Preying on the Self-Published

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Writer Beware has an excellent overview on PW Select and other "pay-for-review" scams that prey on self-published authors. They write, in part:

[…]no matter what altruistic motive the service offers to justify its fees, paid reviews are less an effort to expand review coverage to worthy books than an opportunity to make some extra cash by exploiting self- and small press-published authors' hunger for credibility and exposure.

Now there's a new entrant in the fee-for review arena: Publishers Weekly.[…]For a self- or small press-pubbed author with a quality book, therefore, PW Select could–just possibly–be an opportunity. Problem is, most writers believe their books are quality, whether or not that's so. Many, if not most, of the writers who pay the $149 won't have a prayer of getting a review (sorry, self-publishing advocates, it's true. Large numbers of self-published books suck). All they'll receive for their money is a listing–and while the reviews may attract attention, who will look at the listings? It's hard for me to imagine that anyone beyond the authors themselves will care.[…] PW Select is a moneymaking venture that feeds on self- and small press-pubbed authors' hunger for exposure, in full knowledge that the majority of the writers who buy the service will not benefit from it.

THE WALK in Paperback

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The_Walk_FINALBack in 2004, I wrote a book called THE WALK, which was released in hardcover by Five Star and quickly slipped into obscurity.  But a little over a year ago, I made the book available on the Kindle… and since then, it has sold nearly 9000 copies. Non-Kindle users have repeatedly asked me to release a trade paperback edition. I am pleased to announce that a paperback edition is now available on Amazon and CreateSpace for $11.99.

Here's the story:

It's one minute after the Big One. Marty Slack, a TV network executive, crawls out from under his Mercedes, parked outside what once was a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, the location for a new TV show. Downtown LA is in ruins. The sky is thick with black smoke. His cell phone is dead. The freeways are rubble. The airport is demolished. Buildings lay across streets like fallen trees. It will be days before help can arrive.

Marty has been expecting this day all his life. He's prepared. In his car are a pair of sturdy walking shoes and a backpack of food, water, and supplies. He knows there is only one thing he can do … that he must do: get home to his wife Beth, go back to their gated community on the far edge of the San Fernando Valley.

All he has to do is walk. But he will quickly learn that it's not that easy. His dangerous, unpredictable journey home will take him through the different worlds of what was once Los Angeles. Wildfires rage out of control. Flood waters burst through collapsed dams. Natural gas explosions consume neighborhoods. Sinkholes swallow entire buildings. After-shocks rip apart the ground. Looters rampage through the streets.

There's no power. No running water. No order.

Marty Slack thinks he's prepared. He's wrong. Nothing can prepare him for this ordeal, a quest for his family and for his soul, a journey that will test the limits of his endurance and his humanity, a trek from the man he was to the man he can be … if he can survive The Walk.

If you are a book critic/blogger, and would like a free review copy of  THE WALK… as a PDF, an ebook, or  as a trade paperback… please send your name, the address of your blog/website, and your preferred format to lee@leegoldberg.com.

Publishers Weekly Whores Itself

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Publisher's Weekly has become so desperate in the face of declining advertising and an eroding subscriber base that it has decided to whore itself, and its good name, for a few extra bucks.

The magazine is launching PW Select, a quarterly "special issue" devoted to reviewing self-published authors, which would be a great and laudable thing… except that they are charging aspiring authors a $150 "processing fee" to be included. So it's just another vanity press scam, an advertising supplement pretending to be a review publication, aimed squarely at deceiving aspiring writers out of whatever money iUniverse hasn't already shaken out of them.

But it gets  even worse, my friends.

PW has also decided to piss all over their journalistic integrity, and the minimum basic standards of ethical journalistic conduct, by drafting their staff of reporters and critics to participate.  This creates a terrible and untenable conflict-of-interest for PW writers, who are now reviewing, and reporting on, authors who have paid for the opportunity.

The entire PW editorial staff will participate in a review of the titles being considered for review, and we'll likely invite a few agent friends and distributors to have a look at what we've chosen. No promises there, just letting some publishing friends take advantage of the opportunity to see the collection.[…] We briefly considered charging for reviews, but in the end preferred to maintain our right to review what we deemed worthy. The processing fee that guarantees a listing and the chance to be reviewed accomplishes what we want: to inform the trade of what is happening in self-publishing and to present a PW selection of what has the most merit.

Do they really think that charging a $150 processing fee is any different than directly charging for reviews? Do they really think they are fooling anyone?

It's sad that PW,  once a fine and reputable publication, has decided to follow the example set by the disgraced, and widely derided, Kirkus Discoveries, and prey on the desperation of aspiring authors…sullying PW's good name in the process. But they have waded one step further into the sewer by dangling the enticement of possible agent representation or contract from a publisher as an incentive to submit to "PW Select." This puts them solidly in the ranks of vanity press scammers.

If  PW wanted to honestly and informatively report on the self-publishing field, and give worthy self-published titles the attention they deserve, while still maintaining journalistic integrity, objectivity, and good name, they would have done their special issue without charging authors to have their books included and reviewed. Or dangling the possibility of agent representation and a publishing contract to self-published authors for their participation.

This is a money grab, a blatant attempt to exploit self-published authors to improve their sagging bottom line. It's PW pissing on their own good name.

It's pitiful, disgraceful…and very sad. PW and its staff should be deeply ashamed.

Have Books Become Folk Art?

