Cover Story

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Watch Me Die_5 One of the great things about the ebook format is that it allows you to quickly change your product to adapt to the  marketplace. I learned this lesson when I changed the covers and titles of my .357 VIGILANTE series (to THE JURY SERIES) …and sales immediately and dramatically increased as a result.

That made a big impression on me.

I have since experimented with changing the covers, and in some cases the titles, of some of my other work. Almost always, I have seen a marked improvement in sales. In fact, I recently changed the cover of the JURY SERIES again and sales of that book have more than doubled.

So I now I'm hoping to perform that same magic on THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE, perhaps most my widely acclaimed novel when it was released in hardcover a few years ago…and yet one of my weakest performing ebook titles today. I have tried changing the cover multiple times…and while that has always helped, the uptick hasn't been much. 

I think the problem is the title. It's awkward, dated, and dull.

So I have decided to take a more radical step…this time I am changing the title and the cover.

It's now WATCH ME DIE.

It's a much more active title and the cover, by Jeroen Ten Berge,  is far more vivid and compelling than any of the others. The image is taken from a key scene in the book.

I predict that sales will go way up…what do you think? Here's the evolution of the covers…

The McFarland &  Company cover for the original, hardcover edition:

MwIOB_lg
The First Kindle Edition, made by yours truly:

BADGE 3
The Second Kindle Edition, designed by Carl Graves:

GOLDBERG_Iron_On_Badge_FINAL
And, once again, the new cover by Jeroen Ten Berge:

Watch Me Die_5

 

 

The Rap on Me and Monk

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Lee Goldberg and Traylor Howard-2 Kirkus Reviews is spotlighting the MONK books today in an interview with yours truly conducted by J. Kingston Pierce, who also runs the excellent Rap Sheet blog.  Here's a taste:

The series focused primarily on Adrian Monk, but your books are told from Natalie’s first-person perspective. What affect has that had on your storytelling?

I think it humanizes Monk. It gives us a necessary distance and, at the same time, a perspective to frame what we’re seeing. In a way, Natalie’s eyes become the replacement for the TV screen that’s was usually between us and Adrian Monk. Also, a little Monk goes a long way. You can overdo the joke and all the obsessive/compulsive stuff. By telling the stories from Natalie’s point of view, we aren’t with him all the time. We get some space, a breather from his shtick, and I think that’s important.

It’s also a conscious homage to Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, who were seen as well through the eyes of their assistants.

The interview was huge, and all the stuff that Kirkus couldn't use, Pierce has posted on his blog.  For instance,we expanded on the previous question…

JKP: You’ve said before that telling these stories from the first-person viewpoint of Monk’s assistant, Natalie Teeger (played on screen byTraylor Howard), rather than from a third-person perspective more similar to what we saw on television, “humanizes Monk.” Could you explain that further?

LG: [I]t’s allowed me to add an emotional resonance to the storylines that goes beyond just Monk’s eccentricities and the solving of puzzling mysteries. The underlying theme of the book (and yes, there always is one in each tale) is often reflected in whatever is happening in Natalie’s life. Her personal story frames the way in which she perceives the mystery and reacts to Monk, so it’s all of a piece. It’s allowed me to make her a deeper, more interesting, and more realistic character. By doing that, I ground the story in what I like to think of as “a necessary reality.”

Without that reality, Monk would just be a caricature and cartoon character. Natalie humanizes Monk and makes the world that the two of them live in believable to the reader. Through her, we are able to invest emotionally in the story. Without that crucial element, I believe the books would have failed.

MR. MONK ON THE COUCH is out today!

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MM on the Couch.revised_2 My 12th original MONK novel, MR. MONK ON THE COUCH, is out today in hardcover…and as an ebook, too. 

This is the second book set after the finale of the TV series and takes the characters in some new directions, none more so than Monk's assistant and the book's narrator, Natalie Teeger. Over the last few books, she's begun to realize that not only does she enjoy detective work, but she's actually is pretty good at it. But it hasn't been easy to prove herself when she's constantly paired up with a brilliant detective who often solves crimes on-the-spot. In this book, she finally gets the chance…and really comes into her own as a detective (which I take it to the next level in the book I'm just finishing now, MR. MONK ON PATROL). 

