This may be the longest You Tell Me in history, but here goes:
What should be done about all of these fake memoirs?
Let that question percolate a little, and then let's see if your opinion changes by the end of this post.
I've been trying to process the news about two more fake memoirs surfacing, one by Misha Difonseca, who admitted that her memoir about her alleged Holocaust escape was fiction, and now Margaret Seltzer (writing as Margaret B. Jones), who concocted a story about growing up in South Central Los Angeles as a half-white/half-Native American gang member (she is white and grew up in Sherman Oaks). These fabrications, of course, follow closely on the heels of the J.T. Leroy and James Frey scandals (NYTBR blog roundup of these four here), and amid investigations by The Australian questioning elements of Ishmael Beah's memoir A LONG WAY GONE.
My first reaction is, of course, outrage that people could actually go through with these shenanigans, and resignation to the fact that the publishing industry will go through another round of beatdowns in the press and in public opinion. But after these initial reactions wore off, I'm left in a bit of a muddle. What really, should be done about this?
First off, as Michael Cader pointed out in Publishers Lunch today, I don't think people are giving enough credit to Riverhead and editor Sarah McGrath for heading this matter off before the book was published. According to today's NY Times article by Motoko Rich, knowing full well what happened in the Frey case, McGrath asked for (and received) several different pieces of corroborating evidence that backed up Seltzer's story. Seltzer's agent met with someone who claimed to be Seltzer's foster sister. McGrath and her agent did not turn a blind eye to Seltzer's fabrications and she did a more than cursory check, it just turned out that Seltzer had a whole lot more time to fake the truth than McGrath did to investigate it. Once the truth came to light, McGrath and Riverhead acted responsibly. I can't fault them on this. The book was never published and no one bought it.
But fine, so you might say, the editor did what she could do without becoming a full-on investigative reporter. So why don't publishers employ fact-checkers?
It's complicated. As Ross Douthat points out, the Atlantic fact-checks their articles, as does the New Yorker. But for the Atlantic this amounts to checking about 600,000 words per year. That's a holiday weekend in the publishing industry. It would take an army of fact-checkers even to do cursory checks of the millions of words published every year, it would be a tremendous expense, and that expense would inevitably drive up the price of books, reduce already slim margins.... I mean, are you willing to pay a lot more for a book just to root out a few bad apples?
One of the lesser-known (at least to outsiders) portions of a publishing contract is the warranty and indemnity clause. In nearly every publishing contract, the author has to warrant (i.e. promise) that they are the real author, that they have the ability to enter into the agreement, and usually when it's a work of nonfiction, they have to pledge that what they have written is true and based on sound research. If a court rules that the author has broken this warranty they're on the hook. Completely. It can seem onerous to the author to be on the hook like this and we agents negotiate the clause so that it's as fair as possible, but ultimately it's on them to tell the truth. And really, isn't this how it should be?
Another lesser-known component of memoir writing is that, from a legal standpoint, sometimes the truth HAS to be fudged to avoid defaming people, such as removing identifying details and changing names, so that the person in question can't point to the memoir and definitively identify themselves. Far from being a genre that is (or should be) held to journalistic standards, memoir is, and always has been, inherently a very squishy medium.
If anything, isn't this is all a byproduct of the drive by publishers, and in our culture in general, to want an author to be the "perfect package?" Someone whose life story is just as compelling as their work, who isn't just someone with a skill for words but someone who embodies their own work, this whole brand thing. We as a culture have become obsessed with authenticity -- it's not enough to just be talented, you also have to BE compelling. You can't just write a good book, you need to be able to sit down on a talk show host's couch and talk about your own human interest story, even if you're a novelist. The fabulists are just filling a cultural niche that we've created and which is nearly impossible to fill. It's so ironic that the more we as a culture want a great true story the more pressure there is to fake one.
Sure -- it's fun to pile on the publishers, but what really should be done about this? Should publishers bite the bullet, raise the prices on their books, employ fact-checkers and just hope that people will pay more for books when there is already incredible downward pressure on prices? Should we just treat these people as the outliers that they are, a few mistakes in an industry where thousands of books are published every year and live with a few embarrassments? Whatever the answer may be, it's not an easy one.
So now you tell me: what should be done about the fake memoirs?
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By: Nathan Bransford,
on 3/5/2008
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/27/2008
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: You Tell Me, You Tell Me, Add a tag
Simple enough question, but I'm guessing there will be wildly different answers.
What is the ultimate goal of your writing? To pass the time? To find fame and fortune? To change the world? To leave something behind? So scholars in the future can debate the meaning behind your work? To scratch an itch?
What end result do you have in mind when you put pen to paper (or fingers to laptop)?
Why do I write? Damned if I know! Just because I do.
I grew up in a house full of books, had a wonderful dad who usually had (and was reading): a book in the bedroom, a book in the living room, a book in the bathroom, a book in the car, a book at work. I was fortunate, indeed. He taught me the love of the written word. As a young man, I thought I wanted to write, but that thing called life (and paying my way through it) got in the way.
Now, in my sixty-fifth year, with a body too worn and broken to do much else, I write. Sure, money and fame would be fun, but my greatest fun is the challenge. Meanwhile, I best get out of this crazy and wonderful world of blogs and continue the hundredth (well, it seems like that many) edit of my WIP.
PS You guys and gals are fun! Thanks, Nathan, for providing this space for a community of interesting and thoughtful folks.
I want to entertain, tell my stories, and write more stories. And I want to do this full time. Because writing is bliss. Ideas come into my head and I have to write them down. If I don't write I go a bit crazy. (Just ask my husband :) I can't remember a time when I didn't write.
So, I'd like to keep writing and get paid for it so I don't need any other day job.
It's exercise for the mind. Once I finish a piece, I have to move on to the next, even if it's writing to a stranger's blog.
On AI last night, Paula said something to one of the female singers... that she was "relevent." That made me think of this post.
I think all writers want to be relevent, or have their words be.
Is it bad to say it out loud?
I want to write a book a year and win a Newbery medal. In the end, I'd like a wonderful career like Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary
I write because it takes the ideas rattling around inside me like a box of marbles out where I can play with them. I like to study each individually and invent pattern games with as many as I can. Writing lets me share my best games. And it quiets the rattle.
My goal as a writer.
I imagine my first goals are simple ones. I live with the worry I'll lose my eye sight. Truly, I do. So, I have a goal of keeping my eyes healthy. I live with the fear of being overtaken by arthritis like my grandmother, so I take my vitamins and eat healthy and pray.
Then there are the more complex ones. I enjoy plotting my stories more than writing them, but I do like writing for an audience. The best way to get an audience is through publication, but once I do publish, I will still have the same goal. I want to continue to widen my audience range. Why? The more readers I have the more encouraged I am to write.
I loved reading everyone's comments. And I saw alot that said writing is therapy. For me, writing fulfills a need to the storeies that plays like movies in my head. If I don't write them down, I'm afraid one day the movies will stop playing and I will wither away to dust from boredom.
If you do a Google search for the exact phrase, "I write because I have to" you get 47,800 hits.
Hurray for OCD!
I lost track of those who touched on this already. But put me down for a desire to connect with fellow humans as well. I spent some time in theater, and the desire to move my audience is also a part of my writing.
I write for my own sanity and because I believe it's my vocation. I hope to get published because I want to wake people up to see the world in a different way--to see that the common assumptions of our culture do not lead either to individual happiness or to the betterment of society. I want to help people believe in redemption, forgiveness, and the fact that their lives have worth and meaning. The world can only be changed one person at a time.
Writing is such a personal experience and our own motivations may vary. Sooner or later someone is bound to nitpick another's stance on the matter. I say, if that individual wishes to declare to the world that writing is a deep rooted passion of theirs and they feel an innate force compelling them to make it a career choice, so be it.
A little late to this, but . . .
to read the kinds of stories I'm not reading.
to try and make sense out of things.
To create, with words, worlds that my readers and I can walk around in.
Compulsion and a certain generous misery that soaks my soul when I don't.
Fortune, though not necessarily fame as I like to stop in at my local bar where I can be just another customer.
tom, you are very cool...
For my fiction: to entertain young people. To create a place they can go for a while when they need to get out of the "real" world. To encourage people think and ask questions.
For my nonfiction: to justify the time I spend chasing interesting bits of research by turning them into publishable entertaining useful bits.
In all writing -- to communicate and make a connection with people I cannot see and speak with.
Oh...forgot my last goal...to always know that what I wrote today was the best thing I can do now, but not the best thing I'll do tomorrow.
must avoid the surrender to dead air
I write in the hope that someday someone will read my work and find a true and human thing that makes them realize that they are not alone.
I write because literature is my religion, it is my way of connecting to the self.
As as Yann Martel put it, "Literature makes one existentially thicker" and I experience this all the time when I read.
My Goal as a writer is to communicate with readers the same way so many authors have communicated with me through their books, helping me realise a little more about life and the self and this incredible world.
My goal as a writer is to meet Nathan Bransford. I want to write a novel worthy of a decent query letter, to write a query letter worthy of Mr. Bransford's attention, and to submit a full that Mr. Bransford will want to sell to a great publisher. This will hopefully result in lunch and a contract and a sunny vacation in CA. And while I'm waiting for that to happen, I keep writing, because Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan." I will meet you one day, Nathan Bransford. I plan on it.
If I didn't want to sell my work, I wouldn't be reading agent blogs.
--Erin
To write stories.
I would have thought that to be self-explanitory and am suprised there are other answers.
My goal as a writer? To be read.
Why I write the fiction that I write? Because it's the life I'd like to have had.
My goal as a writer is to write, and improve my writing. that's it. If I can become better by tomorrow than I am today, I'm happy. Now, I'd very much like to get an agent, a publisher, and have my work read and enjoyed by a wide audience, but When I sit down at my keyboard I'm not really thinking about that. I just want to write.
I don't really have a goal as a writer. I write because I have to. When I finished my first novel I felt a sense of relief that it was done and now I had the time to start novel number two.
The story ideas keep filling my head and I have to write them down. If I can make some money in the process, that's good and if sombody enjoys reading it, even better.
Paul Phillips
www.paulphillips.ca
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/20/2008
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: You Tell Me, The Hills, The Hills, You Tell Me, Add a tag
As anyone who has presided over a slush pile, passed on a megabestseller, or read their friend's manuscript will tell you, reading is subjective. Many different people have their own opinions about the same book, and those opinions can vary so widely it's almost impossible to believe they've read the same book. One person will think it's the best book ever, another will think it's the literary equivalent of Heidi Montag's Spencer-directed music video.
Writing? Subjective.
But wait, is it really? I feel that I can fairly confidently judge whether a book has good or bad odds if I were to submit it to publishers, I can categorize a pile of manuscripts into "good" and "bad" writing, and I have to make judgment calls dozens and dozens of times a day. If I didn't make reasonably accurate decisions I'd be out of a job.
So you tell me: how objective or subjective is good writing? How do you know what's good? And who decides what is "good" anyway? Should it be the people who sell the most copies? Experts? Critics? The publishing industry?
i can't imagine anyone in the publishing industry would agree with this, but i think good writing makes a reader work. it makes a reader think about the story when the book is closed and the lights are off, want to read passages out loud because they are so well-written, discuss it with their friends.
there are some obvious markers of bad writing (awkward tone or voice and unbelievable characters, etc.) and i don't mean the reader is supposed to "work" through those.
but ease of reading experience or being a "page turner" certainly aren't prerequisites for something to qualify as good writing. the best examples i can think of for contemporary authors are Gao Xingjian and Cormac McCarthy.
Soul Mountain is beautifully written but it certainly doesn't suck you in immediately. Blood Meridian wasn't easy or even pleasurable (that book still haunts me and it's been years) but the writing was... stunningly good.
on the flip-side, i could not put The Davinci Code down but i would hardly call Dan Brown a craftsman.
I think there's obviously bad, clunky writing, writers who are trying too hard, and writers who are lazy. We can all weed those out pretty quickly. But after that, the waters grow murky and opinion and taste play heavily upon our judgement.
I look for a variety of things in books. I judge some as good because I immediately forget I'm reading and if the writer breaks any of the supposed rules of storytelling, I don't notice it. I'm so immersed in the story the writer can do anything he/she wants short of disappointing me.
And when a story really resonates, the first thing I want to do is read it outloud to someone or retell it after I've finished. Sometimes it's the storytelling itself--a solid story with interesting characters. Sometimes it's the language, the turn of phrase done well, the vividness of the colors the writer uses to paint the picture.
While I do care about good writing, it's the story that's more important to me. Good writing can make for a great story, but a great story does not always need good writing.
John Grisham, to use as an example, isn't the best writer. His characters and dialogue can be limited, but he's a first-rate storyteller.
I've seen beautifully written manuscripts that bored me because the story didn't grab me. There's lots of good writers trying to get published with perfectly edited manuscripts, but their stories are weak, so they can't make it beyond the slush pile, while those with not the best writing but with great stories, get published.
Erik makes an interesting point:
All of the various things that people talked about ... are important, but only to the extent that they help get the reader into the work so that it can have the right effect on them.
The only fiction that "works" is that which comes alive in the reader's imagination. Every trick the writer uses has to be aimed at turning on the reader's right-hemisphere brain.
Good writing MUST be subjective. If not, every novel published would be a bestseller and there would be no need for someone like you to evaluate talent.
I also think that you must maintain two separate sets of subjectivity. Based on your personal tastes, you may love a work, but the tastes bred from you professional experience and knowledge understand that even a wonderful story may not fit what editors are looking for.
For me, good writing wipes away the real world and places me body and soul into another place where I can smell the sea on Chesil Beach or taste the ash on McCarthy's road. Poor writing moves me, too, mostly to the top of the page to see how many I have left or to the clock to wonder if I have anything better to do.
I work in management for a national retailer and part of my job is evaluating talent in the form of job applicants. I have passed on several people over the years that have gone on to work out great at other companies, but I know if I don't feel that chemistry right away, it will not benefit me or the applicant if I make an offer. In such a case, my subjectivity is not just a matter of whim, but a key to maintaining a successful business, just as I know yours is while you shovel through the slush.
Of course, all my fiction is good . . . except the stuff that isn't.
Bad--for some values of bad--can be spotted a mile off. It confounds our expectations (of grammar or humanity or what have you) and gives us nothing in return for the extra work it requires. Separating the good from the merely competent is much harder and more subjective.
Spotting the salable is beyond me. I'm the person who stocks up at the supermarket when I find something new I like, because it's pretty well guaranteed to vanish without a trace in a month or two.
If writing, good or bad, was not a subjective craft, there would be only one agent and one publisher.
For most of us, the cash register at the book store is the judge that counts.
Aloha,
Ahhh writing...
If read good to me...than plenty good writing.
If no read good to me...than plenty no good writing.
If no read good to me...but brings millions to agent and publisher and editor...then my thoughts are insignificant...though writing remains no good...for me.
Maybe you should ask James Patterson - he apparently thinks he has it all covered & seems bent on making an impact on the YA market - so that "his" work will make kids say "wow" & read more. If we only knew ahead of time that all we needed was for him to write for kids to start reading more. In my objective / subjective opinion, his writing ain't all that" but he's a commercially powerhouse. It's all about taste - or lack of.
Sadly, I have to agree with crapshooter.
Money talks, and you can never tell what opinion it will voice or what book it will choose.
By the way, that video was harsh. Nathan, please don't ever be that cruel to us again.
I think that Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) is a bad writer. His dialog is stilted, he wanders off on tangents and gives overlong descriptions. He also tells us stuff without showing us.
But the world he created is wonderful. So I struggled through the writing to get to the world.
So who's to say what's good or bad? I agree with those who say if it captivates a reader, then it's good.
YOU'RE ALIVE!!!
Ahem, sorry about the outburst. Nathan, I think we'd all given you up for dead when you didn't post promptly for two days. Don't scare us like that!
As for good writing... I just go by a simple rule. If I don't *notice* the writing (that is, if I don't pick out errors, frown at the metaphors and wonder if a character would really do that) than I consider it good writing. The writing itself should go unnoticed, leaving the reader with only the characters and a good plot.
"I think that Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) is a bad writer. His dialog is stilted, he wanders off on tangents and gives overlong descriptions. He also tells us stuff without showing us."
With all due respect, anon
"I think" and the rest of your statement are completely at odds.
So wonderful worlds would be the only reason his novels captivated and continue to captivate the entire world?
I think Tolkien is a mighty fine writer. Conventional? No. A good writer...? Ignoramus question.
A question or statement flung by a pour soul who grew up suckling from the MTV teat and regurgitating the jealous and critical words of Pullman, a writer who wallows around in Tolkien and Lewis-envy.
Have a little humble pie with thine ego dinner.
Hmmm -- There are objective criteria available for judging the use of the English language, at least for standard NA usage or standard British usage. However, what those really do is reject imperfect usage -- they don't establish good writing.
It is perfectly possible to do technically perfect writing without any redeeming characteristics. It is also possible to do evocative, effective writing that breaks many of the rules. A lot of the New Wave authors in SF back in the '70's "broke the rules", but did so effectively.
I think that perhaps the question that might be better asked is "Can good writing be consistently recognized (discriminated from poor writing) by a number of readers." I believe that the answer is "yes", as long as we take into account the question of cultural biases and balance for taste. For instance, the question of Dickens' abilities, as criticized by his contemporaries was brought up, and I mentioned the New Wave SF authors above. "The Worm Ourobouris" is not to everyone's taste, nor is "Dhalgren", or "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." (I picked those because by at least some criterion, they are all "well written.")
Whether such examples of good writing will be more or less successful than "Buffy the Teenage Vampire Detective" is an entirely different question.
-- rambling along...
well...it's easier to see bad writing in other writers' work. LOL
If grammar, capitalization and punctuation were that important then ee cummings wouldn't have gotten too far.
Everything is situational.
*puts head down and keeps writing*
So you tell me: how objective or subjective is good writing? How do you know what's good? And who decides what is "good" anyway? Should it be the people who sell the most copies? Experts? Critics? The publishing industry?
Whether or not a piece is well-written can be objectively judged.
As a journalist, I see a lot of really bad writing cross my desk. I even create some of it sometimes. :-0
It's the style of writing, voice of the author and the content of a story that is subjective, and writers need to trust those in the publishing industry -- agents, editors, publishers -- when they say they believe something is or is not salable. They are the ones who best know the trends in the market.
Ultimately, it will be the reader deciding whether or not something published is "good."
As far as critics, I don't know anyone who has picked up a book at the bookstore and said, "I have to read this because (critic at national daily) said this is a great book."
I have more faith in what my friends tell me is a good book.
Anonymous 3:24 pm said "If your judgment on books is typical of most successful agents and editors, how do you account for the fact that publishers lose money on most of the books they acquire?"
Hi Anon--
I felt compelled to answer your comment. If only the world worked that way. You write a good book and it sells like gangbusters. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. A lot of great books with really quality writing just don't find the right audience. And it's not always about the way it's marketed, or the publisher support...sometimes it's just about luck.
Does that mean I think there aren't any bad books published? Certainly not. There's always the stinkers.
But I don't think it's fair to equate not-so-great sales to a bad book. It just doesn't always work that way. Especially in today's consumer market.
It's not difficult to identify them both, I think. One makes you wnat to submerge yourself in it, the other has you running for cover. In the final analysis though, I would imagine that someone like yourself who does this for a living should have no problems blending objectivity with a little subjectivity
"Good" writing is that which engages you even if you don't care about the subject. It's writing that people will still want to be reading in 50 years. Anyone who has lived on a steady diet of good reading over a lifetime--a diet which must include the classics--is qualified to judge whether writing is good or bad.
Good writing rivets you, makes you want to keep reading. Good writing is beautifully written without being "overwritten." It employs metaphor, and other poetic devices. It incorporates style. It imparts wisdom and knowledge even if it is fiction, without hitting you over the head. You know your own writing is good if someone says they felt like they were there, in the moment with the character.
"Marketable" is questionable. So many books are horridly written and agents and publishers think they are marketable. What is marketable? People write books and have so many people tell them they were enthralled and chapters have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the subject is unique, and yet agents say it is not marketable.
Marketable is seeming to be what will appeal to the lowest common denominator, to the masses and herein lies the rub. Books that people (the public) would be interested in, books that have authors who already have a fan base from other genres, poetry, for instance, will be ignored, because an agent can't see the book would sell.
Agents and publishers say they want something new, but when it comes their way, they say it's not marketable.
Anon 9:56PM, I agree with Anon 9:26PM who said Tolkien wasn't the greatest writer. I think Tolkien's prose was turgid but his world was amazing.
I also think people who sling insults around rather than presenting any kind of convincing case for their opinions aren't worth listening to. You really expect to change anyone's mind with an argument that can be summarized as: "U R STOOPID AN JELLUS BCUZ U DONT AGREE WITH ME"?
And then you had the gall to say, "Have a little humble pie with thine ego dinner." Funny--I only see one out-of-control ego here, and it belongs to the person who apparently believes his opinions are correct simply because they're his.
The final arbiters of whether a book is good or not are the reading public, and any subset of them may decide that a book is good or not for that particular subset.
with all due respect to Thomas, who wrote:
I've seen beautifully written manuscripts that bored me because the story didn't grab me. There's lots of good writers trying to get published with perfectly edited manuscripts, but their stories are weak, so they can't make it beyond the slush pile, while those with not the best writing but with great stories, get published.
perhaps you're missing the point. any story -- one day in a man's life, someone's funeral, the lives of poor farmers, whatever -- will become a good or even great story if well written.
the reverse is not true.
I'd say pretty much ever aspect of writing is subjective. The only things that aren't are spelling and grammar. Word count? subjective. I know some agents who will feed a query to their dog simply because the novel in question is longer than they'd like, while others will give some that's over 150k a fair shot.
As a student of writing and a writer myself, I'm very tempted to immediately pounce on authors who have crappy character development and pacing problems, but those aren't things I can take into a lab and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt must be done a certain way.
There are several agents out there who have passed up on books that have gone on to become hugely successful. But even those big successes are still loathed by many.
Writing's a strange beast. It's nigh-impossible to find any one piece of writing that everybody can agree on as being good or bad.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/13/2008
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: writing advice, You Tell Me, You Tell Me, Add a tag
One of the very most difficult aspects of the writing process for any author is how to respond to feedback about their writing.
Listening to feedback in order to improve one's work is an incredibly important skill, and some authors are adept at skillfully improving their drafts based on the advice they receive (I've seen it happen). But what happens when you don't necessarily agree with the advice?
What is the balance between listening and ignoring? Do you follow the people you trust or go with your gut? Should you bow to someone with more experience or trust your own instincts? When do you go with the advice and when do you hold firm?
Successful revisions hang in the balance!
I think there are as many schools of thought on this as there are writers.
Me, I take the suggestions and ideas that make the particular story better.
Sometimes I get fantastic suggestions and it breaks my heart not to use them because they are just that good. But they would make it a different story than the one I was telling.
Sometimes I get some lame suggestions and I always thank the reader graciously, but I know I'm not going to use them because the reader was too far removed from the story to offer me anything useful. "Dude, it's chick lit... why are you telling me how I can make it more like The Godfather?"
I do find that I don't usually take someone's suggestion verbatim. (Obviously something like a grammar correction I would, but I'm talking about story elements here.) Instead I run them through my own mental filter and try to distill what that suggestion is intended to accomplish in the story. More of a catalyst for a change than an implementation of it.
"Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong." -Neil Gaiman
I try to remember that when I catch myself succumbing to the desire to please others (i.e. implement their suggestions) against my better judgement.
And, you know, it's important to remember that not all advice is created equal. Some people just get off on being catty and snide about other people's work as a form of self-validation. Some people are going to worry too much about your feelings and hold back legitimate criticism.
"If editors or agents were good writers, they probably wouldn't be in their current professions. Their advice should be listened to, but not necessarily heeded."
Ouch, there, Mark Wooding. Just because someone does not write for a living does not mean that they cannot do it well. Just like painting, dancing, playing music, or any other art.
And don't underestimate the value that a good editor brings to a work. A diamond you dig up in a field is a valuable hunk of rock, but there's an artistry in cutting it too.
I find it depends on how strongly I disagree.
If I don't think it makes much difference, I'll make the change and see how that reads. Sometimes it's better, sometimes not.
If I'm violently opposed to the change, I analyse the reason for my strength of feeling. That nearly always shows me some aspect of the story could be developed further and then used to solve the problem in a different way.
I won't make a change I profoundly disagree with unless an editor insists.
mpe
If the feedback revolves around something which could use a little clarification I'll listen to that because I know one of my biggest weaknesses is assuming that people will just know what I'm getting at. Recently though I got a critique which chopped each of my sentences up into neat little pieces and told me how to rearrange them. After taking a long, hard look at it I set that one aside. Essentially it was instructions as to how to rewrite the section replacing my voice with the reviewer's.
That said, if it was an editor making those suggestions I would at least have taken a longer look. There's a reason publishers pay them to be editors.
I need all the help I can get! ;)
But seriously, if the feedback is just praise, I don’t believe it for a moment. Good, constructive criticism, I will always take on board. I may eventually throw it over the side, but if I respect the source and their advice makes sense, then I’ll do my best to use it.
I’m aware of some of my problems. So I’m always pleased when these are pointed out, because I do know how to fix them!
I absolutely go with my gut.
If it feels right, even if I think it will be difficult, I go with it.
cmr
I'm fortunate to be a member of a fantastic critique group -- most are published authors. Once in a while someone just doesn't "get it" or isn't listening carefully so I simply say thanks and ignore the helpful suggestion.
Listen to your heart. It's your manuscript.
All right, Nathan, I'll put in my two cents on the topic.
