

Lee: They do compliment each other. I was a reporter first… and that taught me how to write tightly, to say more with less, and to craft strong leads. It also trained me to meet deadlines and to be a ruthless editor. I became a screenwriter when one of my books was optioned for film and I got hired to write the script.

I think that being a screenwriter, particularly for TV, has made me a much better novelist. You have to write outlines for TV, so it has forced me to focus on plot before I start writing my books. I’m not figuring things out as I go along as some authors do. I know exactly where I am going…though I may change how I get there along the way.

Being a TV writer has also trained me to focus on a strong, narrative drive, to make sure that every line of dialogue either reveals character or advances the plot (or both), and to cut anything that’s extraneous or bogs the story down. I also suspect that being a TV writer has given my books a faster pace and more of a cinematic structure.

 

I also talk about what I wear in bed, so you really don’t want to miss it.

The Presumptuous Stranger

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A successful screenwriter I know recently shared with me an experience he had with a stranger that's becoming more and more common these days among my writer friends who have any kind of online presence…

A complete stranger sent me an email informing me of the glorious news that he's coming to LA to try to sell his book as a TV series, and that he wants me to have lunch with him to tell him how the business works. He presents this as something of a treat for me.

I want to be polite, so I told him that I will be out of town that weekend, but good luck.

He writes back and asks for an agent recommendation.

I told him the only agent I know is my own, and he is not even considering taking on new clients, but good luck.

So he writes back and asks me to read his spec pilot.

Now I feel like the Terminator, running down that list of appropriate responses, from "No, but thanks for asking" to "Which part of fuck off and die did you fail to understand?"

I have had this experience so many times myself  that I now believe that being polite to these presumptuous strangers is a mistake, that it's seen as an invitation to intrude even further. So now I am very blunt. I tell strangers the obvious — that I don't know them at all, that I am very busy, and that I have have no interest in meeting them or reading their work.  I get one of three responses: 1) a polite "thank you,"  2) a nasty diatribe about how I'm an ungrateful, self-centered, selfish, insecure prick or 3) no response at all.

But I do wonder what is going through the minds of these strangers. Do they really expect me to drop everything to meet someone I have never met before, online or otherwise? It would be different if we were "pen pals" and had established a relationship of some kind… but these are complete strangers I am talking about. Do they think just because we have websites, or blogs, or Facebook and Twitter accounts, that we are at their beck-and-call?

The Lost Gunsmoke Novel

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James Reasoner raves on his blog about Joseph A. West's new novel SHOOTOUT AT PICTURE ROCK which, as it turns out, was actually written as a GUNSMOKE tie-in novel. West revealed the backstory in a comment on the blogpost:

SHOOTOUT AT PICTURE ROCK began its life as the 7th novel in my GUNSMOKE series, but my publisher and Universal couldn't agree on financial terms. Finally my editor said: "The hell with it, we'll publish the book as a stand alone." Then, with many a merry quip, he added: "Big hurry, Joe. Change the names and send it back to me yesterday." Of course, there was a lot more involved than simply changing Matt Dillon to Kilcoyn. I had to saw the novel apart then rebuild it, the deadline hanging over my head like the proverbial sword. In the end, poor, ink-stained wretch that I am, I got the job done and Shootout was the result. Ah, I love the publishing business so much, just sitting here thinking about it brings a tear to my eye.

Fascinating stuff.