Like all of my MONK books, there are lots of little “standalone” mysteries that Monk solves while investigating the major, over-arching mystery of the novel. However, this time the central mystery is less of a whodunit than it is a “what the hell is going on?”

MR. MONK ON THE COUCH is also grittier than any of my previous Monk books…but nothing too extreme. It’s still very much a MONK,  with lots of laughs, but also with a lot more going on and a slightly harder edge.  Plus there’s even a subplot involving Monk’s brother Ambrose, picking up where his story left off in MR. MONK ON THE ROAD.

All in all, there's a lot going on in MR. MONK ON THE COUCH and I hope that you enjoy it.

Doug Lyle is a Royal Pain

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My friend 41G5ikeA7oL Doug Lyle, the medical advisor on my scripts & books, as well as my doctor, is writing the tie-in novels based on the hit USA Network series ROYAL PAINS. It was a series he was born to write…I just had to convince him first.

His opening novel in the series, “First Do No Harm,” has just come out and novelist Laura Benedict, whom I had the pleasure of sharing a panel with at a conference in Kentucky, has interviewed him on her blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Q:     I know readers and writers alike will want to know how you came to be chosen for the gig. Was there a writing/audition process?

A:  I have to blame my good friend Lee Goldberg for this. As you know, Lee writes the Diagnosis Murder and Monk novels. His brother Tod writes the Burn Notice novels and his partner Bill Rabkin writes the Psych novels. These are called tie-in novels because they are tied to a television series.

Penguin approached Lee about taking on the Royal Pains project, but he told them he was probably not the guy to do it but that I might be. He recommended me to them. So that’s basically how it began. After I spoke with my wonderful editor there, Sandy Harding, and my equally wonderful agent, Kimberly Cameron, I finally decided to sign a two book deal with them.

Q:    Royal Pains is such a fun television series. Were you a fan, first? You’ve done a terrific job with the characters’ voices in First, Do No Harm–particularly Divya’s. Does it help to have live actors as models for the characters that you’re writing? 

A:    Thank you. I’m glad you liked the characters and the story. Yes, I watched the TV show before I was ever approached to write the novels. Though I have problems with some of the medical stuff that Hank does–couldn’t happen in the real world–I really enjoyed the characters and their interaction. I liked the humor and I liked the other characters that surround the four main ones. And I thought it was an interesting premise.

As for having live actors as models, it’s a double-edged sword. I have these characters that are already created and so therefore I don’t have to come up with new characters out of whole cloth. But, it also means that I can’t tinker with them or take them in directions that I would like. You are constrained by the creators and the TV series as to what you can and cannot do. But overall it was fun.

He goes on to share more about wriing the ROYAL PAINS novel, as well as his other fiction and non-fiction books. You’ll want to check it out.

Book Review: TV Noir – The Twentieth Century

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9781453696002 I bought TV NOIR: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Ray Starman based on a rave review by my friends over at Bookgasm… and because I'm a sucker for TV books. But TV NOIR was a huge disappointment on just about every level, from the actual printing itself to the thin, badly edited, content. 

Even by self-published/print-on-demand standards, the print quality is awful. The photographs look like reproductions of xeroxes. The copyediting and proofreading are atrocious (missing and inconsistent punctuation, show titles with and without quotation marks, etc). It does not look or read like a professionally published work. 

But all of that would be tolerable if the content was worthwhile. Sadly, it's not. There are some compelling ideas here, but you have to slog through some truly awkward, rambling sentences to get to them. Sentences like these: 

Stack was able to overcome his 'tennis anyone' roles and an academy award nomination for the melodramatic "Written on the Wind" ('57) to perfect his underplayed and superior to the later Clint Eastwood's monotone style to gain status as a subtle and ironic characterization that was unique.'