I take advice like I take aspirin, in small doses. I listen to what their saying and consider the side effects on what it will do to change my work for better or worse. Then I give some time to myself to mull it over on whether or not I really need to take it.
I might step away from the writing for a day to get my thoughts clear on what I want the story to be about. Then I put my writing hat back on, chip away at the aspirin, swallow a little pride if I need to, then better the work as I see fit.
Perhaps it's a stupid analogy, but it works for me.
Often the (constructive!) criticism that hurts the most, helps the most.
I will look at every comment with an open mind. Often it is a matter of gut feeling, but when there's a pattern in the comments from 3 or more critters, it's almost automatic.
As to the "more experience" matter, more experience in what? I want experienced readers with an open mind and a critical view. The opinion of a 16 year old fantasy buff can be as valuable as that of a literary bestselling author who doesn't really like fantasy. But sometimes someone who never reads fantasy looks at things from a surprising angle, and offers valuable advice.
1. Personal preferences have a lot to do with it. Some people, including many professionals, will insist that you chop everything down to bare bones. But if you actually have a gift for prose you shouldn't follow that advice.
2. The advice that I always take first is the advice that makes me say, "I knew (or should have known) that!" Advice that could have come from me, if I could only read my writing in an unbiased, fresh way.
3. I'm more likely to accept advice that says, "I really like X quality, but Y stinks."
4. On conflicting advice, I once had one person slam a certain "parenthetical" passage, but I ignored that advice. Later another person praised it because it captured the spirit of the whole novel. Suddenly I realized why I'd left it in.
On giving advice, I often tell people what I would like to see or cool ideas I had from reading the excerpt. This is not meant to reshape their work in my vision, but is actually meant as a positive critique. Good writing spawns ideas.
This clearly all depends on who is offering the comments. And whether you're new or have been publishing for a long time, you take each comment as seriously as the person who gave it.
If an editor wants revisions, and you trust the editor from past experience, you usually listen and make the revises.
Same goes for agent advice...if Al Zuckerman says you need to change, whatever, you might want to listen. But if Betty Jane the Blogging Agent, who still refers to her mother and father as "my Mom and Dad" in blog posts, offers advice you might want to think twice before you make the revisions.
Ultimately I go with my gut, but I do consider the source and if four or five say the same thing I have to face the facts, my gut is fat, hairy, and wrong.
I have two primary criteria in deciding whether to follow advice:
1) I consider the source. If the person giving the advice is a more experienced writer, one whose work I admire, one who writes stuff similar to mine (or of course an agent or editor), I give the advice greater weight. If it's a novice who's just repeating "rules" she's learned, I'll generally ignore it, unless I know that's a problem area for me.
2) Sometimes I'll know immediately if a piece of advice is right. Sometimes I react negatively at first, but after I mull it over for a while, I'll see the validity of it. I know my own work well enough now to have a gut feeling as to whether certain advice is right for my work.
In critique groups one often gets conflicting advice from different people. I've sometimes found that if different people suggest different solutions for a particular problem, the problem is probably real, but the best solution will be one that I come up with myself.
I don't remember where I read this anecdote, but this reminds me of something I read about E.B. White when he was writing for a newspaper. He reported about a woman who was hit by a car; when her husband ran into the street after the accident and saw his wife he said, "Oh, God, it's her!" White's editor told him to change the quote to, "Oh, God, it's she!" so it would be written in proper English. He refused to change it, quit his job rather than change it, since everyone knows that when a man sees his wife lying in the road he says, "...it's her" and never "...it's she."
Writers can make themselves crazy, trying to accommodate random advice from well-meaning people.
For this reason, over the past four years, I've searched for and found five critique partners in whom I have complete trust.
I know them inside and out--their strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes and the odd quirk. That knowledge helps to inform my decisions on whether to accept their feedback.
For example, one has trouble with violence and will always want to soften the action scenes. I tend to disregard her comments in this regard. However, she can spot a soft POV or a passive sentence in the dark, and I never argue those comments.
My manuscripts are much stronger as the result of their critiques and I'm enormously grateful.
I recently faced a first for me--a beta reader who didn't like the work and it caught me by surprise as he's always been such a supporter. Frankly his criticisms (which were heavy and many) not only hurt some, they rattled me and left me worrying about whether or not I'd wasted a year of my life.
But this is why we look to more than one beta reader, right? I was very fortunate this time to have several readers (Not always been the case)--two of whom were friends of a friend who'd himself also written a book. Their generous feedback (considering they were doing him a favor more than me) was not only very positive--they were constructive and largely consistent with one another. It made it easy to address the fixes and face the weak spots in the plot.
I realized that the friend who had been so hard on the book had offered some very valid feedback--not only were many of his observations spot on--but it also reminded me that I can't--shouldn't--write to suit everyone. Sometimes the reason someone doesn't like your work is because they weren't the target audience.
Too, I think we writers are often harder one another than need be--and not always because we want to see the other person succeed. It doesn't hurt to make sure some of your criticism is coming from people who simply like to read.
It makes sense to pay attention when you get consistent complaints about a scene or a plot problem from more than one person. And it also makes sense to pay attention to very specific comments such as "You have this character walking through furniture here . . ." or "Wait a minute. I thought the character was here. Now you've moved him to here." And statements like "This sentence is convoluted and makes no sense." bear listening too as well. Sometimes we (meaning me especially) aren't as deep as we think we are. :)
When it comes to writing advice, I follow the advice of Stephen King.
He’s not a big fan of criticism, constructive or otherwise. He says that the first draft of a manuscript must be written with the door closed. It’s okay to have an “ideal reader” in mind, usually the writer’s significant other, but that’s all. “With the door shut, downloading what’s in my head directly to the page, I write as fast as I can and still remain comfortable. Writing fiction…can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self doubt…Let your hope of success (and your fear of failure) carry you on, difficult as that may be…even after finishing I think you must be cautious and give yourself a chance to think while the story is still like a field of freshly fallen snow, absent of any tracks save your own.”
He’s also wary of writing courses. “…daily critiques force you to write with the door constantly open…The pressure to explain is always on, and a lot of your creative energy…is therefore going in the wrong direction.”
And last but certainly not least, he relates, “I have written because it fulfilled me…I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”
My pet peeve is vague criticism.
"X doesn't work."
"Y isn't believable."
"I don't like Z."
WHERE does X stop working?
WHAT about Y is not believable? WHEN did you stop believing?
WHY don't you like Z?
If I'm going to understand the critique, I need specifics: as many of the W5 as I can get.
Anyone who responds with a request for more information with something like "I don't know. I just didn't get it." Is no help to me at all.
I once paid for a critique from a person with a good reputation and resume--popular writing book (which I enjoyed), online classes, etc. The crit. was supposed to be in four steps, each one building on the other. It wasn't too pricey, but I was pretty strapped for cash, so it was a big decision to mail off that check.
When I got back the first response, the expert had one suggestion--a major change to the story (the literary equivalent of turning a serious drama into a light-hearted musical). It was a change I didn't agree with and didn't want to make, but I mulled it over. Surely, this person was right? I mean, they had a reputation. They were a professional. I paid them to tell me this!
The problem was, if I didn't make the change, there was no second step. I had three steps and emails coming to me and if I didn't play ball, what was I supposed to do?
I considered making the change "just for the experience"--maybe I'd like it! Maybe it would work better. That sort of thing. But I just couldn't picture putting all those hours into turning my project into something I didn't want it to be.
In the end, I sent off an email, thanking the expert for the input, but saying I just couldn't make myself make that suggested change. They wrote me back, saying okay, they understood, etc. And that was that.
I haven't paid for a professional critique since. My writing buddies are great at trading crits and if their vision doesn't match mine, I'm no poorer for hearing it.
I follow it if the ones offering it are the ones who are going to be cutting the check.
I follow it if it's given by others who are pointing out mistakes I should have caught-grammar, punctuation, plot holes, etc.
I ignore everything else, because I haven't yet had one beta tell me what I really need to know. And that is if the mss is marketable. Will it sell? Will an agent want to rep it? A publisher buy it?
Not a single one has EVER been able to do that. So they're feedback is pointless for me. Sadly, myy own intuition has proven more accurate than any beta.
I guess it all comes down to whether or not you agree with the advisor/critter.
What I really don't like is somebody trying to make me change my story to fit their style and idea of what it should be. I have a style, such as it is. It's mine and I'm keeping it. You want to write the story? Then go do it on your own time and don't waste mine.
Good, this is so far down in the comments queue, I don't have to worry about anybody critting my comment.
Haha, Marva, you're wrong -- I'll comment on it. :-D
I agree with you wholeheartedly. When it comes to writing, "I'm the decider." I get to say what happens, when it happens, who it happens to, and what they bloody well have to say about it. That's because I'M THE ONE WRITING IT.
You want to change it, go write your own story. It's that simple.
I listen to critiques when they give me an "Aha!" moment, or when they come from an editor who is paying me, or when they come from someone in my intended target audience.
Worst critique I ever had was from a well-known fiction author at a writer's retreat I had paid large bucks to attend for ten minutes of his/her time. My submitted pages had not been read as had been promised, and all I got was a quick scan, some picking at characters names, and a confused ramble about something in someone else's work.
One of the best, well reasoned and thought out and typed on 2 pages, was from a 14-year old boy who had read my YA fantasy novel.
I do feel I owe thanks to anyone who gives up several minutes to hours of their life to read what I've written. After all, it can be embarrassing or distasteful for them, too, if they don't like it!
Most of the time I listen to critiques, although I often change them in a way that's different from what was suggested, trying to correct the original problem in my own way. But when I don't agree with a comment, I set it aside for a while and mull it over. What made this scene/character/word choice not work for them? Is it a one-off, or do they have a valid point? I'll often have another person critique as well, so I will ask them, too. In the end, I still have final say--at least, until I have an agent/editor!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/23/2008
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Much like a new mother, I have sufficiently forgotten the pain of birthing the past few blog contests and am ready for another. So..... contest next week! Who can stop me? No one! (Remind me of my bravado next week when I'm nursing a drink and a shot of good old-fashioned remorse).
But since this is your blog and you have been kind enough to let me write here for a while, I'm wondering: what kind of a contest should it be? A hook contest? Another title contest? A worst contest? Book covers? Short fiction? Random lottery?
And, for that matter, short of an outright offer of representation (which I can't do) or money (which I don't have), what should the winner receive?
It's going to be fun! I think!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/16/2008
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According to PW, there are 3,000 books published PER DAY. Now, granted, I'm sure this figure includes self-published books, things like trade manuals and everything else under the sun, but that is a whole lot of books. Without question, there are more books being published today than ever before in the history of humankind.
Is this a good thing?
One thing I always hear is that the publishing industry puts out too many bad books. "Too many books -- too many BAD books!" I always tell these naysayers that they just bought the wrong books, because there are more good books published every single month than would be possible to read in an entire lifetime, but I won't deny that there are quite a few mediocre books that hit the shelves, some of which even sell quite a few copies.
What should be done about this? Hypothetically, should there be fewer, better books and should the publishing industry invest their resources in these? One of the problems with so many books being published is the sheer abundance of options is one important factor in the gradual disappearance of the "midlist" -- books that sold fine but weren't bestsellers. This abundance has helped to fracture the marketplace into niche markets, leaving only a handful of mega-bestsellers at the top who are commanding large advances.
Or do we benefit from having 3,000 books published a day, some of which rise to the top, but most of which languish in anonymity? Consumers have options, niche books are finding their markets, and small gems that might not have made the cut in a blockbuster-driven publishing clime are published by small presses every single day.
So you tell me: should we publish fewer books or more? Which is better for readers, the publishing industry and literature as a whole?
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/19/2007
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I'm kind of obsessed with Christmastime. I know some people find it stressful, what with all of the good cheer, colorful lights, and egg nog, but I seriously can't get enough Christmas. Santa, bring me a bestseller!!
So last night I was thinking: what's your favorite December holiday book? Doesn't just have to be Christmas (this is an equal opportunity blog!), but there are so many awesome candidates to choose from.
With apologies to Charles Dickens, I'm going with THE POLAR EXPRESS by Chris Van Allsburg, which manages to be awesomely Christmassy and nostalgic and yet slightly scary at the same time. It just so happens that my favorite Christmas songs are also the ones that are a bit wistful and sad, like "I Heard the Bells" and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" -- what can I say, I like a nuanced holiday.
What's yours?
It will always be Dr. Seuss with HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! I have the boom somewhere in between the many books that are housed in the two bookshelves in the box which I occupy in my parents room!
This is the first time I'm the first one commenting...it must mean something good is coming for me. ^_^
The Grinch is a great choice, but I have to cast my vote for Dickens. I have a volume of Dickens's Christmas stories, and I enjoy them all. It's hard to beat a story that combines Christmas with creepy, all wrapped up in great writing. As our buddy at 101 Reasons says, I'll never be that good.
That said, last week I read In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd, part of which is the basis of A Christmas Story. It's not *really* a Christmas book, but it was a fun read.
Do Christmas catalogs count?
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris, Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, Home for the Holidays & Other Calamities by Chris Radant -- all very "nuanced" Christmas reads.
You know, usually I think Charles Dickens' Christmas stuff is too cheesy(and overplayed, butchered to hell by modernization), but I had a change of heart when I was dismissed out of hand as unChristian lately for not doing anything other than NOT be bad... no active good/charity etc. Soooo... yeah. All of a sudden I can kind of empathize with Scrooge. I don't think he meant to be a jerk, though, of course(and Dickens could empathize with just about anyone- I always liked that about him). So my favorite this year is Dickens' Christmas Carol. BTW dude, thanks for mentioning "I heard the Bells." I think I'd never heard it before because it's too Christian for Christmas radio- you know, mentions God and a one-line note on a theological crisis. Thanks! It's a nice contrast to most of the season.
Scott in the spirit of continuing on your trail, I read a book recently that I've absolutely fallen in love with. It too has nothing to do with Chritmas. But since Mr. Bransford nicely promised fairness in allowing non Christmas entries here it is: THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Carlos Ruiz Safron. You have to read it. Everyone must read it. If you haven't, you honestly don't know what you are missing. It is so seductive, and so beautiful...I just totally, I can't believe I paid 3.99 for it (University bookstore sale...they know how to reel me in).
Though I thought the movie was a steaming pile of...coal, I also really enjoyed the book the Polar Express. I think what really did it for me was the picture of all the kids in their pajamas sitting in the train car drinking hot chocolate. Everything looked so warm and friendly (all yellows and reds) and everything outside the train windows was cold and dark (black and blue), and I liked the contrast. It made me feel fuzzy. It was a bit scary, and sad at the end as well, when people stop being able to hear the reindeer bell, but that's part of why I liked it.
The movie really was just wretched though.
The Polar Express.
And no, not the movie. The book. The movie annoyed me.
Like others have said, I also love Dickens, The Grinch and In God We Trust. How about a Christmas short story, though? A Terrible Night is my all-time favorite Chekhov!
We have quite the collection of Christmas books in my house. I give each of my three kids a Christmas themed book every year as a gift from the jolly old Elf.
One of my faves (my girls love it too) is ELOISE AT CHRISTMASTIME by Kay Thompson. They used to dream of going to the Plaza and seeing where Eloise lived. We never made it before they closed it down...
The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern is the story that inspired It's a Wonderful Life, which is such a great Christmas story. Unfortunately, the movie is much better and more nuance-y than the book. The Gift of the Magi by O'Henry, though, is perfection. Definitely sweet but wistful. And I can never quite remember just how he unveils the punchline, so it's fresh every year.
My favorite holiday book?
Charlotte MacLeod's first Peter Shandy mystery, REST YOU MERRY.
An Idiot Girl's Christmas by Laurie Notaro
Long time reader...first time commenter. Or is that commentator?
Christopher Moore's STUPIDEST ANGEL. Nothing says holiday spirit like zombies attacking a church full of revelers and a fruit bat named Roberto. Ah, good times.
Definitely The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell! I also like O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi, but can't get over the fact that she cuts off all of her hair. Why? Why?? I have a thing about cutting hair, and I'm looking forward to the day when I'll be one of those old women with hair far too long for their face, and seventy cats.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss.
Both the book and the television version with Boris Karloff hold special places in my heart.
I saw about half an hour of the movie on cable once and was glad that I had not paid to see it in the theater.
I found it painful.
Happy Holidays!
Linda
I love Christmas too. Well, there are things that I don't like about it, like pressure, etc., and responsibility, but I love the joy and peace and celebration, the camaraderie, and yes, the silvery shimmery sparkling stuff and magic of surprises and the packages.
And the singing. Everyone can sing a carol. And in their real voices too. Not just church voices and karaoke voices.
I love the song The First Noel.
I love the ghosts of Christmas in Charles Dickens although I really am ready for another story line.
Peter Pan is my favorite Christmas story. I heard it and also saw the Disney version of it for the first time at Christmas and now I often think of it as a Christmas story.
And I love short stories at Christmas, how they come out in little books all by themselves. I like the ones that are fun to read as an adult but that children can appreciate too. Books that can be read aloud to a family or a lover. Short, funny, sweet ones that make people feel connected and warm together. I thought there were some very nice scripts on that Steven Spielburg TV show, Amazing Stories, about Christmas.
Great topic! My own faves: A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, by Truman Capote, and MEMORY OF A LARGE CHRISTMAS, by Lillian Smith. More details over at my blog: http://lsparkreader.livejournal.com
All best,
Linda Sue
My husband and I read Max Lucado's Cosmic Christmas together every holiday, but I don't know that I have a favorite holiday book.
does Shakespeare's Twelfth Night count? If not, then the Grinch is the topper for me. I just am not that big a fan of holiday books.
I'll go for songs:
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Preferably sung by Judy Garland. Major nuance there.
And modern, how about "2000 Miles" by the Pretenders?
I love Christmas. I have a bunch of regular parties and get-togethers with family and friends. Too much food and drink and a lot of singing.
Bring on the carols!
Lest we forget, Ebenezer (literally "stone of help") Scrooge was, in the end, a redeemed man. If someone calls you a Scrooge, smile, it's a compliment.
My favorite Christmas story? The one in Luke.
I guess I don't really have a favorite book with a holiday theme, but someone up above mentioned David Sedaris, and I immediately thought of "SantaLand Diaries."
I enjoy reading my little girl The Little Tree which is about a little tree (yes, really) that wants to be a Christmas tree and finds happiness when the little family that live in the little big city take it home. But what happens when Christmas is over? does that make it nuanced?
The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. It's a bit longer than her other stories.
I've loved it since childhood. Now, my 7-year old enjoys reading it (to the cat!).
There's a great British-made video which does justice to the story.
I'm going to second Michelle's vote for O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi."
I remember when I first read it as a kid, the budding writer in me got her first impression of the importance of an ironic ending by reading that story.
"Grinch" and "Christmas Carol" were also stand outs when I was a kid - but like a lot of Christmas stories, I experienced them as movies/TV shows rather than books.
Though someone else already mentioned it, (Drat!) Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris is a classic.
The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket -
Oh, and Oliver Twist for the fireside read.
Good Housekeeping used to put out Christmas short stories when I was a kid and I remember pouring over them. One of my favorites was a story by Madeline L'Engle which has since been published as a kid's book, called The 24 Days of Christmas. It had all the joy and excitement I felt about the holidays as a kid, as well as some disappointments and the lesson about what is really important. It was about the family I hoped I'd have of my own someday.... and now I do!
Still, the Christmas story in Luke never, never, never gets old. It is amazing and beautiful every time I read it!
BTW: I Heard the Bells became one of my favorite carols last year when I read all the words, including the verse that is almost always deleted, about it being war time (it was written during the civil war, I think). I copied it and sent it to about 100 troops with Christmas cards and candy canes last year. It's all about HOPE!
The Secret Life of Santa Claus, by Gregoire Solotareff. A picture book full of wry, wistful illustrations. Who knew Santa longed to play the violin?
I love all the traditional Christmas stuff. My favourite book: Twas the Night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. And my favourite carol: Silent Night.
I haven't read a lot of Christmas books, so it'd be between The Grinch, though I usually just watch the video with Boris Karloff, and A Christmas Carol. Of course, there's the Christmas story in Luke, but I think that one almost goes without saying.
As for a favorite song, the list goes on and on and on... Some that come to mind immediately are O Holy Night, The Little Drummer Boy, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and One Small Child.
HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, of course! I know all the songs from the movie by heart, too.
The previous comment is deleted because I misspelled "Grinch." I should be whapped over the head with a Christmas tree, I swear...
I was a GRINCH girl until my husband introduced me to Terry Pratchett, and now my favorite read-it-every-year holiday book is HOGFATHER.
Isn't Terry Pratchett divine!!!!!
I couldn't believe my luck when I went to hear him speak in Ann Arbor at Borders Bookstore there a few years ago.
He came out, this little magic fellow, looking like he was (really, even if invisibly) in his bathrobe holding to a beer (like he says, he writes in this getup every day) and said: "Wow, my whole North American fan Club is here!!!" People had come from Ohio and parts south. NO ONE I had ever known, (with ALL their degrees in English too) knew who he was, except for my daughter and myself that I'd ever heard of, but here were these two hundred of his fans. He was THE FUNNIEST person I have ever had the privilege of listening to talk. (Robin Williams, you will have to take the second seat.)
Terry Pratchett for Christmas???? Yes!!!!
I'm taking it a completely different direction: Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo. A gift to the spirit, filled with spirit and generosity, never mind funny.
The Jolly Christmas Postman, definitely. It loved it. It came with all these little letters and gifts from fairy tale characters.
Okay, I love the Grinch, and Dickens' Christmas Carol, and Clement C. Moore's "A Visit From St. Nicholas," but let's not forget that great classic:
THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER by Barbara Robinson. That one is a scream.
But one of my must-reads each year is THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS by JRR Tolkien. I LOVE that one!
Year after year, a particular passage in Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee reminds me the spirit of Christmas a hundred years ago and two thousand years ago. I know I didn't personally experience Christmas during those periods but I like to think about them.
I put an excerpt in my blog so I won't put it here.
The beginning of Ben Hur by Lew Wallace recreates the birth of Christ in a way that plops readers right in the middle of the era. I can almost smell the desert air.
A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote (short story) and The Best Christmas Pagent Ever, Barbara Robinson (sadly, out of print).
We read these w/family every year. We also always watch Christmas Vacation (w/Chevy Chase), Home Alone (first one only), Love Actually and Die Hard (first one only).
It's all about tradition.
Don't know about favorite, but it hasn't been mentioned yet; The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans.
Ooh... I was about to say THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE OF JONATHAN TOOMEY (which I love, love, love), and then someone mentioned THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER... tough choice!
I discovered a new favorite last year..."The Autobiography of Santa Claus" by Jeff Guinn. A sweet and entertaining tale, and it answers all your questions about the "real" story of Santa Claus...
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Anyone who loves language for its own sake, as well as loving Christmas and all the associated old-fashioned traditions, will love this book. The film-for-TV version with Denholm Elliott is also fabulous, hilarious and deeply moving.
I also adore Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but it's already gotten lots of votes.
The Grinch is classic.
I don't know how much of a Christmas book it is, but, I remember a book from when I was a kid called 'The Swan Princess' and it was actually something along the lines of the lost Russian princess Anastasia. Weird, yes, but I always think of it around this time of year.
Nobody's mentioned my favorite--Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree, by Robert Barry, published way back when in 1963.
Mr. Willowby's tree is too tall for his ceiling (even in his huge mansion), so the butler cuts off the top and tosses it in the garbage. Along comes a bear and picks it up. Too big for his den; off and out go the top, along comes a fox. And so on...down until the little mouse in the mouse nest, back inside the walls of Mr. Willowby's mansion! The black and white and GREEN! illustrations are wonderful. I loved it as a child, got it for my son, and then, later, for a friend of his who's parents own a Christmas Tree farm!
This sums up Christmas for me.
All the children sing
All the dancers start to sway in time
The orchestra begins to play
Somebody pours the wine
The sun and moon collide
Isn't gravity a funny thing
The universe explodes apart
All the children sing
Just finished reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Wasn't the last part about Bali and the funny little medicine man great?! I picture him looking just like the monk in the Comcast commercials.
Crawled across a thousand miles of desert sand
Looking for an answer from a holy man
And this is what he told me with a wave of his hand
He said, a bell in your head will ring
All the Children Sing (Todd Rundgren)
I began collecting Christmas books after packaging a couple of anthologies. Hands down my favorite book (now out of print) is THE SECRET LIFE OF SANTA CLAUS by Gregoire Solotareff, published by Chronicle Books in 1996.
Christmas Day in the Morning, by Pearl S. Buck, illustrated by Mark Buehner. So lovely and the true Christmas message.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/12/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: book recommendations, publishing industry, You Tell Me, Add a tag
The Top Ten Books of 2007 Lists are out in force these days, and while it's mind-boggling that people can even do this (no one read all the books published in 2007... so how in the heck do they decide?)..... let's just go ahead and compile our own best-of list, shall we?
So you tell me: what was the best book you read that was published in 2007?
Aside from my books by my clients, my favorite book of '07 was.............
THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie. Just a really awesome, touching, funny novel.
There are still so many books from 2007 I want to read... I'm not ready for '08! Slow down, time!!!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ... the perfect ending to a wonderful series. I'm still sad it is all over.
On Chesil Beach ...how can you not love Ian McEwan? It was beautiful.
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer ...Such a fun series.
Lastly, I also loved Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I laughed, I cried, and I learned so much. Great, great story.
Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning and Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. Both were beautifully written and absolutely incredible to read.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, by M.T. Anderson.
This list should come in very handy for vacation, thanks!