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Over on Joe Konrath's blog, he's talking once again about how traditional publishing is on its death bed and how the ebook is the future. I agree with much of what he says, even if my friend's observations are beginning to feel stale and repetitive (much like my own observations on this topic and so many others). But I thought that this comment on Joe's post from reader Thomas Brookside offered a fresh insight…at least to me. Brookside wrote:

…if the question out there is why authors without any great financial interest in the present publishing system are defending it so fervently, I think the answer lies in a statement made by Anne Rice a number of years ago to the effect that when anyone can publish literature becomes a folk art.

The current system hands out very few financial rewards to authors but provides them with a lot of prestige.

I think even if they can make more money in the new paradigm and even if they can still find good books they want to read without much effort, these authors will feel highly aggrieved if the current system continues to disintegrate. If the statement "I've got a novel out right now," becomes the equivalent of "I sell handmade jewelry at flea markets on the weekend," these guys will be quite pissed off, even if they make more money and even if the slush apocalypse does not actually come about.

I think he makes a very good, and painfully accurate, point. I believe this is a genuine fear among published authors, whether they are making big money under the current model or not, and has gone unsaid.  But I don't think it's the only thing that motivates their concerns, and their fears, about the e-biz.

Certainly they have financial concerns, too. Can they still make a living as writers if the publishing business shifts to the ebook? Will their incomes increase or plummet?

And then there's concerns about the tsunami of self-published swill that's swamping the e-marketplace, and what the blowback from that might be on the e-book market, and books in general, which gets me back to my friend Joe.

No, I'm not saying his work is swill.  He's a clever writer, a savvy marketer, and is very helpful and generous with his knowledge. (I certainly owe my modest Kindle success to him). But it is his tremendous, and well-earned, success publishing his books on Amazon, and how impressively he has gotten the word out about it, which is making dollar signs dance in the eyes of newbies.

Hordes of newbies are rushing to get their work on the Kindle… even if it's horrendous in every way…and with no regard whatsoever to the impact that publishing crap will have on their careers. Because they aren't thinking about careers. They are thinking about money. Joe's money.

Even Joe, perhaps the biggest cheerleader there is for the Kindle format and the possibilities it offers writers, urges caution:

New writers tend not to know how crummy their writing is. No one learns to play piano overnight. Same thing with crafting a narrative. I've personally met thousands of newbie writers. I've only known two of these newbies that I knew were good enough to succeed–and both did. I've met maybe a dozen others that have potential. But that's it. The rest just aren't good enough. Maybe they'll become good enough, with practice. But putting starter novels on Kindle isn't good for anyone.

But I suspect that few, if any, aspiring authors have or will heed his wise advice in this regard. They are too eager to get their work out there.

It's not just those who have been published in print who have to adjust their thinking to embrace a changing publishing business…but also aspiring writers as well. As I have say many times, just because you can publish with a click of the mouse, that doesn't mean that you should.

On the other hand, for published authors, particularly those on the mid-list, times are changing. Accepting a publishing contract is no longer the no-brainer decision that it used to be, even if the offer is from a major house. Yes, it comes with an advance, editing, marketing, distribution, and prestige… but does it still make financial sense when you can publish the book in ef0rmat yourself, keep that agent commission in your pocket, and get a 70% royalty?

I don't have the answers. I don't think anybody does. But a lot of long-held beliefs about the business, certainly my own beliefs, aren't going to hold anymore.

Mr. Monk and Crimespree

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Cleaned out Jon Jordan at Crimespree Magazine has given MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT a rave review.  He says, in part:

I love what Lee does with these books. His ability to channel Monk is uncanny and almost makes me wonder if they based this character on him in some way when they developed the series for TV. In truth it’s just that Goldberg is a Hell of a writer. […]I now associate Monk with Goldberg more than with the TV show.

Thank you, Jon!

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 Mail I Get

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Here's just a sampling of some of  the "offers" and questions I've received lately. I've changed the names and other identifying info to spare the senders any embarrassment…

Hi,  I came across your site while surfing the web. I've decided that episodic TV is where I need to be. I have written an original pilot, including title bible and summaries of every episode of the first season, as well as a couple of spec scripts.[…]Panelists at a seminar I attended suggested I get a mentor or three. Is there any chance of me talking with you for a few moments one day, just to pick your brain on the industry? Hope to hear from you. Please call.

Here's another:

I can't write but I have a terrific idea for a book that I have outlined in detail. I have selected you to be my co-writer because I am such a fan of your work. I love MONK! Please contact me at your earliest convenience so I can tell you more details (I don't want to share this great idea in an email for obvious reasons!!!).

Here's another:

I am a writer with two self-published books that are under the radar but would make great movies. If you would be interested in making them into movies I will send them to you.

That was the whole message, by the way. Here's another:

Mr. Goldberg, I'm not asking a favor really-at least I don't think so. I'm asking because I enjoy your MONK and DIAGNOIS MURDER so much. I stumbled on an interesting investagation when I got hold of an old newspaper that was in the bottom of a box I bought at an auction sale […]This is just a brief bit of info I've collected etc. Question: any suggestions on doing a story about this by changing names etc?

Here's my favorite of the bunch:

I found you on the interweb and only seek your help or therapeutic solace if you are entertained or amused by any of my efforts. I'm an Art Director for Video Games who, needing an impossible challenge, has to make a sitcom. I cast actors and shot a pilot, which you can see here: XYZ. By the later shots I was getting smarter. Editing out the 'not going anywhere self indulgent cleverness' and collecting comments taught me a lot too. Better writing and production help are next. And not casting a slacker actor. Besides writing characters you care about because they care about something, do you have any advice for me?