Huh? That's crisp, lean, clear prose compared to this sentence:

Add to the list the controversial but I think brilliant 'Blade Runner' ('82) complete with Harrison Ford's tough guy voice-over reminiscent of Bogart in anything and William Holden's commentary in the noir-ish 'Sunset Boulevard' ('50) and you have future noir served on a platter existing in a dark futuristic society where Harrison Ford, as a 21st century ex-cop is recruited to find alien androids settling among humans.

Painful stuff. This is a writer in desperate need of an editor and a few lessons on how to use a comma. The book is about noir, but he uses the word so much, that I often wondered if his goal was to stick it in as many times in as many sentences as he possibly could. For instance:

Although science fiction is not a particularly strong genre for noir analysis, certain key noir elements may still apply it for noir status.

Or

'City of Angels' is another noir curiosity that only ran from February to August 1976 but deserves inclusion because of its private eye genre, it's noir-ish photography and general 1930-1940s style that lent itself to noir iconograpy.

It's a shame he couldn't have stuck the word noir in there one or two more times. He also spends way too much time sharing with us his own, internal debates about whether shows deserved to be included in his book or not. For instance, in the midst of discussing "Harry O," he starts rambling…

Much lighter in tone than the very dark 'The Fugitive', it still did not reach the humorous heights of James Garner's 'Rockford Files' or even Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul's inspired comic renderings of 'Starsky and Hutch'. Two worthy programs I have not included in my analysis because their humor prevented them from noir status. A tough decision, but Garner's often-folksy humor and Glaser and Soul's comedy team antics were just too light for noir justifications.

As if we cared. But more importantly, what the heck does any of that have to do with "Harry O?" Nothing. 

I love books about TV, particularly those that focus on cop shows. But this book is a mess. And way, way over-priced at $15.95. Skip it. 

MWA Opens Active Membership to Ebook and POD Authors

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The MWA membership committee, of which I am chair, has crafted a major overhaul of the criteria for Active Membership to embrace the new technologies that are changing our industry. These new guidelines, approved unanimously today by the MWA Board, opens the door to scores of authors whose books are published solely as ebooks or via print-on-demand, but they still exclude self-published works. An  email blast with all the changes went out to all MWA members moments ago. Here's the intro…

The publishing business is experiencing massive changes and if MWA is to remain relevant, we have to change, too.  That’s why we’ve revised our Approved Publisher criteria to make books published solely in e-book format or using print-on-demand eligible under certain conditions for MWA membership (and, perhaps later, for Edgar eligibility as well).  Self-published books, whether they are published in print or as e-books, still do not qualify for MWA active membership. [Note: The italics added by me for clarity in this post, they are not italicized in the actual guidelines]

In crafting the criteria below, we had to strike a balance between including books published using those new technologies while also  maintaining our high professional standards and our commitment to protecting our members (and writers in general) from the less-than-reputable publishers who seek to take advantage of them.

We hope you’ll agree that we accomplished our goal. 

There are a lot of tweaks to our existing rules, but here's the ground-breaking portion…the new section on Approved Publisher criteria for ebook publishers. If your ebook publisher meets these criteria, then your book qualifies you for Active Membership in MWA.

E-Book Publisher Guidelines:

Publishers interested in being on MWA's Approved E-Book Publishers List must fill out the affidavit and submit a sample contract. If all of the following criteria are met, contact the national office to begin the vetting process (the affidavit will be supplied if these requirements are met). The publisher must also meet all of the following criteria (the term "book" refers to all e-formats, "Publishing" refers to print, web, and other e-formats):

1. During the preceding year, the publisher must have paid a minimum of $500 in advances and/or royalties to at least five authors with no financial or ownership interest in the company.
a) The publisher must have paid a minimum royalty of least 25% of net revenue to authors.
b) The royalties must have been paid at least quarterly, with a detailed statement, breaking out books sold through affiliate sites, through the publisher's own site, as well as print books if applicable.
c) Payment must be in monies, not in barter for advertising or copies or any other considerations.
d) Payment must be actual – not, for example, a donation of writing deemed worth a given amount.
e) Payment must have been made and not merely promised.
f) A contract alone is not payment. Proof of payment may be requested by the committee.