I second Harry Potter, the writing quality was far above the previous books. Except, perhaps, the Battle of Hogwart's chapter and the Epilogue.
SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU by Peter Cameron. Amazing voice and brilliantly woven text.
I only read five books from 2007 this year, among the 40+ books I've read so far this year. Of those four, it's hard to pick a favorite.
Deathly Hallows is a good choice for favorite, though. It was a nice finish to a fun series that almost lost me after the fourth and fifth books. The fourth wasn't bad, but should have been shorter and was sometime irritating. I disliked the fifth enough that I seriously contemplated giving up on the series. 6 and 7 made me a fan again, though.
I also really enjoyed a book of local history my friend Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg wrote about a family and their farm in her part of NW Massachusetts, A Sense of Place: The Story of the Williams Family Farm. It's nicely written and draws me into the history of the farm and the people who lived there.
Speaking of friends, my pal Kimpei Ohara published his co-translation of Demon Lake by Izumi Kyoka this year. It was my introduction to Kabuki drama and was a fascinating read.
I also read two excellent new books about writing, Hooked by Les Edgerton and Spunk & Bite by Arthur Plotnik, both of which should be in every writer's library, well-read, dog-eared, and tattered.
Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander.
Probably Making Money by Terry Pratchett. I didn't read many books published in 2007, but even if I had read them all, it's likely this one would still be at the top of my list.
Though I read as many books as usual this year, many of them were older books retrieved from my library's stacks, because I found the books published this year disappointing.
I have read a couple of the books on the NYTimes best books list, and had to conclude that the people who picked those books as "bests" hadn't actually read past the first couple chapters.
Of the new books I read this year, my vote goes to Good Germs, Bad Germs by Jessica Sachs, which made a complex and important topic--the interdependence of humans and bacteria--highly accessible to readers.
Deathly Hallows for sure. :) Wicked Lovely and The Luxe were excellent, too.
The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman.
Hmm. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss; Night Lost by Lynn Viehl; Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (I read it in Jaunary, the pback version JUST came out, does that count?)
Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins, The $64 Tomato
Power Play by Joseph Finder - a beautifully crafted thriller.
Notable mention goes to Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and Down River by John Hart.
I have yet to read The Deathly Hallows. Knowing how incredible Rowling is, it's likely she would have gotten my vote.
Notable disappointment: Spook Country by William Gibson. I had high hopes for that one.
My favorites:
PIECES OF MY SISTER'S LIFE (Elizabeth Joy Arnold): A beautiful page-turner, about identical twins growing up in Rhode Island.
AWAY (Amy Bloom): A wonderful novel, with such a unique story and protagonist--I went back and bought her first novel and a collection of short stories after reading this.
RUN (Ann Patchett): My second-favorite Patchett novel, after Bel Canto.
Biggest disappointment? The Amost Moon (Alice Sebold): What a piece of trash. Not that the writing wasn't good, but honestly, I couldn't get past the 4th chapter.
The Zero by Jess Walter
http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Novel-Jess-Walter/dp/0060898658
I'm waiting for The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray to come out. Then I'll pass judgment.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION, by Michael Chabon,
followed by THEN WE CAME TO THE END, by Joshua Ferris,
LIKE YOU’D UNDERSTAND, ANYWAY: Stories, by Jim Shepard
and THE OVERLOOK, by Michael Connelly.
Nonfiction wasn't as purely enjoyable, mostly because the subjects were so bleak, but I liked IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
and THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin,
and HOW DOCTORS THINK, by Jerome Groopman.
Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes
I didn't read a whole lot of new books this year, what with college seeping up all my time, but I would definitely say:
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
I loved The Kite Runner and was not at all disappointed with his second novel. I also read Deathly Hallows this summer, but while I love the series, I don't really feel like her writing is that great. Just my opinion.
I may have only read two books published in 2007 this year - one I read this weekend and one I'm reading now - but seems I've made some pretty great choices. These two are among the best novels I've read - ever! Robert Harris' THE GHOST, and Jean Hegland's INTO THE FOREST.
I listed my Top Ten on my book review blog enduringromance.blogspot.com on December 4th. I'll list the Final Three tomorrow and my Book of the Year on December 31st.
Interestingly, I just realized today that half of my Top Ten were debut novels.
Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon.
Deathly Hallows.
Nearly impossible expectations met and surpassed.
Harry Potter did it for me too, I'd say. I also really enjoyed Ally Carter's CROSS MY HEART -- very fun!
Novel: The last Harry Potter.
Non-fiction: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Brilliant.
Ironic that you should ask this question today of all days, because today I met the author of the book I'm about to say: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson. Still haven't read Kristen Britain's The High King's Tomb, though. I have a feeling that one's gonna be good.
I'm with Brian. It was Peter Cameron's SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU.
Deathly Hallows! Although JKR is still not my favorite prose stylist, it was a smasho ending to the whole adventure.
I find the question overwhelming. I've read almost no book from the year 2007, except for one, which I just reviewed at my own blog:
http://tbdeluxe.blogspot.com/
Man, I am sooo out of it . . . .
I know I already stated mine, but I was torn so I'm also adding Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box - buying a ghost on ebay - fantastic.
Like a lot of the comments indicate, though I read a lot I didn't read that many from 2007...
I did like Deathly Hallows, I thought it was a really great finale for a wonderful series...
Lottery by Patricia Wood was fabulous, even better than my expectation when I picked it up (and it was highly recommended by some blogging friends)...
Another one I really liked was Interred with their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell - I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, but she manages to both pepper the novel with the bard's work and still make it accessible for readers who are not that well versed.
By a wide margin:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Hmmm..... if it has to be published in 2007, then I have to say, "A Welcome Grave" by 20-something writing phenom, Michael Koryta.
You can read a review of this book on my blog, and like Kimber An, I'm going to be doing my own "Year in Review - Books" posts, starting next week.
Right now, I'm working on the best and worst things I've heard this year at my writers groups meetings.
Nathan, if you ask what was the best book you read all year, I'll bet you'll get very different answers.
Interesting so many people have gone with Deathly Hallows! I'll have to second (or third?) some of the previous nominations:
PIECES OF MY SISTER's LIFE: An amazing, stunning debut that made me laugh and cry. I couldn't put it down.
NINETEEN MINUTES: Everything Picoult writes is gold, and this is no exception. Read this after the VTech shooting, which made it resonate even more.
ON CHESIL BEACH: Just a gem. Can be read in an afternoon, but as most of you are writers, I'd recommend reading much slower, to absorb every single sentence.
The Overlook by Micheal Connelly
Aloha,
I must echo Lisa...
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini is a book that all Westerners should see, taste, feel, and breathe.
It's nice to get a new perspective on that broken fingernail crisis or perhaps that ghastly missed job opportunity or Saturday's missed freethrow.
Favorite book published in '07? Fiction: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (great ending to a wonderful series) or Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg -- a different direction for this underrated writer and a serious piece of fiction in genre. Nonfiction: The Discovery of France, a Geographical History, by Robb -- an unusual take on history and a grand travel book, all in one, beautifully written.
ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET by Joanne Proulx.
I have to say I enjoyed it more than DEATHLY HALLOWS and more than ECLIPSE.
(Maybe in 2008 I'll start reading books about people over 20...)
This book has perfect voice and the details are rich. It's totally unexpected and even though it deals with some gritty tragedy, it's full of hope. I love this book.
Ha! I did read a book about someone over 20 this year!
LOTTERY by Patricia Wood. Another book with excellent voice.
Also, like my super-top-favourite (Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet) a female author writing in a guy's first person POV.
I'd have to say the Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkien, even though it is incredibly depressing.
Aloha again,
Forgive me...I guess I wasn't quite through...
A Thousand Splendid Suns
It made me want to give a large hug to womankind!
Ken Follett, World Without End
Pure genius! I waited so long for the follow-up to Pillars of the Earth, and this is brilliant.
Fiction? I'll break it into two categories.
FAVORITE PLOT: I'd say The Thirteenth Tale, which I couldn't put down.
BEST WRITING: Pieces of My Sister's Life.
Non-Fiction I'll also break into two:
MEMOIR: Brother I'm Dying.
A BOOK TO IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS WITH: Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
Monkey Love by John Paul Allen. A Real sneaky horror novel put out by Biting Dog Press. Masterfully written.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Eclipse by Stephnie Meyer
Love is a Many Trousered Thing by Louise Rennison
Gentleman's Alliance 1-3 by Arina Tanemura
=^..^=
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
World Without End by Ken Follett
Most of what I read this year was pre-2007, but I believe that this year was a very good year for YA. I found several excellent books, but Deathly Hallows was my favorite. No surprises there.
THE EXCEPTION by Christian Jungersen.
Water for Elephants...which I know technically came out hardcover in 2006, but paper back came out in 2007.
I don't know if this counts. I don't think I've read a true 2007 at this time, but A Thousand Splendid Suns is on my TBR list.
World Without End by Ken Follett. I was as engrossed in this book as I was in Pillars of the Earth.
I have read 50 books this year and sometimes forget what I read!
Best Middle Grade book of 2007:
ALEX AND THE IRONIC GENTLEMAN by Adrienne Kress. It's funny and silly but has some very dark moments. It's a rare book that a 13 year old girl, 11 year old boy and their mother can all appreciate!
Best memoir:
PRISONER OF TEHRAN by Marina Nemat. A surprisingly hopeful story or torture and survival. I highly recommend it.
I had forgotten about the Children of Hurin. That was quite a good tragedy. Although the antagonist wasn't complex or devious enough, the dark protagonist was very well done.
Clearly, I must be the only person who truly hated Harry Potter. Oh well. Some of that comes from being a non-Christian and predicting that he would be a major Christ figure at that end of it, and thus being totally unimpressed that it was so very predictable (and outside of my own worldview).
Also, she needed an editor way bad.
Thousand Splendid Suns is my pick.
Oh, and Nathan, I'm going to get to Part-Time Indian as soon as I'm done with a project, thanks for reccomending it. It sounds great, and I wouldn't have heard about it if it weren't for you.
The only new book I read this year was Harry Potter whihc was well worth the cost!
99% of the things I read are from the library sale and it's hardly ever new things.
Jay Asher's THIRTEEN REASONS WHY. Great premise, and the writing sucked me right into the story.
I'm surprised at how many people picked Deathly Hallows. Everyone has different tastes, I suppose. Personally, I found it disappointing. It wasn't a bad book, but it didn't live up to what I was expecting. Nothing against JK Rowling, though. As much excitement as the end of the series caused, it would be impossible to please everyone. Oh, am I rambling? Sorry. Going to have to stop doing that. Maybe that'll be my New Year's resolution.
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES got in my head like no book had in years.
Although it's not a 2007 title, SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN
Adult
ON CHESIL BEACH
YA (3-way TIE)
Thirteen Reasons Why
Blood Brothers
Wicked Lovely
MG
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little
the meaning of night by michael cox. set in victoria england, it's not a genre i have ever read. and i loved it.
the blood of flowers by anita amirrezvani would be a very close second. wonderful storytelling and gorgeous prose, set in 17th century persia. a debut novel for make me aspire to.
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, by Junot Diaz.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's new translation of Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE.
Because I read it most recently, Captain's Fury, by Jim Butcher. Closely followed by The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Another good one is Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg.
I would definitely have to agree with sophie w.--I cannot say 100% since the book comes out in 13 days(!), but I'm pretty sure A SWEET FAR THING by Libba Bray will top my list for the year.
Not so much posting about my fav book this year (though I could say Harry Potter, not so much due to its content but rather the whole experience, kind of a once in a lifetime thing), but since you love the Sherman Alexie book (of which I have an ARC but still haven't had a chance to read yet) I thought you might be interested in this little clip from the Texas Book Festival where actually I was lucky enough to be on the same panel as him. Someone filmed it and edited his answers together. They are really funny, and he also reads a bit from his book. It's cool, take a look!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NwiQb8OQ6dY
(and yes I did find this clip while googling my own name . . . so I google my own name, you got a problem with that Mr. Bransford?)
Did someone say google your name???
Lemonade Mouth, by Mark Peter Hughes. Lyrical, engaging and fantastic.
Gabrielle
Thanks for posting the link to the video, Adrienne! And it has to feel good that you made the list here. ALEX is on my Christmas wish-list.
lol! I hadn't read the list yet, I had planned to revisit it with pen and paper and write down a few titles! Yes it is very flattering, big thank you to Ms. Hick!
(glad you liked the link, he's a very charismatic person isn't he?)
Only three of the books I read this year were published in 2007: On Chesil Beach, Deathly Hallows, and Yiddish Policemen. Since I haven't actually finished Chesil yet, I have to go with Yiddish Policemen.
I'm about a year off; the best "new" book I read in 2007 was The Road. The best older one was To Kill a Mockingbird. Duh. That was easy pick.
THE RAW SHARK TEXTS by Steven Hall. Genius.
Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
ANDDDDDDDD
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (aside from the atrocious, completely appauling and now infamous among Harmony shippers alike: The Epilogue.
Magic Lost, Trouble Found, by Lisa Shearin. Wonderful fantasy novel with a kick-ass MC, set in a world that reminded me of Venice, Italy.
Plus a hint of romance, too.
I'm looking forward to the rest in the series. :-)
~Nancy C. Beck
http://writelystuff.blogspot.com
With nothing better to do on a cold/wet Friday night I Googled myself here and found my novella, Monkey Love mentioned . . . cool.
:)
JPA
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/5/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: The Hills, publishing industry, You Tell Me, Add a tag
What can I say, I'm on an e-book kick lately. This week's You Tell Me is a poll, but EXPOUND in the comments section like you've never expounded before!
I don't think ebooks will ever entirely replace paper books, but ebooks are definitely in our future. I give it another decade before they're really useful, though. We're still in the equivalent of the cell phone's bag-phone-plugged-into-the-car phase, ebookreaderwise.
I answered Never, but it really depends. For technical or certain reference books, I've already mostly replaced my books with PDFs or online sources. For example, although I have a couple of pretty good dictionaries, I usually go to a computerized dictionary first.
I also think that poetry's future might be electronic. It's usually short, which makes it easy to read electronically, and publishers just don't have much financial incentive to publish poetry. Problem is, of course, that most, but not even close to all, self-published (online) poetry is crap.
For regular reading, such as novels, stories, or nonfiction I'm reading either for fun or research (which is often even more fun than "fun"), gimme books.
I have tons of research material in PDF form, but I rarely use it because it's less enjoyable to read than in book form, even if I print it myself--which can be more expensive than buying the book, by the time you buy printer ink, paper, and a binder.
A year and a half ago, I swore I'd never read an ebook--I like my paper, thank you very much! But in the last six month or so, I've changed my mind quite a bit. Unless I'm buying one of my all-time favorite authors I go e-book, usually Mobipocket or eReader depending on the discount. If I love it, I'll buy the actual book (you're welcome, my favorite authors!). I absolutely cannot read a book from my computer screen so I load it into my Palm. It's much easier on the eyes, and it makes me look busy ;)
I will probably get to the point where I have to buy some ebooks (I see myself buying nonfiction that way) but I will always prefer regular books.
Yes, when the portable reader is as convient and easy on the eyes as a book. They're not there yet.
Okay, this is like asking which do I prefer - blueberry pie or pumpkin? I like the both and want some of each. The pumpkin I can scoop from the pie plate and walk around eating while I'm doing other things - even when it's piled with whipped cream. The blueberry, on the other hand, is for devouring from a deep plate, snugged in my chair, as I savor the sugary blue juice and flaky crust. If I'm alone I'll even lick the plate.
And another thing; how do you give an e-book as a gift? My Amazon order just arrived with books for Christmas gifts(including Kim Long's "Almanac of . . ." Thank you for putting us on to it, Nathan) and I just don't see how I could give them in e-book form.
So - both. Pumpkin and Blueberry.
I wonder if the e-book will replace paperbacks, with hardbacks shifting position in the market to become a 'luxury' item.
That's how it went with manual wind watches and to a lesser extent stereo turntables. They never really disappeared from the marketplace, but are now mostly high-end items that trade on a certain chachet.
Give you one guess as to how I voted.
Nathan, so glad you're doing polls. Did you know agent Donald Maass asks lots of poll questions of his audience whenever he gives a talk? He's always taking the pulse of readers, trying to get a handle on what books they buy and why.
I'm looking forward to Santa bringing you a Kindle thingie. Curious to see how user friendly you find it.
Never say never. There may be a day that some books won't even come out in print, leaving me without a choice.
Still, I voted never.
Never. I like paper. I like being able to hold a big fat book in my hand. I might be willing to buy e-books...but not mostly.
Nathan,
I'm rarely able to buy books due to these little people running about my house demanding things like milk and sweets.
I belong to three different local libraries.
What do you see happening to our beloved libraries?
I'd like to see an e-book reader that didn't drain your pockets with uploading, downloading, reloading and page loading fees. Also, a clicky wheel. The only reason I bought an iPod was for the cool clicky wheel.
That said, I'll probably only buy books that are only available in e-book format for my e-book reader. Too much screen time is bad for the eyes. (Says the girl who spends 3 hours a day staring at her computer.)
I haven't paid total attention to this since I first read about it in Publisher's Weekly. Once you purchase the books, will you be able to "lend" it out?
Definitely, if only so I can carry around two hundred books at once. :-)
Plus, I can't afford a house big enough to hold all the books I want.
I don't think ebooks can ever replace paper books. A electronic gizmo like Kindle is just as easy to ruin as a book, and possibly less portable. Books are one of those perfected technologies that have staying power. That said, ebooks have a future - one that's probably analogous to dime novels. They'll become a haven for hacks and pulp artists, and a generation later their readers will be nostalgic.
I honestly don't see why people care about the medium. If it was up to me, all my entertainment would come in the form of barroom banter - stories told to me by strangers. All this mass media stuff, from books to teevee to magazines, requires you to use your imagination. So use it, fer godsakes!
Okay I said Maybe - how's that for a definite answer :o)
Spyscribbler - carry 200 books at once - now that I like!
erik I have visions of your work on bar room napkins after that post. I'd read'em!
Being with a large e-book publisher (Samhain, born from Ellora's Cave) I've quickly learned the value of e-books. Not for those volumes you KNOW you're going to keep (like my hardcover Harry Potter collection or my beat-up but collectible Annotated Alice), but for those you know you'll read and not read again. I look at my tiny house and the piles of books on the floor that need a new home and I think "Yes, I need an e-book reader".
I just found out that, as a writer, I can use it as a tax-write off, since I mostly buy tween fantasy, which is what I write. They call it 'market research' HA!
I'd buy a Kindle if they weren't so dang expensive. For now, an ebookwise will do for me.
I probably would have said "never"... but then again, I remember the first time I downloaded an mp3, and I thought, "This has its uses, but I'll never give up buying CDs. Never never." And oh, how ironic that has become.
Then again, perhaps the analogy doesn't hold. If you have a CD, it's easy to transfer it to mp3s; if you have mp3s, it's easy to make them into a CD. That means it's easy to share the stuff you like with your friends, and while we're less likely to give music as a formal gift, we can still give it as a favor. So far with ebooks, there's no easy way to transfer, and there doesn't seem to be one in the making without major changes to the process.
I'll bet the majority of people commenting haven't seen an e-ink display yet. They're really good, absolutely as readable as paper, very sharp with high contrast and no refresh/flickering at all. Once you see it, a lot of doubts will disappear.
But here's where I see it going. Even though I'm not opposed to e-books, the reader that I would buy hasn't been made yet. It would need to have the same wireless functionality as the Amazon Kindle, but be reduced in bulk considerably. I don't want any border around the page and just the most minimal of buttons/controls. It also needs to be black, not sure why that's important, I just don't want it looking like a piece of hospital equipment. It would also be using the next generation of e-ink displays, which can do colour (and even refreshes fast enough to do video - JK Rowling eat your heart out). Could even be flexible or foldable while we're making a wishlist. Basically, it's a about two revisions away from what I want right now.
The second thing is, I wouldn't stop buying books. I'd still want a nice library of classics, books that mean something to me or are straight up essential. You can't have a house with no books in it, it's not right. Similarly, too many books is oppressive, that's why people thrown them out.
So in a couple of years I'll have a little e-reader (made by Apple, no doubt) and a bookshelf that has awesome written all over it. Totally going to happen.
You know I'm one of those booksmellers.
I've just learned to never say never.
My 10-year old is dying for an IPOD. That's just crazy. $250? She got an MP3 player, much cheaper.
But I am tempted to buy my kids a computer--just so they'll stay off mine. Never thought I'd get to that point.
So ebooks are definately intriguing. Especially if there is a backlight on the Kindle and I can read in a dark car without disturbing anyone (when I'm not driving of course).
I don't want to be "Britney Platinum Blonde Call Her" personally. Or anybody on Brody Jenner's phone list.
As of this post, the poll stood at 89% Never or Maybe and 7% Absolutely.
This from people that read a blog about the publishing industry. What would be the response from people coming and going from a grocery store (beyond, "get the F^@& out of my way!")?
sam-
I'd look at it another way. 44% never, but 51% say either yes or maybe. If half of people by half of their books as e-books that's going to result in a significant change in the book industry.
I've read a few and yes, I still read better on the page than on the screen. E-books are great and serve their purposes but I suspect that, for me, they will always be like audio books: Fine for some, but I prefer the real thing, heavy in my hand.
(did I expound enough, or should I write another chapter? This WAS sort of short for me)
Quite honestly, no. LOL. It's not necessarily because I don't think the technology will improve and be close to "the real thing." It's just that I'm in front of the computer _all the time_. It's nice to put all gadgets aside and just sit with a book without the inclination to pop on my email, etc. A reader would probably help, but I dunno... I like the smell of fresh, shiny books. (g)
Because I'm a decisive person, firmly grounded in my own beliefs, I voted 'Maybe'. Because, y'know, they kind of might maybe some day, but then they might not, so I don't really know...
Here's something that's just occured to me. A lot of where civilisation is today is born of a few huge advances in technolgy, like the mastery of fire, the invention of the wheel, and the printing press bringing enlightenment and education to the masses.
We'd still be in the dark ages if someone hadn't thought of typesetting words and printing them on paper. And in the few centuries since then we've invented cars, aeroplanes, radio, television, computers, the Internet, space travel, and blogging literary agents.
We'd have none of those things without the printing press, and here we are debating whether or not a piece of mass produced plastic is going to finally kill off a method of communication that has essentially changed very little since its inception.
Mmmm, smell the irony.
No. I enjoy the look and feel of books.
I have books from the 1800's I adore, carefully. Where is the pleasure in looking over a screen? I love the worn covers and pages showing the books were read and loved by many.
Give me lots and lots of books to curl up with and surround myself with.
Of course, I am also one of these people who mourns the passing of letters, handwritten and treasured.
I checked absolutely, but I'm concerned about quality. I've read a couple of ebooks recently from small ebook publishers and they were extremely poor. The authors were obviously not yet ready for publication, but they were published anyway. That's a concern. I know some startup electronic publishing companies will buy anything they can just to build inventory, and that's a bad thing for readers.
E - books will 'take over' but I think the option for either will remain available for a long time. There will probably be a premium added for the paper versions (tp prod acceptance?). That makes Conduit's 'Maybe' pretty safe, though I can't smell the irony all because of Susan's pies. When the e-book thing takes off & since the cost exposure for production & distribution would be greatly reduced, maybe publishers would take more chances with their acceptance of writers & their (well written)work. I gotta go buy pies now.
Speaking of ebooks, I see publishers are now selling eARCs prior to release of the hardback edition. Isn't that interesting? Is it ethical to sell ARCs? If everyone who's interested in reading the book buys the ARC, will the hardback hold as much appeal? Lots of food for thought. Read about it here:
http://arcaedia.livejournal.com/130842.html
I answered Never even though I've put a considerable amount of effort into my ebook reading software. (Doesn't matter which - I'm not here to self-promote.)
The idea of ebooks is great ... entire libraries in your pocket, read anything anywhere, buy without leaving your chair, lower prices, etc, etc.
The reality is different. Books are a physical product you can buy, hold, sniff, enjoy. And they still have a value when you've read them ... you can pass them on to family, friends, others. You can line your house with bookshelves and set out to collect certain editions. You can get them ... gasp ... signed.
If you're buying something to read, then ebooks will do the job. But to me, wanting to read a book is only about 60% of the reason for my purchase. The other 40% varies, but none of it is met by ebooks.
No way. It'd feel too much like 'work' if I read on a Kindle...sorta like I was multi-tasking at work on my Blackberry.
I love the feel of paper. I love how its edges grow dark over the years. I love poking through boxes full of paperbacks and hardcovers at flea markets. I love cover art with its raised lettering. Most of all, I love having bookcases full of the ones that wouldn't let me toss them into the yard sale box.
My research habits involve opening lots of books at the same time and spreading them out on the desk with book marks and post-it notes sticking out everywhere. I'm willing give E-Books a chance, but how many Kindles will it take for me to hit my comfort zone as described above? Maybe I need to start thinking more linearly as I work. Or, maybe I can't. This question seems to be laden with hidden stressors for me, I'm beginning to realize. Anyone else?
Hi Nathan,
I actually had a quick question completely unrelated to your blog topic (sorry!). I've been trying to research Curtis Brown Ltd, but I can only ever find info on the UK branch. Is the US branch planning on creating a website? Is there somewhere I could find a list of who reps what? Whenever I search, I only see the same two or three names over and over again, but I thought there were more agents? Thanks for your time!
Yes, I have and I will continue to. I just recently found out that some countries don't have printed books in stores like we do in the USA. ha. Are we spoiled or what??? I also discovered that books cost a fortune in some countries. Ebooks are a better choice.
I suppose I should exhibit a little support, since my first two releases start out as e-books. But there's nothing like a real book. Nothing.
Paper, for sure. However, when the industry ever gets smart, it will come up with a reader that someone 40+ can read, that can support any ebook format (or at least a common one), and is reasonably priced. They are no where near that yet. Bought a Rocket Reader, got burnt when they went under. Never again until the industry gets it right.
Probably not. Until there's an E-Book I can read in the bathroom, there will always be a place for paper books in my house.
I agree with whoever said that e-books are great for those books that you intend to read once and toss. I get a lot of free books that I read and recycle - stuff I'd never buy, never want to take up space on my shelves.
Also for traveling, when I read them and leave 'em behind.
Also if I need a book in a big, tearing hurry and can't find it at my local bookstore and don't have time to order it.
I say this as a person who owns many, many paper books and plans to keep buying them.
The only advantage an e-reader can have over a real book, for the general population, is weight. So until an e-reader resembles a folded piece of stiff card, which when forded out can have a left and right page visible at the same time, I don't see it catching on. Also to be really convenient it would have to incorporate other functions such as GPS, maps, photos, video, films, tv, and be something you can write on like a piece of paper. We are a long way from this yet.
The other thing which will really drive the e-book is when publishers can make more profit out of an e-book than a paper book.
Peter
MervynBright.co.uk
I'm curious.
As an agent, do you ask for electronic submissions or need them printed out?
So far, I have not heard of many instances of agents or editors who accept submissions other than paper
I would love to have my entire library compact so I could bring it everywhere. Why wouldnt I, why wouldnt you? The only problem right now is the price. I'm am so cheap! Unless a book is hardcover and attractive I dont spend over 10 dollars for it and I would never normally spend even more than 6 dollars for a paperback. I love hunting for books at used bookstores. Once I found a signed copy of Vivian Vean Veldes ( or however you spell it book's) it was only a dollar fifty. I'm pretty sure the people who worked there had no clue it was signed. So unless the e-books are really cheap I would never use my money on them.
Wait a second!!!!!!!!!!
Now I'll have to to descibe the concept of books to my kids!!!
I never thought I'd see the day.
I can't afford new books so e-books are out unless they end up at the quarter rack at the library book sale...
Interesting question CarBeyond (how many publishers and agents accept e-query). The number appears to be growing. I wonder how many print out the submissions they REALLY want to read.
I don't think it's likely I'll ever pay for electronic books regularly, but not because I'm so devoted to paper books, just because I'm used to finding my electronic entertainment for free.
Additionally, I don't see the ebooks being necessarily a terribly sustainable model for publishers. Not only is it difficult to protect electronic content from unlawful distribution, coming up with and maintaining a systemic method of distribution is bound to be expensive, and the likely result would be a system too inflexible to keep up with the market and changing technology. Plus, there already are several electronic distribution models that cut out the middleman, with varying degrees of success, and a publisher would have to offer far more than their shiny name to compete with those models effectively, at least from an income and reputation standpoint.
I know that if I were a writer, I would never even consider selling my electronic rights to a publisher unless what they were offering me was better than I knew I could do on my own (that just makes sense, right?) Based on my experiences in webcomics, that means they'd need to not only have an extremely solid plan for protecting my material from unlawful distribution as well as encouraging lawful sales, they also would need to be offering me extremely healthy advances and royalties... I would expect to be making on the higher end of five figures a year at least by allowing them to handle my electronic distribution for me.
I realize that sounds much too high from a print market perspective, but my husband and I currently make our entire living from VOLUNTARY payments for an otherwise free electronic distribution product, and that has perhaps given me a different perspective on the electronic market. It may not be the most stable income ever, but if my husband and I are doing that on our own, I don't think it's unreasonable to require that publishers show they can do at least as well before handing over those rights.
I voted "absolutely." I LOVE my paper-and-ink books, and I hope I always have the opportunity to buy them. However, one of my biggest heartbreaks is that I will never own a house large enough for both my family and my books -- at least not all the books I WISH I could keep. (Unfortunately the rugrats take first priority. Darn them.) Every year I give away boxes of books, sadly waving good-bye as the Goodwill truck fades into the distance. Once e-books are the norm, I will NEVER have to get rid of a book again.
Conduit sed:
We'd still be in the dark ages if someone hadn't thought of typesetting words and printing them on paper.
Yes, all that you said is true. A little time spent understanding the Reformation, the 30 Year's War, and its net effect on the development of three continents shows the importance of the press. Publishing the Bible in vernacular languages was the key to ripping apart the largest empire the world has ever seen.
Fast forward to today, and it seems to me that everything moved along at a reasonable pace after that, more or less according to Hoyle. While the technology grounded us nicely and made other things possible, the really interesting bit was the splash the press made when it first arrived.
So if you feel nostalgic for the printed page, remember that there's a decent chance we might live to see the new technologies really turn a corner in ways that are unimaginable now. Charles V might not have seen it coming, but I think we can.
I was watching a program last night on the influenza pandemic of the early 1900's that killed millions worldwide. Part of the method used to track the killer, isolate it and make a vaccine, depended on notes made by doctors who tended to the dying. The doctors notes were published in printed volumes so scientists could study them at a later date. It occurred to me that ebooks are too transitory and that what can be read in an ebook today might not be readable ten years from now as the technology changes. Paper and ink are permanent. I can and have read books over 100 years old. I doubt I'd be able to do that with an ereader. I'll likely read some ebooks but I will always have a library of the real thing.
Linnea-
Paper's not permanent either, if you take the long view!
I've bought a few reference pieces in the form of e-books.
You're right, Nathan. Paper isn't permanent. But a 100 year old book has character and history. When you pick up a 100 year old book you know that particular book has been read for 100 years. You can see it on the flyleaf in the handwriting of its first owner, the first time it's given as a gift, the first time it's sold in a used book store, the stains, little tears and bends in its pages. Books have 'soul'. Ebooks are nothing like them. Maybe it is simply because I love history that ebooks will never replace a real book that I can hold in my hand.
Nathan,
I love to feel the pages between my fingertips, run my hand down the page, smell the book (as Heidi said). The reading is a whole multi-faceted sensory experience for me.
Also, I feel that any house, without the books jammed in the bookshelves of many kinds and types, lining every wall, is a house lacking in soul.
Reading an e-book for me would be like making love to a robot. That might work for some, but it just doesn't get to the "heart" of the matter for me. ;)
I like hanging out in bookstores, losing hours of my life exploring the books inside. That's a habit I developed as a kid, and I'd hate to see it go.
But then, I think about things like PDF files and rich text format, and eBooks aren't that far off. I suppose if they can somehow figure out a way to simulate that experience or, ideally, preserve it, I wouldn't have a problem with buying eBooks on a regular basis. (Sure would save space by not having huge bookshelves filled top to bottom in my house...)
I like that the technology could make "small" books available for years to come. No more going out of print! Also that it can help save trees.
While thinking about this topic, I actually collected a complete large garbage bag filled to the brim of breakage with junk mail and old bill and bank statements over the last year.
Now, I would want to keep my best books always,
but if i am going to save trees, please let's get rid of bills and junk mail first, NOT books!!!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 11/28/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: The Hills, literary agents, publishing industry, You Tell Me, Add a tag
First of all, my apologies for being a day late with my rundown of a rare (these days) non-coma-inducing The Hills episode that not only featured a she-Spencer (!) but also included Justin Bobby.... uh... well, they said he kissed someone who wasn't Audrina. It mostly looked like someone stepped in front of the camera. And Audrina was SO MAD that she HUGGED HIM and WAS TOTALLY NICE TO HIM and GAVE HIM A RIDE HOME and THIS TIME IT'S KINDA SORTA POSSIBLY MAYBE OVER. (Clearly you don't mess with Audrina.)
Justin Bobby was forced to employ his ultimate secret weapon: saying nonsensical catch phrases with his head cocked to one side. I know I'm powerless in the face of phrases like "What do you think I did?" and "You're on hallucinogenics" and "Your friends don't fathom me."
The Hills is back, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, lots of people have opinions about the Kindle and with apologies to the people who like to smell their books and turn the pages, I am of the opinion that at some point in the near or distant future the e-books will take over and while sure, some people will always read books on paper (in the way that some people still use typewriters), and illustrated books and heavy-photography books will probably still exist, I feel like the convenience, affordability, readability, environmental friendliness, and eventual ease of e-books will outweigh the residual nostalgia for reading printed books. In my opinion, someday e-books will comprise the majority of book sales.
In this e-book world of the tomorrow:
- bookstores could be largely a thing of the past (much like video rental stores) -- people would browse online and download directly to their cell phone/reader/organizer/thingamajig and find out about books through word of mouth, TV, and the Internet.
- people would have instant access to just about every single book ever published, anywhere, anytime (Google Book Search is helping make this happen). This part is seriously incredible to me
- thousands of trees would thank you
- big publishers would lose one of their major advantages in the marketplace (namely distribution) and would have to adapt to stay relevant
- there will always be literary agents to help authors navigate this increasingly complex landscape and to make sure they are fairly compensated for their content
- authors will be better able to control their own sales destiny, and if they can ride the wave of word of mouth, unknowns could capitalize in a big way because they're not dependant upon traditional distribution
This doesn't scare me! Honestly I think it's amazing and incredible and a major leap forward in human history. Literally the biggest thing in publishing since the printing press. And I'm not the only one who thinks this: just read Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt's post entitled "Why Traditional Books Will Eventually Die."
My question to you is: When will this happen? When will e-books take over? Or will they? Is it coming 5 years from now? 10? 50? Never?
You tell me!
This will happen when The Eagles keep their word and don't reunite yet again.
This will happen when the rock group KISS actually turns down an offer to make more money.
This will happen when Hollywood refuses to make a sequel to a box office winner.
This will happen Pamela Anderson stops walking down the isle.
This will happen when Oprah selects an Urban Fantasy as her book of the month.
This will happen when Gilligan and the gang get off that island without the help of the Harlem Globetrotters.
I think a large part of it will be if the display on an ebook or e-reader type device gains an information density equivalent to, or greater than, that provided by paper and commercial printing presses.
It's why most people print documents instead of reading them on their monitors--the monitor (on average) provides a resolution of 72 dots per inch. The same area on paper, printed with a press, has a generic resolution of closer to 1440 dots per inch, more if it's a photographic print.
So as of today's technology, in terms of transmitting information, paper is still better for non-dynamic content that doesn't need to update constantly or change. Once e-readers manage to match resolutions, then they will have isolated and eliminated paper's greatest advantage.
aden-
Not sure if you've gotten your hands on a Sony Reader or Kindle, but in my opinion they've really already solved the dpi/readability problem. The only annoying residual is a "wipe" effect, which I imagine they'll figure out soon. I don't think we're very far off from a time when screens are truly as easy to read as paper.
PS: not to mention the fact that on these devices you can adjust the font size -- definitely an advantage over the printed page.
I hope never. I love books. I love bookcases filled with books. I love bookstores and libraries and I can't imagine not holding a paper version I can flip back and forth between, or dog ear, or mark up, or make notes in...you know all that stuff you can do on paper that you can't do on little screens.
If it is inevitable I think it will be a long time coming. Like magazines, I think people love holding a book in their hands, seeing the cover, and feeling the pages...hopefull it's not just me ;).
DRM is going to have to go. When I can loan an electronic book to a friend as easily as I can a paper book; when I don't have to worry about Amazon going away and taking my legally purchased books with them; when I can make notes and highlights in the text as I go.
Also, someone is going to have to perfect an electronic version of walking into a bookstore and wandering through the shelves, grabbing the pretty titles at random.
I think people start calling e-books books and call the other kind paper books (spelled p-a-p-e-r it's that thing that ancients extracted from the tree pulp after they stoped writing on dead animals' skins) twenty years after fourteen year olds refuse to read any other way. Paper book will be a novelty item but will stay here for quite a while like CD never really completely replaced LP. There are people who buy them and people who make new ones...
I'm so glad you said all that.
I've been whispering it around ever since I bought my husband that ipod that plays movies.
Everyone I've said it to (in my writing circles at least) has looked at me like I was a heretic...a blasphemer.
I give paper 10 years.
Hey! Remember on Star Trek, the Next Generation where Captain Picard had that hard-bound, paper book inder a glass case?
We've made it to the future!
Ooooo, I can't wait for the food simulator-thingy to be invented.
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot"
"KFC. Extra crispy. Now, dammit."
They won't.
E-books will definitely have a place in the market, just like audio books do.
They could be useful for technical manuals and other material that is often read on the road or in the field (which ever field it happens to be), especially if they can handle PDF and have a good search mechanism.
They could also be useful for people who have visual impairments that make the print in books hard to read, especially if the readers can read the books aloud.
For those two niches, they are an exciting technology. For casual reading, especially for ardent readers, I just don't see books going away anytime soon. For most readers, I just don't think these readers have any advantages over the traditional book, other than the nerdy-cool factor.
There might be some use for them in academia, where text books are back-breakingly heavy and have gotten as expensive as tuition, almost. If the reader has a good notation feature and makes it easy to print out the notes for study, it could be a great alternative to traditional texts. But, if that happened, I doubt the text book companies would really reduce their price all that much for electronic versions, plus the used text book market would become obsolete.
I just don't think it's going to happen.
Remember in the 1990's when everyone was talking about how POD was going to be the end of traditional publishing? It didn't happen. And very, very smart people--people who were inside the industry, were the ones who were wrong.
I don't know if it will be different with e-books or not.
I think it is funny how Nathan is 100 percent certain that his job won't change. LOL, Nathan!
Anon-
Two questions:
1) What is it about anonymous commenting that makes people so sarcastic?
2) How do you think my job is going to change? Care to elaborate?
And for the record, I didn't say it wouldn't change, just that the role of literary agent will continue to be necessary, perhaps moreso when the landscape becomes more confusing for authors to navigate.
I'm sure you're right. Since I'm one of those who prefers traditional paper books, I cannot begin to imagine the answer to your question. I think I'm probably in the minority.
I do sometimes receive ARCs electronically to review on my blog. I just cannot relax and enjoy the reading experience on a screen. I do my best though, because the author deserves a fair read.
krw3b, I'm still waiting for my replicator to get here too. I hate to cook.
To weigh in on the wrong side of the writerly sensibility, I think the reason this is such a hot button topic here is that the majority of us are writers, which makes us all (I hope) ardent readers... We love our books. Bring them to bed with us (not that way, don't get all offended), take them everywhere we are and expound on them endlessly... when something is that important in your life any change is seen as the enemy.
That being said, with my hearty disclaimer that I, personally, would rather have the flesh and blood book in my hands, the issue isn't really what sells to writers. We're a relatively small percentage of the book buying public. The issue is what sells to readers - and I have to go with Nathan here, ebooks will eventually take over the majority of sales.
There will still be the buyers who want the book, but you can get that through amazon, and I'm afraid bookstores may, too, go along the wayside in time... I give it under ten years - and yes, I hate myself for saying it.
But with the downfall of the paper book comes the uprising of the technologically advanced readers... the technology won't change the need for great stories from wonderful story tellers. I'd wager that everyone on this blog will be able to get their books in either format for the remainder of their lives... there will be enough of us that prefer books for there to be a market for printing them. I don't think they'll go away, it's not like the vinyl album or 8-track, paper books had more than a ten year reign in their venue.
As far as the big publishing houses, I don't think they'll have a problem advancing as long as they take advantage of their expertise and consistently put out quality material... it's the biggest advantage they really have over the start ups, most e-presses don't have the same quality offerings. But this venue will be an equalizer, if the small presses are committed to quality and to their readers, they will have a better playing field to compete on.
I...dunno.
I think I see room for both. I really like techno gadgets (I own a bunch) and I would get an e-book reader (if it was functional and cute and not too expensive) as a way of reading, but I don't see it as the only way I'd want to read.
Then again, I still use a film camera.
i think the scales tip the day they release 'ulysses' for these e-readers with all the hyperlinks to maps of dublin and homeric references embedded. at least that's the day they're going to sell one to me. the wikipedia function is a good start though. my prediction for years 'til ebooks get half the market share: 10. i feel like the amount of books that are purchased as gifts will keep hardcopies in business for a long time (just like CDs vs. music downloads).
I love gadgets and gizmos - love them. But I have to say I don't see it happening.
While I love the reasons you posted (I'm for saving trees to - but they thought plastic bags was a good idea to) I don't think the reasons out weigh those who love an actual book.
Too many issues to be compaired to music cd's and movie dvd's. The book hasn't gotten to the cd or dvd level to merit a gadget and I don't see it happening any time soon.
Plus don't you feel it is a different crowd from the cd/dvd crowd? Librarys and upity yuck-yuck folks would delay any real take over. I don't mean to sound sarcastic or rude - just stating a fact that it may be a different crowd.
You said, "When they're better than books."
I agree, but add, when they are significantly cheaper as an alternative path. We may be forced into e-books by e-conomy.
One of the ways e-books could surpass regular books is by adding in-context community and content links. Start with Shelfari or some such app, find out how books you have rated high match with those of people you also rate high and borrow a book from their shelf. Read a topic in the book, highlight it and search for other books of the same tone, from the same genre, with the same topic.
Also, research could work better, if every time you grab a quote from an e-book, Word automagically places the correctly formatted citation in the document.
If they're locked down and you can't do any of this, then they will continue to bite dogs.
Nathan, I think you should conduct a poll by age group as to who will buy/use this gizmo, or embrace any kind of e-book form.
Something tells me that it's those of us who are old enough to be your mother :-) who reject the idea that paper books will go out of style; my bets it's the oldsters who want to douse the Kindle.
Perhaps as the boomers die off and the kiddies who first started reading on a gizmo or computer screen grow up will you see a beginning of the end of traditional paper books.
Heck, look at what's happening to newspapers.
I don't think it will happen in our lifetime, but I think it will happen within the next 100 years or so.
There are so many factors to consider:
Environmental issues - We are not as concerned about conservation as our descendants will be. Something like Kindle might even become mandated for them.
Economic issues - It will take time for this technology to become priced so that people of all income levels can afford it. No one would want to deprive the poor of the ability to read.
Business issues - At some point in the future, this will cause an upheaval in the publishing industry. Agents and authors will probably still do their jobs as usual, but publishing houses will need to restructure. Houses that are the top dogs now, might not be once the dust settles, if they can't or won't regroup to meet the demands of the technology. The smart houses either already have or will have divisions to handle e-books so they are ready when the change is necessary.
I could be completely wrong on my projections, but this is my theory.
PS: Merry, good point about the skewed demographic here on Nathan's blog.
Ah...I was waiting for this one! "Your friends don't fathom me," is perhaps the best line ever. Ever!
And dork that I am, I had to pause and reply (in slow-mo, no less) the whole "kiss." Let me tell you, MTV missed it. No footage. What they pulled instead was a blurred out image of...wait for it...Justin Bobby leaning in to kiss Audrina. Oh the drama! That's worse than the notorious voice-overs. :) The Hills at its finest. Gotta love it.
And finally she-Spencer. (!) is right. For a minute there I thought perhaps I was on hallucinogenics. Scary!
Wow, I'm amazed at the number of people opposed to e-books.
I'm about as ardent a reader as can be (easily a novel-a-day if I have a good supply and can evade my responsibilities...) but I have no attachment to paper and binding. It's the story that matters. The easier to obtain, read, and carry around the better! If I could get direct writer-to-reader telepathy, I'd take it!
That said, I agree with Barbara. For now, the DRM is too onerous. And the prices are usually much too high.
I don't see it happening within the next 25 years or more. Maybe never. In some ways, it's a neat idea that any book could be read by anyone - -but I think there are too many obstacles still to overcome before we're anywhere near that.
I can't speak to the long term, but in the short term I think it would be a fantastic supplement to regular paper books.
There are so many rare and niche books that it's just not cost-effective to print, but that it's tedious to read on the computer because you have to actually be at the computer to do it. I'd love to be able to download obscure books or PDFs of my friends' writings and read them in bed on a paperback-size reader.
This technology would also be good for some college texts, which cost a bundle and end up being revised every year to reflect current research.
There's room for both old and new technology, I think. Both have their unique advantages.
Nathan, I completely agree with all you’ve said.
But I think it’s still eight years (yep, I know that's precise) until the tipping point.
There will be a lot of advantages for writers, as there have been for many musicians since the changes in the music industry.
People will still be allowed to love books. I love books! I also love my vinyl LPs (super-cool), my CDs, my mp3 files, and my iPod.
I am old school. I love film cameras, records and a world without paper books would just suck.
Absolutely. It's the natural order of things. Not that things are natural anymore. But the Kindle and its ilk are simple and elegant, as physicists like to say, and solve more problems as a format than the printed book can solve. That's the goal, right?
I love books. I have collected them all my life. However, one of the happiest days of my life was the day I donated my entire art and art history library to my daughters' prep school. Giving up stewardship of such physical mass was as liberating as losing weight.
Go, kindle. Light makes right.
I still love my eight tracks and reel to reel. I own a bunch and still have working players. I love my records, though needles are getting hard to find. I love my mp3 player, it holds so much. I write on paper first, then when I am happy I put it all in my computer, than it really starts to take shape. I am hoping for a marriage between real books, and electronic. I am building a library for my children. I have one of the original prints of Swiss Family Robinson, and I actually have a full set of the World Book Encyclopedia. (My kids think these are funny, we actually researched our school work with those.) We have over a five hundred books in our library here at home, and I wouldn’t want to trade them in for the world. E-Books will happen; my worry is not being able to adapt myself and my work to them.
I don't think e-books will ever take over.
Their niche will grow as the different technical details are worked out. And until they can make it comfortable to read in bed, I don't think it'll take over.
Hardcovers are not so easy to read in bed. But paperbacks are nice and bendy, allowing you to shift position and adjust your grip on them to suit. And if you fall asleep on top of them they're kind of pillow-like, their corners don't stab you, your face doesn't stick to them, their batteries don't run low and your page is usually easy to find again because you've bent the binding so the book falls open in just the right spot.
If you fall asleep on an e-reader wrong, who knows what would happen. And how would it handle a little bit of drool?
That little peek into The Hills made my eyes throb nearly out of my skull, and--oh, oh god--blood's dripping out of my nose.
I'll try to maintain consciousness with this:
I think eBooks will become prevalent in the next twenty years. Figure the progression of audio media; cassettes were around for a long time and CD's were only available on a limited basis. But then there was a sudden acceleration, a format which never really took off commercially like mini-disks (sort of like beta in video media, but beta became industry standard and is still used by most network television stations, just the same many radio stations use mini-disks--those that haven't gone satellite). With mini-disks you got the wide-spread prevelance of several digital audio file formats, but mainly mp3, which is easily compressed, user-friendly, and has little loss. This is what made the iPod possible. The Internet only accelerated this. Once software engineers come up with a fluid way to read, annotate, and transfer book media files, the actual hardware will quickly take off just the same way that people now have music on their phones. By the same token, we have a resurgence of things like vinyl which offer a richer, warmer, better quality sound than the lossy digital audio.
It sucks that eBooks are inevtiable for people who have lived in the Twentieth Century. It is the natural order, and I'm curious how they will make things like writing in the margins possible. That's really the challenge programming the software. I'm adverse to it for a lot of reasons, but I think mainly because as living creatures, we fear changes to our environment. As writers, we're afraid of this change because it's hard enough to get published and find a niche in the marketplace and now the game will potentially change, slightly.
laurel amberdine said -Wow, I'm amazed at the number of people opposed to e-books.
I don't think it is so much that the folks here oppose it but just feel it won't happen or at least not for a long time.
So yeah, maybe a poll would be cool but remember we are a pretty cool group to begin with and wont exactly represent the regular reader. I'm 41 and I don't think its the older folks who might resist change.
But then again maybe I'm wrong?
I would like to think there's room in our world for both.
I'm tempted to compare non-fiction on a Kindle device with on-line encyclopedia. The information can be updated regularly which is prohibitively expensive with paper. I agree that text books could be replaced without anybody shedding a tear.
Also, the Tree Thing.
But you know how I feel about booooooks and yes I have a vinyl record collection too.
As for writers and agents, I have to compare this again to the music biz. We've been in music for 20 years. Dizzying changes in that time. Guess what? People are still making music. Record sales are in the toilet. But I still never see my husband because he's in the studio recording musicians. He's clicking a mouse instead of aligning a tape machine...but there is music being made.
Here's what we should really be concerned about, and I think this is happening in the book world already: Anybody with a computer can make a recording/ write a book/ call themselves a genius. The world is polluted with music/ words/ genius!!!
And now I must slink off and not make this comment any longer...
It does scare me. The issue is what do we do about libraries. How does that work. If it doesn't work the way it has for the last 100 or so years, we just created a knowledge under-class. And to me, that is a really scary thing. If you have to have a Kindle and the $9.99, or whatever, to read books--to be informed--then there's a big problem for a democratic society.
I agree with Scott and Heidi and the others who mentioned there's room for both.
Online stores haven't decreased mall presence. But they have provided a valuable addition to the economy.
There will be niche markets where e-books will fare nicely--the ones Scott pointed out, for example.
I don't see paper books and e-books being mutually exclusive.
Great topic!
Two Months ago, I attended a bookseller's conference which featured a number of panel discussions on TEXTBOOKS. Understandable, a textbook is unlike a typical novel; however, as much as the college bookstores want to push E-books (with the same profit margins minus the shipping costs), nobody wanted them. The students wanted something they could write in, highlight, read on a bus, use as a pillow, flip back and forth in class, and dog ear the corners. The professors didn't want e-books or textbooks. They wanted to use excerpts and journals and others stuff (some of which is copyright protected but they don't care about such matters unless they hold the copyright.)