2. The publisher must have been in business for at least two years since publication of the first e-book by a person with no financial or ownership interest in the company.

3. The publisher, within the past five years, may not have charged a fee to consider, read, submit, or comment on manuscripts; nor may the publisher, or any of the executives or editors under its employ, have offered authors self-publishing services, literary representation, paid editorial services, or paid promotional services. If the publisher is affiliated with an entity that provides self-publishing, for-pay editorial services, or for-pay promotional services, the entities must be wholly separate and isolated from the publishing entity. They must not share employees, manuscripts, or authors or interact in any way. For example, the publishing entity must not refer authors to any of the for-pay entities nor give preferential treatment to manuscripts submitted that were edited, published, or promoted by the for-pay entity. To avoid misleading authors, mentions and/or advertisements for the for-pay entities shall not be included with information on manuscript submission to the publishing company. Advertising on the publisher's website for any for-pay editorial, self-publishing or promotional services, whether affiliated with the publisher or not, must include a disclaimer that it is advertising and that use of those services offered by an affiliate of the publisher will not affect consideration of manuscripts submitted for publication.

4. The publisher must publish at least five authors per year, other than those with a financial or ownership interest in the company, such as an owner, business partner, employee, or close relative of such person. Those persons should be listed on the application.

5. The publisher is not a "self-publishing" or "subsidy publishing" firm in which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher or book packager. Among (but not all of) the situations defined as "self-published or cooperatively published" are:

a. Those works for which the author has paid all or part of the cost of publication, marketing, distribution of the work, or any other fees pursuant to an agreement between the author and publisher, cooperative publisher, website owner or book packager;

b. e-books published by a privately-held publisher or in collaboration with a book packager wherein the author has a familial relationship with the publisher, editor, or any managerial employee, officer, director or owner of the publisher or book packager;

c. Those works published by companies, websites or imprints that do not publish other authors;

d. Those works published by a publisher or website or in collaboration with a book packager in which the author has a direct or indirect financial interest;

e. Those works published in an anthology in which the author is also an editor, except an anthology for which the author is a guest editor;

f. Those works published in an anthology or magazine wherein the author has a familial relationship with the editor or publisher

6. The publisher pays for editing, copyediting, design, cover art, production, advertising, marketing, distribution, web design, graphics, and all other aspects of publication. They do not require authors to pay for any of the above.

7. Books must be available through major online retailers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore, and not just through the publisher's website.

8. The publisher must not be engaged in the practice of wrongfully withholding or delaying the payment of acceptance fees to authors.

As the industry changes, you can expect the MWA's criteria regarding Approved Publishers will evolve as well.

In the meantime, now that the Board has passed these new rules, the issue moves to the Edgar committee (which I also serve on) to determine how these new criteria will impact Edgar Award eligibility, award categories, etc. for the 2013 Awards (for books published in 2012).

 

The Mail I Get

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I have a huge backlog of ridiculous emails to share with you, I just haven't had a chance to go through them. But here's one that just came in moments ago…

Hi, I have read the first four books in your Diagnosis Murder series and loved the story and characters.  I attempt to only have family friendly books in my home and these books met this criteria with the exception of two of the books containing the word God followed by d***.  Can you tell me if any of the last four books in the seriers contain this word?  If not, I cannot wait to order them.

I replied that I've written eight DIAGNOSIS MURDER books and can't honestly recall if or when the word God followed by d*** shows up in them. I don't keep track of individual words or phrases from among the 75,000 words in each book. But if you're so easily offended by the coupling of those two words under any circumstances by any character that you find an entire novel unacceptable as a result, I would play it safe and avoid the rest of the books in the series. Come to think of it, and with no offense intended, you might want to avoid books by Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, J.D. Salinger, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bram Stoker, John Steinbeck,. A.B. Guthrie, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Larry McMurtry, perhaps even Mark Twain…heck, if I were you, I'd stay away from just about every book that ever won the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize or is considered a classic of literature (not that I am in their league, of course). There's a very high probability that the word God, followed by d*** appears in the majority of them.