So I don't know if the E-book like we know it is the bullet that will take out the traditional book, but it's obvious that there's a change on the horizon. I'm thinking it will be a slower change than music and DVD rentals, but change is coming.
I think Nathan's job will be more and more important. The way I see his job will be more and more of a career manager than of a contract negotiator... It will be go to that talk show (webcast) and not to that "The Hills" fan club there are only people over seventy in that loony bin... If you were plugging biker chick erotica the geezers will love you but you are writing about the Italian Renaissance - nobody over the age of 12 is interested in that... Or that psycho albino monk is so original! It will be a hit, I can almost smell it..
Give it a couple years of tweaks to the interface, a couple more for a cool design, and a few after that to build the market to the point where we get economies of scale and availability of material. I'd say around ten years for general acceptance and a solid market share.
One of the cool things I predict is that, as paper copies of most books fall out of favor, you'll see really nice binding for those that do exist. Everybody who wants the cheap copy will get it electronically. Nifty extras will be provided to tempt the rest.
Well, I'm sorry but prefer to live in denial. I NEED my bookcases packed with all the books I love.
If it doesn't work the way it has for the last 100 or so years, we just created a knowledge under-class. And to me, that is a really scary thing.
Amen, brother. We are already well underway to doing this, given the decline in public education and public discourse. Libraries are one of the few genuinely democratic institutions left. Without them, we might as well admit we are living in an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy and call it a day.
I think it's interesting how passionate people are about this. I love books. I really do. And I not only write, I also work in publishing. But I'm kind of like ehn, if we move to digital, we do, and if we don't, we don't. We'll adapt when/if/as the time comes.
It's the content, not the physical object, that matters to me. Truth and beauty and love can be communicated just as easily on screen as they can on paper. As long as words still move people, I don't mind delivering them in whatever format is the most useful to them. Now, if we ever decide words are obsolete, we have a problem.
I don't see why we can't have both. I like ebooks, and with the right reader I can see myself loving them. In a, you know, healthy and platonic way.
But the book as it currently exists has been around with very little change for hundreds of years. That's because it works very, very well. Certainly print runs will get smaller as ebook sales get to be a bigger chunk of the market, but there will always be people who for whatever reason prefer a physical book.
Think of it this way: if I drop a book in the tub, it does not destroy the rest of my library and electrocute me. If I drop it onto concrete, it does not cause all my books to fly into a lot of pieces that cannot be put back together. If I lose one book, I still have all my others. And the batteries never run out of my book just as the pilot announces that we're parked on the tarmac for the next six days*.
I suspect textbooks will be the first to go entirely ebooks, and I suspect that print books will remain in place primarily for libraries. Keep in mind that not everyone can afford an ebook reader. Or a computer. Or an iPod. Or a cell phone. Or a car. Or food. But they can still go to the library.
*of course, I may run out of book at that point--in which case I hope I brought an ereader along. See? We can have both.
The real problem will be managing the licencing and copyrights to the media files. (Music files now fly around everywhere without much regard, so that whole issue will have to be resolved, too.) It's not the fall of civilization. Just think, we'll have an ultra-literate global society since we've increased the access to information. And if they add a function to one of these 'readers' that translates between languages, there will be no boundaries and nations once confined by dictatorships or totalitarian rule that block information will not be able to suppress the people's ability to reach out to the rest of the world.
Paper copies of things aren't going anywhere. In such things as the legal field, judges and attorneys still want paper copies of contracts and transcripts.
Never. Although, I like the idea. It doesn't exclude writers from the equation.
Remember when Final Fantasy came out with an animated movie and everyone said that animation was so lifelike that actors would be out of a job. Ten years later, Beowulf. But it is still one in thousands. I think people will always want books, but maybe there is a market for an alternative. Time will tell.
I'm an oldster (I wrote my senior thesis on a typewriter, yes, that old), and I can see having one of these in the future when they are not so expensive. I agree with Heidi - there's room for both. I would use it when traveling, that way I won't be embarrassed if I'm reading trash on the plane (no one will know!!!!!).
Plus, if I'm on a remote beach in a foreign land (I can dream, right?) and I run out of things to read, and the resort has internet . . .
On an aside, I'm reading Feed by M.T. Anderson right now, so the whole technological progress thing has made me a little nervous.
I think it will have it's place in the world of words as another vehicle to distribute said words but I don't think it will ever completely take over the market. Don't forget, there's a whole world outside the US that is still way behind on the tech front.
Plus technology breaks at the worst times. Books don't break.
It feels like we're already on our way and it's mostly a matter of technology. My guess is it'll be a clear trend within ten years, just like watching movies on portable devices is a clear trend now. The Kindle doesn't seem quite portable enough: an early step maybe, but not convenient enough to be there yet. I think it would take technology like a cheap flexible display screen that could be compressed to fit into a pocket, like a pocket book does (sort of), or maybe a heads-up display about comparable to a pair of sunglasses. Given resolution of the screens on iPod and similar devices, the heads-up display doesn't seem too far off, especially since it would play movies, display web pages, etc. as well. Then it would just be a matter of how long it takes people to adapt to the distribution (a la Amazon) and paying for the device. There are still a lot of older baby boomers who won't use online services.
I'm curious why publishing houses would survive, though. Basically, their function is to marshal resources. Remove the need for most of those resources (paper, presses, physical distribution, advertising budget) and the need for publishing houses pretty much goes away. Then publishing would be a matter of writing, editing, simple layout, maybe some artwork, a basic sales contract with an e-distributor like Amazon. And that contract could be automated pretty easily, which means that agents as we know them probably wouldn't be needed either (sorry, Nathan). Prices would go down, but more of the profit would go to the author/editor (I'm guessing some sort of online collaborative process would develop). It would be self-publishing on steroids with no more advances and every hobbyist doing it. I imagine that, with no more gate-keepers, the landscape would be a lot more like U-Tube and the blogosphere: a sea of low quality stuff around with the occasional good piece floating to the surface.
As a writer, I don't know if that should scare me or intrigue me.
Oh, and copyright/piracy issues would be a mess. That's definitely scarey.
Nope. I don't think they'll take over. They're not reader friendly.
On the other hand, I have a much more reader friendly give-away on my blog today--a brand new compact DVD. And shipping is my Christmas gift to whoever wins! Can't beat that for friendly :-)
dave-
I think publishers will still be relevant, just in a different way. They are still the ones with resources for advertisement, co-op money and placement, they provide editorial services and of course the endorsement that comes with being published by a major publisher. It seems to me that their position will be weakened somewhat, but I don't really think they're going anywhere.
And contracts are getting MORE complicated, not less, with the advent of new technologies and a rapidly changing environment. This increases the need for the expertise afforded by literary agents.
We're not going anywhere either.
This is tough one. The modern technology is very exciting though. I hope there will always be room for both. For authors, it's way more exciting to have a hardcover book that WE wrote in our hands--something tangible. But of course if the new wave brings mass sales, can't complain about that.
I think the only people that would gain from this would be the Publishers. I mean there's definitely gonna be less cost involved with publishing an electronic book and I don't see how that will give the authors more money. Especially when the electronic books cost considerably less. The lower the book price, the lower the royalty payout. Right?
And the following comparison is a leap but electronic greeting cards haven't ousted the paper card industry? I think the Kindle and E-Books will be an added surplus to publishing and book sales with print books still in higher demand.
I'm thinking Booksurge is going to bigger than this Kindle thing and possibly put all agents out of work. I'm just kidding. Nathan, I have no doubt that you'll be the last agent standing for a good long while:)
No doubt you're right, Nathan. I was just putting my speculative fiction hat on, while you're monitoring the industry, real world, from the inside.
I sure hope so, anyway. I don't really think I'd like the chaotic future I was hypothesizing. I'd much rather have collaborative specialist-to-specialist relationships with an agent and editors. Looking for an agent is probably about as entrepreneurial as I'm comfortable with on my own.
I've been doing more thinking on this and I'm wondering if there will be a difference in the way writers get paid.
(Not that I've been paid for writing- YET)
I tried to think of more ways an e-reader would be handy. Weekly dose of People mag? Maybe. But wouldn't that be like taking your laptop to the can with you? Come on. Admit- where else do you read trashy mags???
I'd like to hear what students think. Lightweight, easily updated? OR highlight, underline, make notes in the margins?
I'm using a gorgeous MacBook right now but I get irritated when I'm on a hot streak and the batteries wear down. My Moleskine never runs out of batteries. And the debate rolls on...
I thought about this thread last night while I was reclining on my bed, reading Iceland's Bell by Halldor Laxness. I asked myself whether I'd be as comfortable holding an ereader as I was holding the book.
I don't think I would be. I think reading would lose some of its intimacy in those curl-up-with-a-book times. I realize that's largely psychological and it reminds me of back in 1983 when I was writing with a computer and friends said they could never do that because the computer puts distance between them and their writing that they don't have with a pencil and paper. My thought then was, the computer is a tool and the pencil is a tool and it really doesn't matter which tool you prefer.
Ereaders might be the same kind of thing. Maybe it doesn't matter how the story is delivered, not really, but to the person on the other end, it might. Cold plastic (or even warm plastic) doesn't match the feel of a book.
I thought of another disadvantage. I'm a research addict. Whether I'm researching something for a writing project or just for fun, I usually have several books around me, open to relevant pages so I can compare what they each say. I can't afford that many ebook readers.
Even this Laxness book I'm reading. It's not an easy book, and it's taking me a while. It contains a number of cultural references and Icelandic and Latin phrases that aren't familiar to the average English-speaking reader, so I'm frequently flipping back to the endnotes. If I could mouse over the term and have the note pop up like it might on some e-readers now or in the future, that would be a cool thing (and another reason why these things would be useful for students).
But often, reading involves flipping around in the book. I might need to flip back because something I read makes me want to double-check something that I read earlier in the book (like, to admire a writer's use of foreshadowing), or I might need to flip ahead to the endnotes or glossary or a map or whatever. That's so easy in a book.
SO, I think that we'll see more and more ebooks as time goes on, but I just don't think the paper book will go away, especially as paper scientists develop better recycled paper or even a synthetic substitute. But I just don't think that integrated circuits and LCD displays will be the thing that does to paper what paper did to vellum. Something will, someday, but I don't think this is it.
People talk as if MP3s have replaced CDs and downloadable movies have consigned DVDs to history. Well, I was in my local HMV store a day or two ago and they still had plenty of both on the shelves. There is a tactile experience even with CDs and DVDs, a sense of ownership, that doesn't come with the digital equivalents. But the digital equivalents are doing very well. If we apply this model to the publishing industry, I think we'll see both printed books and E-books exist alongside each other quite peacefully.
One interesting thing has happened in music as a result of the MP3 format: new talent is finding its way past the traditional gatekeepers. Word-of-mouth has helped people like the Artic Monkeys and Kate Nash get straight to the public, leaving the big labels playing catch-up. The overall effect has been beneficial for the music industry. The public had gotten fed up with the constant diet of pre-packaged plastic groups the music industry was feeding them. There has been a shift, however, and now the public can find new music for themselves. It's then up to the industry pick up the ball and run with it.
With E-books, we could see the same thing happening. Perhaps writers will establish their own readerships across the Internet, meaning new talent can break through without the accountants having to do profit analysis before signing a new author. One of these days, a new writer is going to become a hit without the assistance of the traditional industry. When that happens (and I believe it's a when, not an if) we'll see some radical changes.
But here's a point: With the ubiquity of the Internet and the emergence of portable reading devices, as well as PDAs and mobile phones that gain more functionality day-by-day, it follows that the way people read will affect what they read. We keep applying this debate to novels as they currently exist as bound paper, or nonfiction books that sit on our coffee tables. As time becomes more precious in modern life, and chances to read become fewer and farther between, how will that impact the nature of the content? If a person has twenty minutes on the train to read twice a day, will they want something that fits that time? Will novels become shorter? Will chapters by necessity become snappier? Will the short story or novella make a come back?
Or will other ways of gathering words and ideas together emerge that fit with the modern world? After all, this whole blogging thing is only a few years old to most of us...
Oh, and in my view, Nathan is spot on: the agent, and the publishing industry as a whole, won't go anywhere, but the nature of what they do will almost certainly be transformed in the not very distant future.
Aloha,
I hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime. I'm a dinosaur. I like being a dinosaur.
I only surf on boards over nine feet in length, with paraffin on their decks and no %#$%#& leashes. I like never talking on the telephone unless I am at home or in some pay booth of my choosing. I listen to music in my car...not voices. (unless, of course, it is a rough day and I'm talking to myself).
I like grabbing a book and taking it on a plane or a train, or taking it to a park or the beach, and never worrying about it needing batteries.
They have not yet made the gadget that I will read books on...
I'm sorry to keep coming back but I find this topic fascinating!
I am interested in what Conduit said about the sense of ownership. That's part of it for me. A downloaded song does not feel real to me. But then, I'm oldish. We old people like the old ways better, grrf grrft grunt.
I think some of us have an identity thing with our books. If it's on the shelf, it defines me, it's part of who I am. This is what I've read. Some people even use their bookshelves to lie. A whole row of classics that have never been opened. Status symbols. Not one of them cost $400 though.
Re: Electronic Books - My Thoughts
Hi. Great topic. Lots to think about in it. Nice touch, the video link too.
OK, to your question:
Where and why do I read? What are my habits and my preferences?
I am an avid reader. I collect books all the time for my library, new books, books I want to keep, reread, share, savor. For Christmas, I am installing eight new Ikea bookcases in my house.
I read approximately 10 to 20 books at a time on a regular basis in bed: usually something like this:
1-3 novels, ranging from Literary Fiction (that illusive genre) to science fiction
1-6 self improvement or spiritual books (Yes, I admit it. I am a junkie for new ideas about how to live well and in harmony - bla-bla-bla, let me at it.)
1-4 reference books, books that give me information on computers, business, formats, art, etc.
1-3 books on philosophy, ideas, theories
Reading in bed is fab. It is relaxed, relaxing, if I want to lean back, think about something, take a break, go to sleep with an idea or a thought or a story passage, I can. All I need are my reading glasses, my books and a lamp. I would miss that most of all.
(Reading on the beach is an extension of that, not to forget you can shake the sand off a book, roll over on it, sleep with it, and its still there.)
I also read on the computer, but research mostly. I gobble up google, whether it is about something that just occurred tome, something someone spoke to me about or connected to a project or writing project that I am working on.
Reading in front of the computer is informational and communicational. I love e-mail and electronic communications. That is reading I start before coffee even.
The biggest problem with computer reading is that it hurts my eyes. I love it for information and communication, but I hate it for pleasurable reading. My eyes feel like two strawberries afterwards.
It is bad for my eyes.
The second biggest problem with electronic books for me is that computers will crash, shouldn't get full of sand on the beach, need electricity, hum, and you can’t unplug with them (unplugging battery dependence too). In addition, they just aren't well loved for the pleasure of the novel, i.e., better send to amazon.com for a novel than read one on a computer.
I WILL read information on a computer, but not pleasurable books or ones I want to really study. I have plenty of friends who publish on the computer. Good stuff too, useful or interesting. But I just don't get pleasure with e-books. They are a must-have and not-available-anywhere-else resort. When I can buy it in print, get back to me.
Personally, I think e-books will be great for college texts and information. It will save a lot of lugging heavy books through campuses or expensive book fees.
However, you would have to wrestle me to take away the pile of books I keep next to my bed to try to replace them with electronic books. I have never met an avid novel reader who takes their novels, by preference, electronically.
I suspect there will be choices and should be. In both cases, bigger print will be needed.
I appreciate, also your take on this subject. I will try to keep an open mind,
(but I have a guard dog for my library coming on e-Bay.)
-CarBeyond
(Typos, like Freudian slips, are usually left behind with great amusement, but in this case, I did try to clean some of them up.)
I get that e-books, to some people, have a slight convenience edge on book books. But not much of one.
I run an unofficial library at my school, as our school library is a quarter of a mile from the freshman building. Though a lot of kids get busted for it, we are not allowed portable electronic devices in the building. I can't see them ever relaxing that policy, because if you can cheat on a cell phone, you can certainly cheat on an e-reader.
Plus, I wouldn't be able to share books I love with people I know will love them too. A good 80% of my group of friends, for one reason or another, is not allowed by their family to go to Books-A-Million. There are times when I'm their sole provider of wordy entertainment. If paper books die off, what happens to that? With e-books, all sorts of bizarro copyright issues crop up if you try to share them. Not just bookstores but libraries would die out, and then what happens to people who don't have an expendable budget for books?
This is a huge bias for me, I admit: just today I put a French-English dictionary in my purse because it was feeling too light (where it keeps company with a Bible, Spanish and Japanese phrasebooks, and the occasional fantasy or historical romance). I love the feel and the weight and the experience of brick-dense paper books, and I'll never stop.
I guess if bookstores die out, they die out, but I want to walk into a bookstore at least once a week for the rest of my life. If books aren't gone 'til I am, not my problem. Though I want my kids, someday, to love books just as much as I do.
Woohoo, soapbox!
I don't know... a paper book won't crash on me or need recharging.
It'll probably be like how the DVD has eclipsed VHS. Hopefully, however, it'll be a lot slower. All that reading on a screen certainly won't do my eyes-that-need-glasses any good.
The thought of not having a bookstore to walk into a blow my money in is a little frightening, to be honest. I mean, yes, I download an awful lot of music through iTunes, but there's still nothing like walking into an actual music store and browsing.
Or maybe I just don't like change!
I entered the newspaper business twenty years ago. When computers came on the scene and later internet, everyone screamed that newspapers were going to die.
We adjusted by launching a website and on-line job sites.
Twenty years later, our newspaper group has grown. Our classified sales force has grown. There is no gloom and doom in sight.
I love my book. I like to feel it, smell it and hear the 'slap' on the table when I drop it. My daughter, who is 18, spends just as much time checking out library books as she spends online. My sixteen year old son just bought six Clancy novels. Paper ones.
The reading appetite of the public is voracious, whether electronic or paper. It will simply grow. There's no limit.
The other reason I embrace paper novels is because I made a whopping $9.75 on three months worth of electronic sales on my novel. Sheesh.
Nathan! Nathan! Are you ill? It's Thursday night. I came to read your blog and *gasp* there's no entry today. I'm sending you a hot toddy in case you need one (how about egg nog with Crown Royal?), and hope you'll be back soon.
The best thing about paper books is that you don't need any special technology to read them. You buy them, stick them on your shelf, and barring flood, fire or vermin, you can read them over and over for decades. Nobody suddenly takes them "off line" or switches the technology on you.
If you buy an ebook in 2010, are you still going to be able to read it in 2015? Or will the technology have changed so much that it will be like trying to find a way to read a 5 1/4" disk in today's world?
The environmental issue isn't cut and dried. Electronic books use environmental resources too. Unless your ebook is solar-powered, you may be using nonrenewable energy every time you read it. Whereas paper is a renewable and recyclable resource, and doesn't use any more resources after its initial creation.
Thanks liquidambar. Now that you mentioned renewable energy, I can comment on here and count it as work.
It will take one more generation after this one, about 20 years. And you forgot to mention that millions of trees will be saved when all newspapers and magazines can be accessed on the book readers, probably along with tv and radio, music, etc. A ubiquitous device to read and see everything.
As my husband commented, trees may be saved for newspaper and magazines, but people WILL print out their books. How many trees will that save?
I've read quite a few books on my Palm. The feel of reading on it versus a real book in hand wasn't a dramatic difference for me. I liked having a dictionary handy to look up words which I could more easily do on a Palm.
However, I've purchased only one e-book. I can't say as I would purchase another e-book. Why? It's not the feel, but the value of what I've purchased. I can use a software program again and again and still have a sense of its value. A book, I may read once or twice or just buy if I really like it. I can't resell or donate an e-book. (Sorry, have to make room for the new ones.) To sell me on purchasing an e-book would be a low price, but unfortunately at the author's and publisher's expense.
For big time travelers e-books can be a nice solution to space. I like to read some history books when I travel- usualy 700+pages and hate sticking them in my bag and hate leaving them behind. * Portability is an issue. Good travel solution. I believe the ebooks may offer some marketing gimmicks that pull in readers to buying into new authors. I hardley ever buy any books at the book store any more. All *new* used books on sale on Amazon or Alibris or whoever else. That said, I'm an online browser and the ebooks tool may be the next thing for Pushing options to people and subsequently have increased success over time. Adoption of the online ebook is just a question of time and ultimately could represent a salvation for books over time. It seems that the readership community is getting older and older and its good to see a technology that may put more books into young adults hands. Old schoolers may stick with paper but change is on the way for a younger generation.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 11/14/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: America's Next Top Model, literary agents, publishing industry, You Tell Me, Add a tag
Way back in the dark ages of March 2007, I had a post that linked to an article about the rise of Young Adult literature (YA for the acronymically gifted) and how the doom and gloom forecasts about how the kids aren't reading are a little gloomier than the situation warrants (Sure kids don't read. Except for HARRY POTTER. And Lemony Snicket. And TWILIGHT. And...)
So I was really feeling good about the land of Kidbookdom. But then in last week's You Tell Me I asked people what they were writing, and Holy Tyra there are a lot of people writing YA!!! Like, a lot a lot a lot of people. More than I could even count. (I didn't actually try to count).
Presumably if you're writing YA you read YA. Clearly there are a lot of adults reading young adult literature (including me).
This week's You Tell Me: is the YA boom driven by adults reading (and buying) kids books? Or are the kids really reading more?
I think it's the same as it is for adult literature - while 1 in every 4 adults didn't read a book last year, possibly one or more of the three who DID probably read a LOT. It's the same way with kids. A lot of kids won't read, but you'll have the slice of kids who read enough books to make up the defecit, or something. ;)
And I think everyone reads everything. I and kids I knew were reading classics like Victor Hugo at twelve, thirteen years old, but then I know college students reading Lemony Snicket. YMMV.
I'll admit it - I write YA.
But here's the thing I find interesting lately. I've been getting my curiosity-groove on and speaking with bookstore managers and librarians and the definitions of YA have blown my mind.
8-25
Seriously? Third-grade thru Grad School?
The librarians I spoke with told me this was a 'relatively' new age bracketing - but how do you quantify adult readers when we can't even quantify when someone becomes an adult.
As YA books get heavier, deeper, and sexier - why should it be any surprise that adults are reading them.
Not to mention how well written a lot of them are. Instead of feeling mass produced, they have a deeper emotional tie thru the characters to the reader that I feel is often missing in the same genre books written for adults.
BUT, I also work with teens - who do you think tells me what to read. They are definitely reading - not only that, I find them more likely to BUY books instead of getting them out of the library. 1/2 my loaners are from 15 year old girls!
Kids don't read adult books. But adults can read kids books. It's mostly that simple.
It's like the old toy store aisle thing. There's only one pink aisle, because girls will play with stuff for boys, but boys won't play with toys for girls.
I've wondered about that, myself. I also wonder what YA means these days. Both questions are probably two slices of the same marketing pie. Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy seems to get billed as YA, but it's pretty sophisticated, and a book like "Trigger" is even more so. I think kids who read are probably more sophisticated earlier these days, so books that appeal to them that are classified as YA today, would have been clearly "adult" not so long ago. Also, they may be transitioning from gateway books like the Harry Potter stories to more "adult" books more quickly. At the same time, more adults seem to be open to reading YA. I know I pay a visit to the YA section pretty regularly, just in the last two years. So maybe the age of the target reader just doesn't mean what it used to - maybe the label's just a way to help art directors figure out which cover artist to use, and bookstores, how to shelve the book.
I've also wondered if more people are writing YA because it feels easier than writing for adults. I don't really know anyone who is currently writing YA, so I'm probably off base. Having tried it, I now know it isn't easier, just different. More complex in some ways. In fact, a YA author I met at a convention suggested it's actually harder because you're writing for a couple more levels of audience: not just the kids, but the parents, teachers, and librarians who act as gate-keepers.
I'd like to think that people, adult or not, who love books are reading all sorts of books. Adult, YA, MG, all different genres. Comic books. Non-fiction. Picture books. I still read picture books. Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein are favorites.
As for writing YA, the best thing to do is to write like you would for an adult (excepting voice and character ages, perhaps), and not enter the project thinking, "I'm writing this for kids." We'll know if that's what you're thinking, and we hate being called kids. ;)
Yes, I also saw that the most people on that post said they were writing YA. That scared me. On the other hand, I am sure competition is stiff in all genres.
I fill out Scholastic book orders for my son's school. It's a small private school, about 100 kids. And I am the only one who ever orders YA books. Then again, maybe teenagers prefer buying books at stores rather than through catalogs. Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask Mr. Bransford for some time by now. Is it easier to sell books for young adults or for adults?
I have often wondered the same thing. I'm a YA author and read pretty much YA books, and anyone I know that reads YA are adults. But that's only because I know alot of other YA writers.
From the other side, I work at a library and the only ones checking out the Teen books are teens, with the occasional exception such Harry Potter and others. But I think the library is the last place most people get their YA books. It seems to be a genre that sells from bookstores and online book retailers more. That might be my assumption, though.
So I guess it's both. But this is an interesting topic. I'm curious what others think.
Never read YA even when I was age appropriate for it. At 12 years old I read Portnoy's Complaint.
Let's just say that where my YA reader daughter is concerned, I haven't changed much since my college-bound son was a YA reader:
If the book looks interesting to daddy, then the chances that daddy will pay for the book (instead of babysitting or lawn mowing money) are much higher.
I out-and-out told my daughter that I wasn't buying her another book in Clique series because they were garbage. But if she wanted one of Scott Westerfeld's books, I'd buy it as long as I got to read it.
Both!
Since the YA market is more competitive than the Adult market, I know the YA books I choose to read will be good. Not so, more often than not,with the adult books I've chosen.There seems to be more fantasy in YA now(thanks to you know who) and I'm not really noticing any worthy, if any, Adult fantasy. Most of the adult books I do find AND like, I've sought after myself through Amazon by keywords I've entered or there reputable authors I know won't disappoint me. But the YA books, through their impeccable advertising means, seem to find me.
BUT, I think Kids are reading more YA. My daughter and her friends are constantly eager to read anything that's remotely chick lit and the teens I work with are always able to tell me about their latest new reads.
Another thought just occurred to me:
YA is often a term used to described what used to be "pulp fiction". The main difference is that the sex and other stuff inserted around Kilgore Trout's seminal work is missing.
I say this because I remember the last time I was on a plane a lot of people were reading titles I recognized as YA. They are quick, light reads in most cases - just like pulp fiction.
That's probably a lot of the real market here. Airplane reads.
Several of the members of my paranormal mystery writers yahoo group (close to 400 members) have limited their reading diet to almost solely YA. They're reading fantasy, paranormal mystery and urban fantasy, and they prefer the YA versions because they find the adult choices too offensive. These readers are uncomfortable with graphic sex and profanity, and they say its used too often in the books written for adults. The YA versions are tamer, but written with grown-up themes that appeal to their reading tastes.
Just being anal and editing my previous comment. Should be "they're reputable authors..." and not "there reputable authors."
Lest anyone thinks I's ain't got no edumacation:)
Karen, I think you are right about a big hunk of the YA market, but one agent that I did bother to get through with my MS told me that it needed to be "spiced up". I think that a lot of people are taking a good genre that fills a niche and are messing around with it to suit their own (slightly perverted) tastes.
I do hope I am wrong on this one.
Sophie W.,
When you mentioned the word, I realized I really only think of middle school/junior high and lower (and maybe not even eighth grade) as "kids" -- and that mostly because my...umm...proto-young-adults are still in second and third grade, and they'd much rather be called kids than children. When I do find myself talking to thirteen to seventeen year-old...um...types, I guess I usually use "folks" or "guys" or something like that. I suspect that even those terms sound pretty stuffy. Sigh. If it's any consolation, I grit my dentures when people call me "sir." ;)
Here's a question for you, Nathan, sort of related to Helen's.
Does it sometimes make sense not to query a book as YA if it potentially is YA?
I've been thinking about how to query the book I've been working on. I started it assuming I was writing a young adult book because the protag is fifteen and I was going for a younger voice -- and trying to gear the vocabulary to be challenging, but not overwhelming, for early teens. By the end of one of the middle drafts I'd started to think of it as "a book for sophisticated fourteen year-olds and up." So I'm considering querying it as "contemporary fiction" and I've been looking for those agents who work with both adult and YA fiction. (That search led me here, in fact.) I thought I could address the YA/non-YA issue in the cover letter for the partial when it's requested.
I figure the agent has the better perspective on knowing where the book will fit, but I also wonder if I'll run the risk of setting up the wrong expectation for the manuscript: leading to an immediate reaction of "this voice is too young" when I might not get that reaction if I queried it as YA.
Erik, heavy petting (is that term even used any more? lol!) might be acceptable in YA, but I sure hope they don't ever publish a full out Ellora's Cave YA kind of story. Man, talk about a potential book ban. Eek! The adult YA readers, like those in my group, would be okay with behind-closed-doors sex, just not the in your face kind (okay, the pun was intentional; I couldn't help myself).
Dave-
It's important not to overthink it. If you think it's YA, query it as YA.
Yeah, I wonder what YA means these days too. Although I didn't write my novel with the YA market in mind, it was promoted as a YA and received nomination for a young readers choice award. My emails from high school students are enthusiastic even though the story is not about teens or teen situations. Go figure.
My children are all avid readers and they read a wide variety of YA and adult fiction. I read most of what my kids read because I want to make sure they aren't reading trash (i.e. bad language, sex). Most of the time I enjoy the YA books as much as they do.
I read YA. I write YA. I'm 27. Several of my similarly-aged friends read YA, though they don't write it. I even got my husband (age 30; an SF and humor fan, mostly) to read some of my favorite contemporary YA novels. The last two author events I attended were YA author events: 1.) Stephenie Meyer (packed, loud, infreakingsane), and 2.) Markus Zusak (speech for the adult/ YA crossover The Book Thief. Also packed. Most people there were my parents' age).
The YA section is my first stop whenever I go to a bookstore or library. I go to my local B&N at least once a week to check out the new YA releases and keep up with the market as much as possible. What's interesting to me is that I'm nearly always the only one in the YA sections at both the bookstore and library. I know somebody's buying the books, but I hardly ever see them. The last few times I wasn't alone in the YA section, I was joined by a younger girl (middle school-age) and her parents as she combed the shelves for chick lit series books. The Clique, The A-List and that ilk. Pardon me, but BLEH. Why would you read The Clique when JOHN GREEN exists?
...Sorry, I guess I'm a bit defensive of the kind of stuff I write and read. Contemporary, realistic YA, veering towards literary. Stuff like Barry Lyga's BOY TOY and Margo Rabb's CURES FOR HEARTBREAK. I see those hardbacks on the shelves and wonder how they sell, and how they sell to teens, specifically. Sometimes I wonder if they're mainly selling to my fellow weird 20somethings who want to write for teenagers. Sigh. All I know is, whenever I sit down with my "I will write the kind of novel I would want to read" mantra in my head (or, as Markus Zusak said about The Book Thief, "I wanted to write someone's favorite book"), what comes out is realistic, literaryish YA.
I've read more YA as an adult than I did as a YA. I am so jealous of the reading selection teens have now! As a teen, I was reading a lot of sci-fi, classics, historical fiction, some fantasy -- almost all adult.
The children of my friends are mostly in the 'middle grade' age range and they read quite a bit. On the flip side, my adult friends are all big Harry Potter fans. My mom (primarily a romance/women's fiction reader) has been reading YA as well as my father and grandmother (primarily sci-fi/fantasy readers).
Good stories are good stories. A lot of good stories are being written for that age group.
I buy the stuff for my niece's son (he's now 12 1/2). Sometimes I read it, mostly I just scan it. My niece doesn't want cursing.
My nephew's girl is just reaching the right grade level for books. He grouched when I gave her Gaimen's Stardust.
I won't write YA because by the time I do, the Harry Potter clones will be out in force. Consider that Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies spawned Bridge to Terabithia and Narnia. Also, with The Golden Compass coming out this year, they might make the sequel to that. Along with two more Harry Potter movies.
A ton of people are going to write YA. An author has to be careful. It takes more than a dragon, a wizard and a few kids to make the story.
Even "Monsters Inc" and "Chicken Little" and "Shrek" have more to the stories than just a quest for some thing. They actually have nicely developed characters and great satire. It's all in the details.
My son (17) and my goddaughter (16) have read everything they could get their hands on since they were second graders. They've both been reading YA and adult stuff, including the classics (voluntarily), for the last couple years, generally going through at least a book a week. My own favorite YA authors at present, besides Rowling, are Sherwood Smith and Tamora Pierce. I copyedit middle grades and YAs, too, which has given me the opportunity to read a lot of good books before almost anyone else. :-) I also enjoy rereading my old Oz books from time to time.
Dave Wood - My comment about "kids" was not meant for anyone in particular. Please don't take offense.
PS: "Folks" isn't cool anymore. You want "homedawgs." That'll get you in with the cool kids. ;)
Huh, until Karen Duvall mentioned it, I hadn't thought about adults reading YA because they prefer something "cleaner" and are guaranteed not to be offended by most YA offerings.
This is interesting. I betcha New York never thought of it, but in the bible belt and other places it might be a huge factor.
And maybe people like to write it for the same reason. You might be embarrassed to let your saintly grandmother read your erotica or your serial killer novel, but letting her read your YA is okay.
Sometimes it feels like YA is the only choice left when you get tired of reading about another handsome shiney-toothed cop chasing a mean-nasty serial killer.
Hmmm, the only YA stuff I've read since I was out of that age bracket are the Pullmans and the Potters. The former seems like it crosses the line into adult fiction (to me), and Pottter - it's just fun. But that's it.
However I don't have kids - from this thread it seems that parents are a large segment of the adult "YA" market.
Remember that kids usually like to read about protags who are a little older than they are. Thus little kids read about grade-schoolers, middle grade kids read about high schoolers, and high schoolers read adult books. I still say there's a huge untapped market for books about college students--which will be read by high schoolers.
My mother went on a YA-reading kick recently. She was amazed at the clarity and high quality of the writing, but that's something that I've appreciated for a long time. I used to write YA (and I'm sure I'll come back to it eventually), and I think that's the main reason why my writing is clear and gets to the point without waffling around describing the scenery first!
(Usually.)
I would guess that many YA writers are more likely to be interested in technology and gadgetry than your average bear, and therefore are overrepresented on the blogosphere.
But I'm a YA author, and I read a lot of YA.
As a teenager I read adult fiction. The YA pickings were slim.
But now there's a whole new world in YA that adults and kids can enjoy. The sophistication level is up.
When I read adult fiction now, I skim a lot. Unless it's Harlan Coben.
Several of my author friends have switched from adult to YA. They've received multi-book contracts as a result. Hmmm... maybe I'm writing in the wrong genre.
And I remember when I used to get made fun of for reading YA in high school and early college.
I think the HP series has enticed more adults AND kids to read YA, particularly fantasy. I discovered the joy of YA four or five years ago in a grad class on YA literature, when I found myself loving homework as never before. It still might not have occurred to me to write YA, however, until I finished my first adult novel and realized my favorite parts dealt with a deluded adolescent gamer I had sicced on my protagonist. And yes, the avoidance of super-graphic sex and violence is an attraction YA has for me. I'm much too impressionable for many adult novels, and I know it.
It's been interesting as I've passed my current YA novel around to various associates of associates for reading assessment; the readers have ranged from a 10-year old neighbor to a 27-year old son of an online group acquaintance. That would tend to bear out the new YA demographics of 8-25 that were cited. And I believe the readers range much older than that! - Lupina
At a certain point I realised all the books I was super impressed with were YA. Hence I stuck to it. I read and write fantasy, YA, of course, and YA just seems to utterly outstrip adult fantasy in terms of originality, accessibility, and that hard to define certain something, heart. Or as I've heard it termed, maybe that sensawunda.
So yes, I read loads of YA Fantasy. I'm frequently amazed how much love for mankind I find wrapped up in the stories, and I mean that in a totally non gushy way, as I am a totally non gusher. :)
But, yeah, now that I've had a think about it, maybe that's why I read it, and that's why I write it.
And anyway, haven't the maturation levels been pushed back lately?
Apparently, anyone up to 30 years old is now referred to as an emerging adult, as opposed to a full blown real one.
So maybe we need to redefine YA.
Hey Nathan,
In your opinion, is there a market for simple, YA love stories? Without any vampires, werewolves, craziness but just a story about kids in highschool? Chick-litty, maybe? But a very realistic story. Or is that just too old school?
I'm 31, and I'm one of those people who read a lot of YA because it's "cleaner" (little to no profanity, graphic sex, or graphic violence).
I have no kids, but the girl I mentor reads a lot of YA books.
Granted there wasn't a ton of YA when I was actually in that age bracket -- but I've always enjoyed YA. Now I mostly read Tamora Pierce and my friends' books (published and pre-published), however :)
When I've wandered through the teen sections here and there (all right, every weekend) at the bookstore, I've noticed mostly adults there with me. So good question!
I found all of these comments VERY interesting! Particularly all of those who went for YA because of the lack of sex and swearing. After all... that's what I'm writing, but I've never thought of classifying it as YA, since my characters are 22 and 23. Here I've been hoping that there's a market for PG rated time-travel and fantasy, so this is encouraging!
Another thought I had, that no one's mentioned, is if the shorter length and slightly lower reading level of (some) YA is also attracting today's busier and slower readers. I mean... a 400 page book only takes most of us a couple of hours to read (I'm guessing that most of you are like me)... but plenty of lighter readers that I know take 3-4 times as long to get through the same book. Perhaps these readers prefer the shorter length of YA?
I honest to gosh think it's the adults reading YA, especially in the fantasy and urban fantasy genres. I've found it livelier, less vulgar, more hopeful, and much more broadly creative.
Katie, lots of cozy mysteries don't have sex or swearing (or show violence); there are plenty of mystery titles for you to share with your kids.
Nathan, when I was 14, I rifled through my English teacher's desk drawer looking for something different to read and pulled out the play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
When I asked if I could read it,
my teacher said it was kind of "adult," and did not recommend I read it, which made me wanna read it more. Which I did, since she gave in and let me.
As a young teenager, I remember swiping my dad's copy of the "Godfather" and whatever other books my parents were reading.
Bottom line, when I was a YA all I wanted to read was the grown-up stuff. And now that I'm a grown-up? It's still nothing but adult stuff for me. Sorry, but the YA titles have never interested me.
I read YA because I write it, and some of it is very, very good. But I think in general teens are buying/reading YA much more than adults.
I'm a high schooler and I read YA fiction. I mean, duh...?
I can see how a lot of adults read YA novels, but I somehow doubt they'd find A-List or Gossip Girl very interesting.
YA has expanded to cover a larger age group than the words Young Adult immediately suggest. They are stories that can be enjoyed by people of most ages, the literary equivalent of the family film. My mother doesn’t read children’s books, but in the last few years she’s started to intersperse her usual crime fiction with the occasional YA.
Then there's teen fiction. And as anon@5:33 points out, that's never going to interest my seventy-year-old Mum.
As an adult, I read YA fantasy for two of the reasons already mentioned. First and foremost, because I am SICK TO DEATH of adult fantasy which seems these days to have plots exclusively based on situations allowing copious amounts of sex.
I also think the time factor comes into the decision - I'm time poor, I can't afford to be brain-deep in fantasy land for too long. And I get really cranky if I have to keep putting a book down.
Howsabout it, Nathan? Can you single-handedly convince the publishing world that sex is not the most important ingredient in a book?
OOOH MAMA! I have read alot of YA books. I just them, so easy to read and without alot of the hassels of adult books.
I can say truthfully I have recommended many YA series to adults that want a light read and dont want chic lit.
My fav series to recommend is The Uglies/pretties/specials and Extras.
Great series that many enjoy for many reasons.
Plus the teens are very active in my library, they volunteer and give advice on what books they would love to see bought.
HUGE turn over of YA books and loads are bought all the time.
I am happy to see these books as my teens years were horrible until I found Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin. The YA section was poor and I think I spent much of my time rereading books.
Kudos to those in publishing that are making this happen. Keep them reading and keep them busy.
In my area more teens read books then adults. But I think that is due to the library giving them a space to call their own.
I've been teaching at the same junior high school for 20 years, and I can most definitely assure you that the students there are reading FAR more than they used to. Yes, I think much of it has to do with Harry Potter and the huge YA surge since then. They don't all read YA, though. They also like non-fiction, and the better readers are not afraid to grab "older" stuff. (Last year I saw a good deal of The Historian, plus, there are always the classics, and Dracula's a favorite.)
Just today, one of my 7th graders told me that all she'd put on her Christmas list were books: 17 of them. That, I think, is pretty cool. (By the way, she had Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days on her desk in front of her.)
I read young adult books because I like reading about younger protagonists and that almost always means the book will be labelled YA.
I like writing about younger characters too, so the time will come when I have to send my query to agents and I'll most likely first focus on the ones who rep older YA. I don't think that my work is YA, but it seems to fit a very loose bill of being short and focusing on people just hitting their twenties.
I can't say if more kids are reading, because my only contact with high schoolers are the drop-outs my mom tutors, and they have to be held at gunpoint before they will even crack open a book.
I went to a signing at Books Inc. in SF last night - Jay Asher, Barry Lyga, Ellen Hopkins and Brian Mandabach (we missed you Nathan - where were you?), and there were a large number of teens in the audience. They were very enthusiastic, asking questions and almost giggling in the presence of these great authors. It was heartwarming.
One reason you might have a higher number of YA writers here is that I found your blog through Editoral Anonymous, who is a kid's editor, and your name is often bandied about on Verla Kay's Blue Board which is also for kidlit writers. There might just be more of us here.
Because I love dark fantasy, I read YA. Also because I love good stories, I read YA. I'm finding that so many of the new fantasy novels are too full of sex or romantic elements that distract from the cool world and the story, that YA novels (which have a high level of skill, in general, when romance fantasy novels frequently do not)that they fit the bill for me.
Besides, what is defined as YA now is what was considered mainstream adult when I began reading this genre around 40 years ago.
Nathan, along the lines of Dave's comment, how do you think "The Secret History" and "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" were pitched/queried/submitted to publishers? As YA? YA mystery/thriller? Neither?
These books seemed geared to a wider audience.
Looking back I realize I read some YA as a kid, but they were animal based books like "Black Beauty" and "Old Yeller" - it was the animals that appealed to me, not the YA characters.
All I know is, I'm depressed.
Signed, a wannabe YA author.
During my stint manning the YA area at our local library, I was astounded by the number of adults reading YA. After I began reading a few of them, I understood why. Some really fine authors are writing YA.
I have to agree with several of the other posts, kids are reading more today than in the past. It may be due to requirements at school through programs like Accelerated Reader.
Also, with such a wide variety of books available in YA, even a picky reader can find something.
As the librarian, if I could find one book or one series that hooked a kid, I knew he/she would be hooked for life. I saw this happen with my own daughter. She needed major prodding to read until I gave her the Louise Rennison series. She was hooked and now reads everything and wants to own it for her 'collection.'
My trips to Barnes and Noble are quite expensive these days.
I write YA so that's one reason I read YA. But one reason I LOVE YA is because the books don't have to adhere to genre norms (mostly because they're all lumped together on one shelf). I feel like adult genre books have to fit that genre while YA books can be all over the place because they're all lumped together (you can write a romance without a HEA). I love the mixing of genres I find in YA, the lack of convention, the pure imagination.
Josephine Damian: I read a lot about Special Topics In Calamity Physics when it was released, and I recall that Marisha Pessl specifically targeted Jonathan Franzen's agent with her manuscript. That agent (totally blanking on her name right now) is well-known for repping literary fiction, and I believe, does not rep YA. Special Topics is an adult lit fic novel with a precocious teenage protagonist, though I'm sure plenty of brainy teens have read it. ("Brainy" is a high compliment in my book.) Secret History is also categorized as adult lit fic, though I find it to be much more readable than Special Topics, and probably has more appeal to teens in general.
It's funny you commented about those books this morning, because they came to my mind last night when I was considering how I could reimagine my WIP if it doesn't sell as YA. It's about a nerdy older teen guy protagonist with some very big problems, and there are several adult characters who figure prominently in it. I suspect I could add 10 - 15K words and re-pitch it as adult mainstream. I've found that the line between YA and adult has a lot to do with pacing.
Crossover is strong for YA, but I see actual young adults reading them. I take my lunches at Seattle's Central Library, and see them coming and going from the YA fiction stack all the time.
One of the benefits of aiming for the crossover crowd is it has raised the content bar, creating a separate Tween category. My 11-year old doesn't read the more earth YA. Yet. But I can tell from his interests that it will be a fresh new adventure for him when he does.
Well, just look at all of the adults who enjoy the Gossip Girl TV show and who were big on The OC, Gilmore Girls, etc. If they like that kind of thing, they'll like YA. As everyone here has already pointed out, YA has come a long way since the days of those cheesy, tiny little romances with the heroine holding a pair of ballet shoes on the cover and a blue-eyed hunk in the background. I avoid adult literature geared toward my demographic because too often it is about grown women who can't find/hold onto men and who can't get along with their mothers. If I'm going to read that kind of thing, I'd rather read about teens experiencing it. With adult characters, I just want to smack them and tell them to grown up.
Oh, and yes, I write YA. But I would read YA regardless.
Lauren, I tried to imagine those two authors sitting down to write their queries, and scratching their heads over which of many ways to present it.
I wonder if they made a decision and stuck to it, or it queried it different ways to different agents, went through trial and error, etc. I also wonder if I would had read either if they were promoted as YA.
The interest in YA doesn't really surprise me. Of course, there's the phenomenal success of Harry Potter, but also Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl, and others. But more than that, look at what we've grown up on.
I think most of us here were raised on 80's and 90's TV, and a few of us even go back to the Brady Bunch and beyond. Look at the popular shows: from the MG Full House to the YA Beverly Hills 90210, many of the most popular shows of our younger years were about kids dealing with their troubles, and they were on prime time, not just after school.
Cosby, Facts Of Life, Wonder Years, Doogie Howser, and on and on--you make your own list. Even though the supposedly main character on Home Improvement was a man, he was an adult child, and as the kids grew up on the show, they became more important to the story lines.
Those shows, whether network sitcoms or the teen shows on Disney and Nick, made stories about young people popular with people of all ages. And those shows gave way to reality shows, which are usually about--guess what--young people in extraordinary circumstances dealing with their troubles.
As for books, much of the adult interest in YA is in fantasy, which has always had young characters. Tolkien almost totally ignored children in his stories, but his main characters were little people with childlike interests who got sucked into the problems of a big-people world.
Adolescents are fun to read and write about and to write for. They are searching for their identities, learning to cope with problems they often didn't cause, and they still have a sense of fun and magic.
And, let's face it, most of us are still kids. Jung claimed that, for most people, adolescence lasts into the mid thirties, and often well beyond that. And those of us who have more or less grown up, still long to be young and relatively free.
Life is so much more exciting when you are a young adult. The world is yours for the taking and you have so much hope.
A good YA, coming-of-age novel is much more interesting than reading about a stat-at-home mom, divorcee, or over forty-year-old woman whose jealous of her married friends.
o/` o/` o/` o/` o/` o/`
You're gonna make it after aaaaaalll!
Sorry. Carry on.
I recently went to a cult meeting - I mean Stephanie Meyer's book signing - hoping to hear her speak. There were three adults (we found each other pretty quickly.)
I'd like to give you a head count of the teens there, but they had to shut the B&N down once they hit 6000. No one counted the mob teens outside still hoping to get in.
I'm pretty sure they all read the books :)
Middle school kids read YA lit. because it's at their reading level. High schoolers are too cool for YA lit, as Merry Jelinek notes. And people in their 20s and 30s read it because it's retro-cool. I think.
Just found your blog recently ... as a writer, it is very interesting and helpful to learn about the industry/business side of publishing. So, thanks!
Kids don't read adult books.
Tell that to my nephew. He started reading adult books when he was about 13-14 (he's 17 now). That's when he started reading Tom Clancy novels.
~Nancy (who's too lazy to log in)
http://writerlystuff.blogspot.com
Hah! Kids don't read adult books? I read everything I could get my hands on, including Bob & Carol, Ted & Alice at 11 or 12, because I loved to read and couldn't drag enough books home from the bookmobile.
Dear Mr. Bransford,
My question is do some literary agents no matter how amazing the manuscript could be, pass on it just based on their own personal taste? For example, suppose a writer submitted a manuscript that was set in the wild west days and the particular agent who is reading it may not care or like reading about westerns and therefore passes on it? Or do they keep an open mind?
Respectfully Yours,
Cocaine Princess
I work with teens, and believe me, they read YA. (I read it, too. They are always borrowing from my shelves.)
I prefer YA because it is often more cohesive than adult (in a YA you can't just skip over the climax, for example, or have a sudden random setting/personality switch stuck on at the very ending of a novel, or have the cynical characters at the beginning just as miserable at the end of 400 pages as they were at the beginning--just thinking of a few lauded adult books I've read.) I like the power in a YA--small choices can lead to tangible change in the world.
I suspect that there's a lot wider scope of YA out there today than there used to be. So many adults seem proud of the fact that they never read any YA books--they just went straight to adult. And I remember being frustrated when I'd maxed out my library at age 12 and wasn't really interested in paperback pulpy teen romance. But there's a lot out there today, and it's not all just "airplane reads."
Actually, I disagree pretty strongly with the assessment that all YA is just another name for pulp fiction and airplane reads. Octavian Nothing? The Book Thief? House of the Scorpion? Speak? River Secrets? These are only a handful of well-written, interesting YA novels with depth as well.
My 6th grader is instructed to choose a YA Novel for his Language Arts class. MG Novels are not acceptable.
"Kids don't read adult books."
I read books like the Count of Monte Cristo in middle school for fun and some of Tolkien’s books (including the Silmarillion) starting around fourth or fifth grade. I actually had more patience for the classics when I was younger than I do now.
Everyone reads YA. Well, not my three-year-old, but you know. Everyone else.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 11/7/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: literary agents, You Tell Me, Add a tag
As many of you know it's NaNoNuMuKiWhAtEvErThIsAcRoNyMiS... National Novel Writing Month (the Internet tells me it translates to NaNoWriMo), in which writers everywhere try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, and during which Sean Lindsay from 101 Reasons to Stop Writing nearly dies from cardiac arrest.
While not everyone will be participating in National Stream of Consc... um, Novel Writing Month, I know there are quite a few blog readers out there who are writing SOMETHING.
So you tell me -- what are you writing at the moment? Feel free to write as much ("here's the plot!") or as little ("um, a novel..") as you'd like, but it would be great to see what genres people are working on and what everyone is writing.
I'm not nanoing, I'm sweating with Sven (Sven's Seventy Days of Sweat Challenge). It's not quite as intimidating as NaNo.
I'm finishing up an urban fantasy about a thief who becomes a hero. The story involves shape-shifting gargoyles, the remains of a prophetic saint, a thousand year-old Turkish warrior from the Crusades, an elf who owns a coffee shop that caters to the people of faery, and the thief's fallen angel father. I'm having a blast. 8^)
No NaNoWriMo here. I’m revising my first WIP and writing new bits for my second. They’re both time-travel inspirationals.
I'm revising my mystery (for the last time, I hope!) before sending out queries. I'm about three-fifths done.
NaNoWriMo (or as k.r. stewart said NaNoReMo) was just the kick I needed.
Now, if only we had a national query-writing month...
Punching out a few 'trinket/stringer' articles for the newspaper--then back to my WIP.
Tom
I'm riding a runaway novella all the way to a full length comic/horror YA.
NEVER thought I'd write a YA. Never. Sheesh.
Traditionally I write a novella in preparation for a novel. It helps me flush out the characters, even if major aspects (name, setting, time period) of the characters change for the novel.
It's kind of like building a small-scale diorama of Disney animatronic robots.
Then, once the scene works, you pull the latex off their heads, give 'em new faces and wigs, and put them in an entirely different diorama and see what they'll do. See if they can still suprise you.
But it was the best diorama I've ever made, so I couldn't stop building until...
Sheesh. I can't believe I'm writing YA.
I'm working on a YA 'boy book', which I'm hoping will appeal to girls too, loosely based on a kid I knew in high school who was injured in a freak accident involving a fishing pole. Might NaNu NaNu just for a refreshing brain dump.
LOVE the pressure.
Currently I have seven WIPs, but of course, I can't actually be working on all of them at once ;-P , so I'm focusing on revising one fantasy novel while writing the first draft of another. I just haven't been in a sci-fi mood lately.
I'm NaNo'ing ... sort of ... more for the moral support of a friend than for myself. I've "won" three years in a row, and I feel I've already gotten from it what I need.
k.r. stewart and I have something in common. K.R. if you don't mind, I'm going to use NaNoReMo, too. ^_^.
~PJ~
I'm one of those housework-avoiding, shower-forgoing, cooking-ignoring NaNoWriMo crazies.
Coupled with that, I recently gave up coffee and diet coke. (WWIT??)
So feel free to follow my pixels and come over to offer gentle prodding or vigorous pokes to keep me goingggggggggggg. (Oops, fell asleep on my 'g' key there, little bit.)
My WIP is a YA psychological thriller set in a futuristic, alternate world where a teenaged girl discovers there may be a more sinister reason for her mom’s disappearance than the rumors of affair floating around her water dwelling pod society.
I'm working on a retelling of a 16th century Irish Arthurian Legend as a YA mystery.
No NaNo for me; I don't write well when asked to word dump. Instead, I'm working on another mainstream commercial character story (yeah, yeah. Seems incongruous, but take a look before you pooh-pooh it) about Lyric, the masseuse/adult store owner in the fictional city of Riverview. She's having growing pains, which is a horrible pun when talking about adult stores.
I'm NaNoing for the second year, and am working on a Young Adult chick-lit novel.
It's great you guys up there started: "What I want to do with my life." Very clever!
Every month is NaNoHooHaWhatever for me. Or it feels like it. I'm writing what I suspect will turn out to be something unsaleably between literary and mainstream. It's about Jennifer, a special events planner, who makes a promise to a dying hit and run victim, who mistakes Jennifer for her sister. Add Jennifer's acquaintance, Olivia, a church secretary who was born with three thumbs and what she fears is a hereditary propensity for lying.
For fun, throw in Olivia's new boyfriend, a NOLA refugee who used Katrina as a perfect excuse to steal his dead cousin's identity--right down to his job as a paramedic. I'm 30,000 words in and have no clue where it goes from here. It's a glorious feeling.
I'm working on an urban fantasy set in St. Petersburg Russia about a team of supernatural diplomats. The timing worked out for me to start it this month, so I'm sort of NaNoing, but I'm aiming for good over speed, so I probably won't hit 50,000.
I am banging my head against a wall on revisions to a science fiction novel, writing an urban fantasy (or is it a paranormal romance? one never knows...), and plotting a contemporary romance. A bit divergent for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if some fantastical element weaseled its way in... ;)
Like others, I'm doing NaNoWriLife. I signed up for Nano just for the pep-talk emails from the likes of Neil Gaiman and Naomi Novik (*fangirl squee*).
Working currently on a nonfiction book on southern women serial killers. It was a toss up between three WIPs, and I chose that one to finish first.
Short pitch/summation of my suspense thriller WIP A STUDY IN FEAR
A war crimes survivor turned criminal profiler risks revealing her true identity as a trained assassin when a sadistic serial killer targets her ex-lover, a famed forensic psychologist.
Long pitch/summation for same:
Everyone believes criminal profiler Caroline Armstrong is a European woman with the quintessential American name. She’s afraid that her ex-lover, forensic psychologist Rhys Garrison, will find out she’s really Nina Gorić, a Bosnian war crimes victim turned assassin who killed so her unborn child could survive. When the two profilers reunite to uncover a sadistic serial killer’s identity, old flames rekindle along with new fears when Rhys suspects Caroline’s violent past and secret identity.
I'm also working on a YA crime short story called KILLER WON'T BE HOME TONNIGHT Dwight, I'm with you, I never thought I was the YA type either.
No NaNo for this scribe.
MANIC KNIGHT. Historical/Time Travel. I don't feel comfortable revealing the plot on-line. You'll have to wait for the query.
;)
You're probably wringing your hands and reaching for gin right now!
;)
Don't worry. I'm getting more efficient. You'll probably have it by Easter.
I think NaNo is wonderful, but I've never done it. Doesn't work with the way I run my life.
I'm finishing up the rewrite of a 90K word sensual Regency Historical Romance.
A notorious rake is transformed by an astrologer's conviction that his chart is that of a constant, loving man.
==
One month after these "write a book in a month" things, are agents deluged with queries from people who do not know the difference between a novel and 80,000 consecutive words?
Several things going on. Hoping my finished Novel is doing well in the Amazon Breakthough Novel Contest despite a typo in the first paragraph... (You can read something a million times and still miss it). Toying with a short story that insists on being told. Working on my next novel about a telepath and a terrorist. It's not sci-fi, it's more literary. Looking forward to the day when it's done and I can start querying... it's going to be a while. Trying to keep up with writing at work (copywriter at a dotcom). I don't need Nanowrimo, I should be writing every month, not just November.
I'm working on two contemporary YA novels -- one's in revisions (third draft? fourth draft? Who knows anymore), and the other's my NaNoWriMo project. This is my 7th year doing NaNoWriMo. I tried to tear myself away, but I just couldn't! It's as much a November tradition for me as getting drunk with my mom-in-law on Thanksgiving.
For at least several months of the year, I do tend to crank out fiction or narrative non-fiction at near-NaNo pace (1000-ish words a day, with the occasional Saturday night blitz). Taking part in the November craziness is not a big deal anymore, and I enjoy going to our regional meetings and cheering on new writers. I'm excited about my NaNo project because it's turning out to be a very clean rough draft. My other WIP has been a nightmare, revisions-wise, and I like to think that this new 1st draft won't require as many story-level changes as the older novel. I love editing at the line-level, making the language as precise as possible. It's those story-level edits that make me crazy.
Cynjay, WTG! Did you know Iris Murdoch started her next book on the same day she finished the last one?
Anon 12:43, krw3b, and Scott (or Nathan), what genre is MG?
Dave f, is your #3 about Pamela Anderson Lee? :-)
Sounds YA but it's not. Three teens stumble upon a cave which contains a jar of superstitious Indian 'killing stones'. Using them on the neighborhood bully seemed like a good idea...then the mc realizes they've made a grievous mistake. But does he have time to undue their sin?
I'm NaNoing, but having a rough time this year. Last year I was working full time, taking grad school classes and still managed to knock out 50,000 words pretty easily. This year I'm done with grad school but lucky to be hitting my daily word count.
It's a YA novel. "When the electricity goes out and there are no signs of it ever coming back on, Southern California is thrown into turmoil. Twin sisters Eleanor and Isabelle are faced with a dangerous journey from San Diego to Montana in the hopes of locating their mother after their father is murdered."
I'm also rewriting a couple of picture books and thinking about starting to submit them *insert cries of terror here*.
Sadly I think I might be writing crap.
Nuthin' new there, then.
Hand me that Captain Morgan that Nathan left lying about, would you?
I'm in the vaccuum between completing a manuscript and starting a new one. So all I'm writing this week are query letters. Soon, I'll start the next book. But for now, I'm enjoying a break after a year of writing my keester off.
Well I'm definitely not taking part, since every spare moment is suddenly claimed by moving boxes and all of the other intricasies of moving... but when my mind drifts off, it's either to my romance of a medieval Highlander living in our time... or to my Robin McKinley style retelling of Sleeping Beauty (totally different than Spindle's End, though.)
I'm not doing NaNo-- I don't expect to be done with my current WIP until sometime next spring.
It's a steampunk YA about a fifteen-year-old girl who gets kidnapped by a transnational mafia and has to find a way to get herself--and the prime minister's daughter-- home alive. It's wicked fun: airships, explosions, islands floating in midair, traitors, pretty dresses, telegraphy and super-spies. I'm trying to work in a homeboy phone, but so far, no dice.
From the fading glory days of romantic Hialeah racetrack to thrilling pre-Derby days at Keeneland racetrack in Kentucky; this gypsy life of adventure tempts a rebellious young woman. Love, drugs, thoroughbreds all rolled into one.
I'm doing NaNo. :) I write gay romance and erotica, and the current WIP is a fantasy.
Angie
My NaNo is a romance that I'm now seriously thinking about trashing as my characters, who were so cute and funny during the first chapter, are descending into not cute, not funny people.
I'm very close to giving up on it.
Especially because my writer's block has broken and I'm into my real WIP again. It's an adult contemporary/mainstream (i.e. it doesn't fit into any genre so far). It's almost 1/3 done and someone's gotta die soon...
I've been working on a collection of linked short stories, all Gothic, some satirical, some not, a soft sci-fi novel, and have just agreed to write the book for a musical comedy.
That should be interesting....
I'm working on an inspirational short story that will either hover at 6000 words or win me over and become a bigger project. I'm researching information for a new novel and fussing with the ending of a previous one.
I'm writing for NaNo. I've got 13,700 words right now.
Bad Spelling: All of Katya’s family are either witches or warlocks, depending on their sex, of course. Katya is sixteen and really ought to be able to turn a rabbit into a toad, but things just don’t work out for her. What she gets is a slimy green hopper. That’s the good part. Unfortunately, it also has long ears and fur. That’s bad spelling.
I am working on outlines for two new projects while my beta-readers have my urban fantasy. Coming soon to a query pile near you!
A modern day dark fantasy based on demon myth.
NaNoWriMo reminds me of Mork from Ork. LOL
My Nano novel is about Sven, an atheist who dies and goes to Limbo. There, he gets a girlfriend and fights monsters that are really corrupted human souls. The monsters get the ability to evade God's eyes by exploiting the power of the original sin. Then they harvest souls of people with a higher PC ("purity content", not "politcally correct," although this is an intentional pun) in order to stay in Limbo.
There are lots of explosions. Big, giant explosions. And squicky make-outs. And a semi-Communist leader named Mom, who doesn't like having his orders disobeyed. (Yes, Mom's a guy.)
And did I mention explosions? Because the explosions are cool.
I'm finishing the editing on my YA adventure (set in my haunted hometown of St Augustine, Fl)- Some day I hope to settle on a title. Also researching & working on my agent/publisher queries (not sending 'til early '08 - BTW there are a lot of agents previously red flagged on P&E now showing up under different agency names. 1/2 way through 1st draft of a dark adult suspense set in Nova Scotia. THAT ONE I have a freakin' title for! Oh yeah, in my spare time, I'm building three hugantic office buildings that need to wrap up by the end of this year. No wonder my boat hasn't moved.
I am writing a supernatural tale called "The Vampire of Alpine Canyon," the progress of which I occasionally detail on my blog "A Curious Man" at http://tbdeluxe.blogspot.com/ (though this week, I'm ranting about Halloween.)
I'm in the third draft. It's going quite well, though a little slower than I might like, but that's probably. After this draft, I start lining up readers
I'm writing an epic fantasy vaguely inspired by Shakespeare's Henry V.
I am a NaNo veteran, and this is my fourth go-round. This time I'm writing a humorous cyberpunk tale called Trouble, Inc.: The Longest Joke Ever Told. So far I'm further ahead of the pace than I ever have been and am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Once November's done, I'll go back to working on rewriting my superhero novel (so I can query you with it, whazzaaaaap?).
Ian
14,430 words and counting...
I've tried to do NaNo, but I am distracted by an agents revision request for my completed Lit. Fic novel, Gumbo Ya Ya. It's a coming of age story about a Cajun girl set on the bayou of Louisiana. Target Market: General Fiction
I am 20,000 words into another Lit Fic set in the Northern Rockies. The story is still telling me what it's about. It's told from 2 first person POV...a brother and a sister.
I'm writing a horror novel about an old man that goes on a roadtrip to deliver a family heirloom to his brother's granddaughter. It isn't for NanoWriMo though, just my current project in process.
I'm doing NaNo this year, because I figured I might as well try it once.
My WIP is something like "Audubon does Fantasyland"--a fourteen-year-old thief and a middle-aged biology professor who studies unicorns team up to defeat the princess, rescue the Dark Lord, and save the habitat of the endangered Green-Frilled Karkadann.
Don't think I'm creatively built for NaNoWriMo. I'm a tortoise, not a hare, I guess. I just finished a final (pending finding and getting comments from an agent) polish of a completed contemporary fantasy, so I'm working up the query and synopsis.
Otherwise, I'm letting my brain lie fallow for a bit to see what takes root next. Possibilities are: sequels for previous projects, or an urban fantasy, or a paranormal suspense, or a return to a shelved historical mystery, or an urban fantasy set in 1930's San Francisco, or...or...or...
But, it'll probably wind up being some strange new seed that falls out of the stratosphere.
(josephine -- MG = a Middle Grade novel, as in for the grade school set).
I'm not doing NaNo -- I cut out 75 pages per novel as is, I don't want to have to cut out another 50 of nonsense simply because I was trying to rachet up a word count.
I'm working on a YA about two brothers.
An urban fantasy novel based on local (West Michigan) history that connects a bunch of unrelated elements (Jazz, time travel, Jaco Pastorious, utopian ideas, and a corrupt furnace manufacturer).
Also (and just for fun) a totally unpublishable novellette involving teenage superheroes.
Seriously.
I just finished a fantasy novella.
Trying to meld fantasy and sci-fi in a non-annoying way:
The apocalypse occurred 1,300 years ago.
The remains of humanity have devolved in a new Dark Ages, trying to scavenge existence out of the wreckage the Ancients left behind. The leader of a small fifedom, Amon Khan, witnesses a scene where a score of soldiers was slaughtered by a lone mage. The evidence convinces the Khan that there may be more to the tales of witchcraft than he had ever believed. Fearing that legend may be true, Amon Khan sets out to find the reality behind the stories.
Before the world’s end, a small society of self-described Illuminati tried to avert the catastrophic war that was coming. Seeing that their efforts were in vain, they choose instead to flee. With no safe haven on a world about to destroy itself, they choose the only route open to them: they invaded and improved the small exploration colony on the face of the moon. Through the centuries they flourished, but were inexorably tied to Earth for the necessities of survival.
Elle McBride captains one of the Illuminati starcraft. When a disaster threatens their habitat, she begins to see that the Illuminati aren’t as pacifist as they claim, and some begin to talk of retaking the Earth--of wiping out the Terrestrials to take the world for their own. But Elle has befriended some members of the primitive branch of the Genus, and argues that they should be spared, or even aided.
While tempers flare on both sides of the debate, she finds that a small unit of her fellows have commandeered a ship, and gone to the Homeworld to begin waging war on the primitives. Elle is forced to act on her own to save the primitives, and reaches out to her Terrestrial friend, Simeon, and by extension to his father: Amon Khan.
Captain and Khan must together find a band of relentless killers in hope of keeping humanity intact.
But while she’s on the surface, an ever darker plan hatches in Haven.
Once the earthbound threat is dealt with, and she returns to her home, a second and larger scale catastrophe prompts the evacuation of the Illuminati home. Every ship is filled to bursting, and ferries her people to Earth.
But the catastrophe was faked to exile her and the people sharing her belief. She is left stranded on Earth, with only the provisions on her ship, and the people who were fooled with her.
I just finished 55 pages of a novel which is about how a rednecked country girl leaves her abusive, holy roller husband who steals her baby girl, and ends up becoming the leader of one of the biggest drug trafficking rings on the East Coast in the late 70s. Broke, homeless, alone and desperate to make enough money to hire a lawyer to get her daughter back, she ends up in South Florida where she falls in love with an Israeli, former Orthodox Jewish, disco producer with a long rap sheet and a deep reverence for cocaine, who promises to help her in her quest to regain custody of her little girl. Even with his help, a fortune in drug money and the incantations of a Santeria priest, getting her daughter back isn't as it easy as it sounds because she is facing years in prison, a vengeful state prosecutor, an army of Southern Baptist ex-in-laws who really don't approve of drug trafficking or consorting with jews, and a real live princess who is after her man.
It's like Scarface if it had been written by Flannery O'Connor, and it's the story of my parents.
FROM THE MOUTH OF THE DRAGON
In a reckless bid for freedom, a slave in ancient Babylon conspires with a traitor to deliver the city into the hands of the advancing army of Cyrus the Great. When their plot is discovered, the conspirators race against time to learn the identity of the spy and avert betrayal before the army reaches the gates of the city.
Misty read eyes. If she met you she had only to glance deep within your eyes to see your soul, your world, your inner most feelings. The only problem is she has no control over how much information the person’s eyes reveal or if she will even understand it. Something that’s got her in trouble before. When she comes eye to eye with a serial killer Misty goes to the police for help, but will they believe her when she doesn’t have all the facts?
Max Jennings is a by the book cop and he’s on the trail of the nastiest serial killer in Angel Fall’s history. When Misty McAllister walks into his squad room and declares knows who the Angel Fall’s Strangler is but not his name or where he can be found, Max labels her a whacko. When the strangler leaves a message on Misty’s door step in the form of a dead body Max labels her a suspect, but Misty insists it’s a warning.
If we answer this, can we still send you a query?
I'm finishing up my time travel romance, which is much bigger than I originally planned. I'm trying to keep it to 150,000 words. Here's the pitch:
"The RMS Titanic. Everyone dreams of going back and preventing her sinking. Two people alive in 2006 just got the chance.
Samuel Altair is a physicist living in Belfast, Ireland. Sam has spent his career researching time travel and now, in early 2006, he’s finally reached the point where he can send objects back along the time continuum. His only problem is, he doesn’t know where the objects go. They don’t show up in the past and no one notices any changes to the present. Are they creating alternate time lines?
To collect more data, Sam tries a clandestine experiment in a public park, late at night. But the experiment goes horribly wrong when Casey Wilson, a student at the university, stumbles into his distortion field. While attempting to rescue her, both Sam and Casey are transported back to 1906 Belfast.
Stuck in the past, cut off from everyone and everything they know, Sam and Casey work together to help each other survive and build new lives in 1906. Then Casey meets Thomas Andrews of Dunallon, the man who will shortly begin to build the most famous ship since Noah’s Ark.
Should they warn him, and try to change the past, creating unknown consequences for the future?
Or should they let him die?"
Well, I'm writing the follow-up to a book I haven't sold yet, which is pretty stupid but well, you never know.
So I'm writing queries for Samuel's Girl, (blurb:) Samuel Watson accidentally releases a demon, and the only one who can stop it is a self-centred professor who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.
Yes, I know, it sounds like it's been done before. I need a better blurbogenerator.
Writing - Norman's House, with some of the same characters, one of whom is trapped in a house with thirteen demons, a witch, a half-demon, a fairy, and a few folk - and none of them can stand him.
Well, better get back to query practice. One of these days I'll get it right...
Forgot to mention... no, I'm not one of the NaNobots this year. I'm trying to avoid starting any new ones until I can get at least one sold.
A novel.
I'm not NaNoing. Count me among the tortoises.
I'm writing a mystery, tentatively titled "Command Performance."
"Perhaps there are worse ways to make your conducting debut than in a shiny-new opera house with a cast of renowned voices in a multimillion-dollar production for which the lighting alone cost more than your entire annual salary.
But if there are, I can’t think of any."
Frank Shelby is the underpaid and overworked assistant conductor of at a major opera company, but he gets the chance of a lifetime when his famous boss falls ill on opening night of a new season. But at the end of the very first scene of Frank's conducting debut, a light falls from the rigging to the stage, nearly killing the company's imperious leading soprano. Frank turns to his boss for help, but while the singers and stagehands were arguing with Frank about who was to blame, their famous conductor was murdered in his dressing room.
There's a lot more to it, including a bass who's a former college football player, a Marxist stage manager and an impresario with a Tourette's-like inability to keep this thoughts to himself.
I started back in October, so I'm already about 36,000 words into it. I'm using NaNoWriMo to help finish.
A historical fiction about a caste of priestesses in ancient Egypt who were second only to the Pharoah. Cutting-edge stuff, even for Egyptologists. No one is going to scoop me on on this one!
Oops, typo.
That's "pharaoh."
November is the absolute WORST month for me to get any writing done because I have to do hair and make up for two school plays back to back. Thus, I will not be attempting to keep up with any of you and your acronyms.
I am doing yet another revision on a YA fantasy (sort of magic realism, actually) before sending it off yet again to Ms. Big Name Agent who requested the revisions.
I also have some great ideas for two other YA novels, but both are in the scribbled note stage.
As of today I'm 106 pages into Samuel's Dream, the novel I posted my "I'm resigned to being the brother of a martyr." first line and paragraph.
While flying over their mountain home on a hangglider, Crash accidentally fools his younger brother Samuel into believing God has spoken to him.
Literary/mainstream fiction.
While I await the yeah or neah of an editor and an agent I'm trying to work on another women/commercial fiction.
It's an updated version with a few twists of the 1978 Alan Alda movie Same Time, Next Year.
Hey Jim Zoetewey - using West Michigan as a back drop - Cool! I live in the very corner of Southwest Michigan!!!
Oh and no- no NANOing for me either.
In my 93k+ word fantasy novel, Caleb, a young and dyslexic outlawed orphan, tries to overcome his lonely and abused past. He trips into his first relationship, and first friendships, in his quest to find out who he is. He must overcome fantastic beasts and betrayal, as well as an entire army, in order to make a last name for himself, and therefore a future. Yet when he discovers the truth of who he is, he is not so sure he wants to embrace it. His destiny could alter the face of the continent forever.
Not NaNoing either.
Last year murder mystery, this year dark fantasy.
I'm not doing an official NaNoWriMo project. I'm using the time, and leeching the creative-frenzy energy of November, to finish writing two of the trashy romances that pay me so I can start the new year fresh and free of deadlines. I'd like to dedicate 2008 to exploring my guilty-pleasure interest in black comedy. :)
Ok, and I'll probably write a little trashy romance next year, too.
Re-reading above.
Maybe I can pioneer a new micro-genre of romance: erotic black comedy romance. Or two genres - romantic black comedy could be the slightly less graphic sister to ebcr. ;)
NaNo is not for people who host Thanksgiving for two families. At least not anyone sane.
I'm putting together the synopsis for my YA SF novel in beta, which is about two kids, a volcano and a time machine that obeys the laws of physics. I'm also working the four storylines of my new YA SF (featuring first contact diplomacy, a humanity-first movement and hula dancing) into a chapter outline and hurrying to get some adult shorts done before I start writing the novel. Oh, and doing fall housecleaning.
My WIP is about an aspiring ballerina, who faces fifth grade in a new school complete with bullies, new friends, homework, and one very cute aspiring Baryshnikov. (summary courtesy of another writer -- Thanks, Amanda!)
I'm in the rewrite phase and still figuring out exactly where to start it.
My first novel (science fiction) sold to Iota Publishing this year (won their contest). I'm halfway through my next novel (fantasy). Basically, I'm reworking Dante's Divine Comedy, but I'm going in the more interesting direction: heaven, purgatory, hell. The main character is a thirteen-year-old English boy.
I'm writing a dystopian YA sci-fi set in ancient Greece. That's it.
Historical fantasy. 305 A.D. Christian persecutions, Roman gods, the apocalypse, Mt. Vesuvius. Oh, and it's a love story. Between two guys.
An erotica novella, and I'm way too shy to go into greater detail. ;-)
Am nano-ing with a spy novel, starting a week late. No stream of conscious, though. I don't like the mess.
I'm not NaNoing either. I have two chapters and an epilogue to write in my fantasy novel. A girl must choose to either save the people who killed her mother or lose the magic that has defined her.
I agreed to do NaNo with my future sister-in-law because she wanted to. And, hey, can another motivator to make sure I pump out my wordcount each day hurt? I hope not. ;p
My current WIP is a YA called Queen of Freaks.
Lily Gardner is a freak; dyed hair, combat boots, super powers and all. She can hear people’s thoughts, and until the Great Lakes School for Exceptional Young People comes calling she can’t help but wonder if she isn’t just plain crazy. The school promises to teach her to control her gifts and, she hopes, will give her a place to fit in for the first time since her mother’s death when she was sent to live with her father and her plastic-perfect suburban step-family. But what Lily finds at school is very little acceptance and a whole lot of rivalry complicated by super-powered cat fights, an impossibly hot but impossible to obtain crush, and a best friend who won’t get out of her head- literally. In a place where everybody is unique and wants to stand out, Lily just wants to fit in.
Just when Lily thinks she’s finding her place at school a dead body shows up on campus, attracting unwanted attention from authorities. With FBI agents and reporters crawling around there is talk of closing the school before someone discovers the students for what they really are. Unwilling to give up her new home, Lily bands together with her classmates to catch the killer and keep the school from closing. But can they find the person responsible before prying eyes look a little too closely at the exceptional young people of her?
Wow. Lots of YA and fantasy stories here. Not a bad thing mind you, but I wonder why that is? I'm not donig Nano. I've gone back to school to become a teacher, which has effectively trashed about 3/4 of my writing time. Really though, for all the brew-ha-ha over the insanity of Nano, 50k in a month is only about 1600ish words a day. 5-6 pages a day for a month. If you have consistent writing time every day, that isn't an absurd amount of writing. I wrote a 118k suspense story in 14 weeks last year. At the time, I had a consistent 3-4 hours a day every day to write. Sadly, that consistent writing time is not so consistent anymore. Still...I write, 5-6 days a week, an hour or two a day.
Anyway. my current project is something of a futuristic urban fantasy, about an assistant pathology assistant working in a globally warmed Manhattan where large chunks of the city are now an insane, NY version of Venice, who has a dead merman show up in the morgue, only to have it vanish, and the ensuing effort to clear her name lead her into a big conspiracy between the mob and some seedy NY politicians to rid the city of its new Mer inhabitants. Ah, the joys of run-on sentences. Good luck all with your current projects!
Would you just look at that shamefully-high comment count?
Now you know, Nathan: never, ever invite writers to give an opinion or talk about what we're writing. We cannot stop ourselves from blathering.
When you ask questions like "What are you writing?" or "What are you reading?", I always wonder if it is part of your nefarious plot, Nathan. Are you compiling statistics in order to have your finger unfairly jabbed to the pulse of the nation? Is this all a ploy to be one step ahead of your fellow agents in determining what the Next Big Thing in publishing will be?
Doesn't matter. We shall continue to be your faithful statistics-sheep, for you amuse us. Baaaa. I am yours, Nathan. Baaaa.
Not NaNoWriMo for me, but WriSoMiFu on lj - Write Something You Miserable Fuck! The idea is to write for at least ten minutes every day so that you make at least some progress :D
I'm writing a fantasy novel. Halley has the perfect job for a Water Mage - looking after the canals of the city of Nocturne Arenaria. Or at least, it's perfect until she's drafted by her boss to search in secret for the next Great Mage, and gets tangled up in Blood Magic and international politics. It's not what she wanted from life, not that Captain Levann seems to notice that he is...
Like some others, I'm doing my own version of NaNoWriMo. Instead of starting a new project, I'm aiming to add the next 50,000 words onto my current novel (the second in a fantasy series dealing with outsiderness and paranormal powers) by the end of the month. "Pseudo-NaNo" is a nice challenge - fun to say, too.
How does anyone write a novel in a month? It's taken me six months to just plan out all the story lines, subplots,characters, and story brief.
WIP is a second YA sci-fi novel using the same characters and setting as my first, Helium 3. Why YA? Because I can have more fun with the characters. When I'm ready, Nathan, I'll send you a personalised query.
I'm picking away at my Environmental\Fantasy\Mystery (does such a thing exist? --it will soon) MG. I want to have the draft done by the new year. Too many kids to do more.
(I thought I already left a comment, but I cant see it. It must have disappeared into the ether!)
There seem to be a lot of fantasy novelists reading your blog, Nathan!
I'm NaNoing for the second time.
I'm writing the first book of a Fantasy trilogy.
The Kingdom is floating in the clouds while the world below boils in a burning mass of dragons and fire.
The protag is the pincess Ellusia, who is the first child to survive the sickness since the Breaking of the World. The King made a pact with the Ethereans (mysterious cloud people) to save her life. Throughout the book we find out the cost of that pact, the changes that Ellusia goes through, and the isolation that she, and others like her, feel.
The Kingdom is on the brink of civil war. The King and his brother have different views on what is best for the Kingdom and the the King's brother is winning more favour every day.
Ellusia's older brother is killed by one of the many dragon attacks and she becomes the sole heir to the throne of a Kingdom that is literally falling apart and turning against her.
NaNoWriMo absolutely does NOT have to be stream of consciousness. :) Unless you're forty thousand words behind on day twenty-six, and even then people tend to go straight for the pirates and ninjas. You don't even have to stop at 50k - I fully intend to hit 80 (and "The End"). In defense of NaNoWriMo, there are plenty of serious writers who are doing it because it's What They Want To Do With Their Life, and writing as a part of NaNoWriMo doesn't make them any less so. I know I definitely use NaNo as a jumping-off point for things that I can polish and submit later.
Plus, it's fun. And that doesn't make it any less legit, either.
My WiP (NaNo-style!) is a historical/political fantasy about a country that has just changed hands from a strong, popular king (well, not universally popular...he was poisoned, after all) to his eighteen-year-old daughter and her husband. Which would be hard enough internally if stronger countries didn't start looking to pick them off and the rivers didn't start rising insanely.
My MC is the new queen's brother, Noah, who really wants to escape the court out of legitimate fear for his life (in this dynasty, you're pretty much expected to be assassinated) but finds himself obligated to stay and help his sister. And her husband. Who he hates. :)
In answer to Peter R's comment: that's the point of NaNoWriMo. It doesn't have to be planned out, highlit, sticky-noted, or even possessed of something resembling a plot. The point of NaNo is to write a first draft with the understanding that it will be crappy...but then, all first drafts are crappy, and you can edit anything but a blank page.
For NaNoWriMo, I'm writing a young adult fantasy type thing that I have no idea where I'm going with but I'm enjoying it nonetheless - letting the oul imagination run riot with magic, dreamcatchers and a spate of disappearances that can only be solved my young adults and some really old people :) Maybe...
In "real" life, I've been working on a selection of short stories, and another young adult fantasy romance. I love this one, it's my baby. There are werewolves and a Romani curse factoring in this in a major way.
I write children’s and YA -- the first almost ready to submit (I must stay off the Internet!) and the second underway.
Meh, no NaNoWriMo for me this year.
I am writing a YA urban fantasy, but I started it back in early October.
I'm also taking two classes online. (One for writing hooks and one on building primitive shelters. World building)
And I'm helping a friend with her agent package. It's amazing how long we can stare at a paragraph or two, while we try to make them intriguing hooks that summarize a 100k book. Eek...
I'm late as usual, but I just wanted to say that I am working for Nano on my original manuscript which I wrote as a screenplay first. It is set in Ancient Korea before Japan was invaded and when Korean was in its Three Kingdoms state. It'll be a bloody, vengeful, shaman magic filled historical novel.
Here's the summary of my most recently completed fantasy, now in revision stage:
On the Flipside
Don Halfinger is a carnival pickpocket who's just trying to "raise funds" to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. Then he snatches the wrong ring from the wrong guy, and before he can blink, his world is literally turned inside out, his girlfriend is burned alive before his eyes, and he's captured by a band of otherworldly freaks who are on their own peculiar mission--and they think he's a spy for the bad guys.
Hooray for the tortoises!
Note to NaNoers: The race is not always won by the swiftest.... but if it inspires you to write, well, God speed.
Stephanie Z., I always wondered why schedule NaNo in a month with a big holiday?: the gals lose a day from all that cooking, and guys lose a day from all that football watching. Thought August would have been the better choice.
CC, thanks for explaining MG to me. In my day we called it Junior High School. :-)
Writing the sequel (sort of halfway jotting down the plot really :D ) to a science fiction novel I'm querying out about why some prophecies shouldn't come true.
K
Living with elephants in Botswana - literary nonfiction.
NaNo?
No, no.
No external discipline required.
WIP is an urban fantasy involving Lillie St. Clair, a full-spectrum mega-Talent employed as the city's official Freak to remove unwanted apparatitions.
She doesn't do zombies, however. Her specialty is ghosts.
But some believe that Lillie's exorcisms of the disembodied is genocide; and someone - or something - re-animated her dead husband for revenge.
She isn't sure she can trust the chatty bean-sidhe from the laundromat, or the big, ugly psi-crime detective assigned to her case.
As the paranormal paradigm expands as more and more creatures from folk lore and legend appear, she isn't even sure she can trust herself.
One of Lillie's later adventures, "Stone Child" has already been published in e-format and will soon be released in print.
Sorry, but you did ask.
Great question, Nathan! Agent has proposals out for two separate non-fiction projects.
Now a question for you: I was told that, while waiting for editor feedback regarding the proposals, I should not begin work on the actual books because an editor may have a specific way he/she wants to approach the subject.
Do you agree with this? What should I be working on? Anyone else out there get frustrated with this part of the process?
Due to Nathan's inspiring blog, I've started one of my own to kill time...something I've thought about for a while. Thanks, NB.
No nano nano for me, Mindy. Bludgeoning a set number of words out of my brain is what I do for a living anyway, and I've learned that with fiction, the faster I write the more torturous the revising.
Yesterday, for instance, I wrote 2,500 words of non-fiction, sourced and documented stuff to make a WFH deadline. Over the next week I have to answer editor queries on that project and also on another "finished" NF book, the edited ms of which just landed in my e-box.
At the same time, I'm making small-scale revisions on a YA fantasy novel (is the whole WORLD writing YA?) and deciding whether to go with a small publisher's offer, making large-scale revisions on an adult semi-fantasy that had been suggested by an agent several years ago, working on another contracted NF book due end of March, and in the note-taking stage of a rather bizarre cancer memoir. It's a little much but I can't help it.
For some reason, I seem to have a much easier time getting publishers (not all small ones) than agents. In fact, the last three have solicited me rather than vice versa. Maybe some people just aren't meant to have agents -- forgive the anathema, Nathan -- but I love hanging out here anyway.
I'm continuing edits to a novel I've been writing for just over a year. The first draft took about 50 days. The idea of NaNoWriMo is fun, but I barely have time to put in on my real projects. Good luck to those churning away at it.
And what are you doing surfing the net, reading random comments? GET BACK TO WORK!
Nathan,
Thank you for asking. I'm writing a fantasy novel. It is a spinoff from my Kumari Vale trilogy. My first attempt at first-person narrative after third-person ambiguous in my first four novels. Since I drafted 90,000 words to my fourth novel last month, I don't anticipate having a problem with 50K this month.
I'm posting the text on my blog: http://bitterhermit.wordpress.com for anyone interested in a taste of my penmanship. It is, of course, uncrafted. But it far exceeds most of the slush I slog through here and there.
--David, aka BitterHermit
I'm doing NaNo. Mine is a horror novel set in Las Vegas involving a guy who can hear on a different frequency: the frequency of the damned. It's just a little freaky for him until the day he discovers that They know he's listening.
Hilarity ensues.
I'm NaNoing - a YA about a 15 year old girl in a small town dealing with the aftermath of her father's suicide, a best friend that isn't her best friend anymore and having to find a new place to fit in. Toss in a crazy new girl, a few beers and some hormone-riddled high school boys, and watch what happens :)
not doing NaNo-I got the stream of consciousness thing out of my system last month, unfortunately blowing a very marketable (imo) historical fantasy premise in the process. Topped out at 45K-46K words. Hate the result.
Currently am writing urban fantasy with an Indy Jones/Relic Hunter angle, but am not trying to meet the Nano deadline.
Those demotivator posters are hilarious! Thanks for the link, I needed a good laugh today.
I've finished my MG novel and I'm struggling with crafting the perfect query for it. Arg. Your site has been very helpful in this regard, so thanks!
I'm working on the third draft of Little Fish. It's not on a set time-table, but I'm hoping to have it submission ready by Spring. Here's to hoping. =)
I'm working on a book where the footnotes make up 50 percent of the book and the footnotes footnotes make up another 25. No, not really. I wish.
I'm doing a YA novel. coming of age. Aren't they all? Tears, kissing, death, gossip, anti-depressants, and dance parties. yay!
I'm one of the crazies doing NaNoWriMo. It's a fantasy using some of the Lord of the Hunt/Forest Lord legends in Celtic mythology. Fun so far, and I finally caught up in word count last night. Can't wait to see where it takes me next.
It's an post-apocalyptic urban fantasy called Demonhead. Berkeley and San Francisco are now separate empires, and my MC has a little creature in her head who gives her advice and can manipulate the pleasure center of her brain, and other stuff like that. You're gonna love it. :-)
American Dad meets Shaun of the Dead in Australia.
Have a lovely day! :-)
OK, to add to all the other YA and/or Fantasy people - I'm NOT NaNo participating - I AM editing/polishing my kind of a Helen of Troy flouts fate story.
I'm a NaNo virgin this year, but I'm not word dumping. I've been participating in several lists with the goal of 1K a day. NaNo simply requires me to up my daily goal a little higher. :-) My novel is an urban fantasy/fantasy romance (haven't decided how strong the romance will be) based on Maya mythology and the "end of the world" in 2012.
November is a bad writing month for me. Lots of other things going on and possible my busiest time of year. So I'm not pushing myself to write at the moment. But I am querying a new project (dark urban fantasy/crime), I'm editing short stories that have been sitting around getting ignored (a mix of SF, F and horror, sometimes all in the same story) and polishing a contemporary romantica novellette. When I get back to more active writing (hopefully in December) I'll be working to finish a zombie themed dark romance novella I started in September called "Rot".
Hmmmm. What am I writing?
Well, I'm no longer writing race stories since I just received my annual lay off notice. After seventeen years, you would think I was accustomed to it, but it's still a bittersweet feeling.
I should be working on my fantasy novel more, but all I've done in the past week is work on a pitch and tweak a chapter with melodramatic enchanted jars. I should also be studying poetry, since one of the jars has decided to reply to everything in verse, but I've decided a salt jar might be excused for bad rhyme.
Some writer friends have encouraged me to do something more with my journal than blog my adventures of middle-aged divorce, which is different from divorce in the middle ages--but not much. To that end, I wrote a brief description.
Over the hill, overweight and overdrawn. One woman's flight to freedom on a forklift.
Years ago I fantasized about being a paladin, stabbing my spurred foot into a stirrup as I prepared to ride off to battle. My toes wiggled inside scuffed, steel-toed workboots. I wasn't quite the knight in shining armor I imagined in my youth, but this was damned sure turning into an adventure.
Unfortunately, I still haven't decided exactly what it is.
I also wrote a tribute to my father for Veteran's Day. That might be the most important thing I've done in a long while.
I'd just like to say I do appreciate your time and effort on this blog. It's interesting to peek in and see what's going on in agent world.
I'm NaNoing to finish the first draft of a contemporary YA that was stalled in the dreaded middle. Actually it was stalled just barely past the beginning. Now I'm truly in the middle, but there's no time to wallow here -- 22 days to go!
My current work is my first work. It's called Jersey Justice. The main character, Jimmy Vincent, was tormented by his peers as a child. One day that all turned around and now he deals in street justice, fighting for the little guy and doing things the cops want to do but can't.
In this particular time frame his dumb witted but gorgeous sister comes to town without telling her brother that she's running from her drug lord husband and the fun ensues.
I'm a hugely sarcastic person and that definitely caries through. I enjoy reading the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich, this work is definitely inspired by her.
I've just finished the second draft of a novel. It's about a 30ish slacker who (at dead father's last request) has to visit a reclusive war veteran and jumpstart his mediocre life to earn the inheritance of which his father cut him out. Along the way he starts a conversation with the ghost of Ernest Hemingway who, while dragging him to key west and giving him cryptic clues, manages to help him reunite the war veteran with a lost love, forgive his father, and save his depressed drunk June Cleaver-ish mother.
Holy...
I can make up whatever I want since I'm the 132nd comment and no one in their right mind will read it. But just in case . . . I'm writing a historical novel based on a man who lived in 145 BC. Unfortunately he has to die a horrible death at the end, but it's been quite the journey developing his character and researching Mesoamerica--his homeland. I hit 80,000 words today, so I feel like I might have an enjoyable holiday season after all . . . as long as I don't eat too much chocolate as I stress about my publisher accepting the project.
Just for NaNo...a space opera surrounding the rescue of a handful of castaways who survived the incidental encounter with a latent mine left over from a distant conflict.
Throw in that one of the survivors is an Imperial general who was restoring the prestige and power of the central Imperial government in a strife laden but neglected backwater province and the story has marginal political overtones.
It is a human drama about the conflicts of the high status individuals stranded without any real belief in rescue in contrast to the conflicts of the workaday crew of the makeshift recovery operation launched by the provincial headquarters without any real desire for the recovery of the lost.
The rescuers have little emotional investment to find the lost. The castaways have little illusion that their recovery is possible or even desirable.
When the low-investment recovery crew finally finds the low-hope but politically significant castaways, the interest is in seeing how the revelation of rescue will affect both.
Getting my ass kicked and handed to me by a fantasy novel.
I'm using Nano to get a dent (not necessarily 50K though) into my NiP Eagle of the Sea
M. Horatius Veranius Aquila wants to make a career in the Roman army. But when he is dispatched to Britannia where the governor Julius Agricola fights against the Caledonians, he has dejà-vus of tribal life he can't explain. During a skirmish, Aquila is taken captive and discovered to be born to the tribes from his mother's side and heir to the leadership of the Cerones.
Torn between conflicting blood ties and allegiances, Aquila tries to adapt to the tribal culture and mediate between the Caledonian Confederation and the Romans. But some of the tribal warriors - led by Aquila's cousin Tarain - don't want peace, the influential patrician Cornelius Lentulus learns about the role Aquila's father played in Britain and accuses the family of treason, and the Batavian auxiliaries in Aquila's charge are on the verge of mutiny.
When his attempts to negotiate peace between the Romans and Caledonians fail, Aquila has to decide for one side of his double heritage and become a traitor to the other.
___
Aquila is fun to write. He's a honest guy, but that's exactly what gets him into trouble because he doesn't share some or the Roman prejudices against the Germanic tribes. Right now he's helping a friend from the Batavians to rescue the man's son who in the eyes of the Romans is a deserter. No wonder the legate wants to get rid of the troubleshooter and sends Aquila to Britain. :)
Current WIP is a letter to my (grown) children, explaining what was going on with Mom when they were young (depression/anorexia). Despite how it sounds, it's going to focus on the spiritual journey and resolution, and hopefully be something they'd want to read. :)
Current WIP is a letter to my (grown) children, explaining what was going on with Mom when they were young (depression/anorexia). Despite how it sounds, it's going to focus on the spiritual journey and resolution, and hopefully be something they'd want to read. :)
Yes, I have got NaNO.
One is a mystery, the other a fantasy.
I find NaNO is a great way to get the draft knocked out and then spend time working on it.
Why people get the impression it is meant to be knocking out a real send to an agent type challenge is beyond me.
I am half way to finishing the challenge but probably will need to add another 10-20k to both, to finish the stories.
Its great fun and the donations go to a great cause, NaNO isnt just about writing it has a real purpose too :) Infecting other countries with books.
Since I've just started a new job (as one of those damn fine editor-type people you speak so highly of) I've had to give NaNo a pass this year.
Which doesn't mean I'm not working!
In the hopper, I've got:
- A manga proposal to retool for TokyoPop
- A spec fic short-short to tighten up
- A half-finished novel to come back to, now that my move to the West is over. (*Which* half-finished novel - the murder mystery or the hard-to-classify contemporary fantasy - is still up for debate.)
Long, loooooooooooooooooooooooong slump. Not sure if its writer's block or what... eager to get back in the swing, just not sure where to start--or how.
I finished what I was writing, so I got to this late. I sent it to a few relatives and close friends. I'll wait to hear what they think, and then I will fix the problems they find--and perhaps create new ones in the process. Until they get back to me, I decided to go to the library and pick up a few books to read. My friends and family don't read as quickly as I, so it'll be a month or two before I hear back from them (to this date, three weeks later, only one has finished my book).
Enough with that, I wrote a novel about the medical system, specifically about four patients with the same condition, and their journeys through the system. I am a Crohn's patient, so I essentially wrote--shoot me now--a fictionalized version of what I saw in the hospital wards. There are very deep issues of class and access that aren't well known. There are also issues of hamstrung doctors that are forced into glorified social work by the very flawed system. All of this irritated me, so I decided to write a book.
A novel with a political point is probably one of the more difficult things to write. It was one of those things "I needed to write." I'm glad I did. Though I think I'll probably self-publish it. I'll wait until my friends and family get back to me before I decide what to do with it.
Wow Nathan, thanks for asking. LOL Even though I'm a little late on this one, I'm writing an urban fantasy. It has the potential to turn into a series.
NaNo gave me an excuse to really put my foot down and start being serious and so far I've written 17k. Still have a long way to go but my plot is fully developed and I think it will be easy to get it out. :)
Kimi
http://www.talechasing.com
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 10/31/2007
Blog: Nathan Bransford (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: You Tell Me, Add a tag
First off, thanks very much to the amazing Ginger Clark for her guest post yesterday -- not only is she a great agent, I think she has a future as a blogger. Also, linking to her PublishersMarketplace page reminded me that I also have a PublishersMarketplace page that I recently updated, so please check it out. It will blow your mind. (not really.) But please at least take a look, that html code doesn't write itself.
So as I'm sure you've heard by now, Dumbledore is gay. I knew I should have read those sequels!!! But here's the thing: those who have read the books tell me that he doesn't even so much as hold hands with anyone. Hmmm...
This we know: he's a bachelor (not this kind), he kind of maybe liked this other wizard dude but it's kind of ambiguous.... Oh! and JK Rowling says he is. But then, the New York Times kind of put him back in the closet, basically saying it doesn't matter.
In order to decide whether or not Dumbledore actually is gay, it opens up a bigger literary can of worms. Who gets final say on the interpretation of a character, especially when the evidence on the page is ambiguous? Does the author get final say based on her intention? Do the readers get final say based on what's there on the page? Who gets to decide?
So you tell me: who owns the characters on a page? The Author? The readers? A combination?
The author, no doubt, gets the ultimate say becasue he/she CREATED the character.
But, I think most authors would be okay with readers having their own unique interpretations as well.
Stephen King has a great bit in On Writing about how writing is telepathy - writers write an image and somewhere down the line, readers receive that image. Not to say that it's the same image once it gets there.
I think ultimately, the film companies own the character - that's how everyone will think of any character once it's been on the big screen.
While the character is being written it belongs to the author. He/she can bend it to their will.
Once it becomes published it becomes the interpretation of the reader.
I agree with cynjay. Once the film companies make a character, that's what it become.
I think the characters are much like your own children. You create them, you give them life and nurture them. You try to protect them and mold them. You know everything about them - their likes, their dislikes, their favorite foods, how they got the scar on their chin, etc. But once you send them out in into the world, they take on a life of their own. They become influenced by new people and new perspectives. At that point, while they will always be your babies, they are now on their own and you can no longer protect them...or redefine them.
The author is god in this case. She knows things about her characters that may never be available to the public. But that only goes so far. The reader has his own interpretation and that's what matters to the reader.
Since Rowling has given us more information (or maybe, TMI) we, as readers, can add it to our interpretation. For me, this info has no affect on the story. Dumbledore's sex life had no relevance at all to the plot or the outcome or any of the characters. Knowing this just kind of "rounds out" the character.
I don't think the film companies own a character, even though that's the one everyone sees. The character is still the author's, as much as our kids are always our kids.
Dumbledore is gay because J.K. says he is, and that is FINAL!
Fundamentally, I agree with V L Smith. But in this particular case, I think Dumbledore cannot be gay because neither I nor my husband nor any of my friends who are HP fans ever suspected he was gay while we were reading the books. (It's not unusual for a sage type to be celibate.) If a quality does not come through on the page, it isn't authentic. The author has blown it. (I would say she blew it by pretending that he's gay rather than by not showing it more clearly, especially since these are supposed to be children's books, but that's just me.)
I'd say the author can always take reader opinion into consideration, but it is their creation, their story, and their say in the end.
The author.
But that doesn't take away from reader interpretation. I mean, look at the Talmud!
Nathan, I noticed you say on your Publisher's Marketplace page that you're interested in narrative nonfiction, but don't mention memoir. Would memoir be included in that category?
I'm writing my memoir which is why I'm interested - I plan to query you when I'm ready!
To answer the post question, I think the author has the ultimate say about the characters, but the public certainly has a right to express their opinions. In this case it's especially noteworthy that Rowling came forward with this information, rather than responding to public speculation (unless I'm mistaken - I haven't read the books.)
To add to the comparison of our characters and our children: We invent fictional characters and raise our children for many reasons. We love them, we want to experience their growth, but ultimately they must leave us!
A writer, in my opinion, has to create an entire world for that character to inhabit. I have to know what my Fake People like to eat, like to listen to, and wear, even if it doesn't figure into the story, because it makes that person more real to me. If he's not real to me, he'll never be real to the reader.
I can see why JKR never mentioned Dumbledore's orientation. It was totally unnecessary to the story!!! I hear a lot of anger out of people that she dared to throw this in after all's said and done and printed and sold. Why shouldn't she? If asked, she'll tell. She invented him.
Of course she isn't going back and changing things. This admission doesn't change anything.
Who owns Dumbledore? She does. And she handed him over to us, he's become part of our popular culture, and we get to share in her world, his world, our own little brain movie as we read.
Those characters have become ours because she created them and wrote about them. There. Clear as mud?
Melanie-
I definitely represent memoir. Thanks for asking!
Nobody. It's just like real people. You meet someone new, you see all sorts of positive qualities and similarities to yourself - you click.
Meanwhile your best friend meets the same person and sees only negative things and the very qualities that you liked are the ones that push your friend's buttons.
Some people, ie. the writer, may portray a character as nice and sweet - but certain readers see the character as a sap who lets everyone walk all over them.
Writer or reader, it's all about frame of reference - nobody "owns" the character, and everyone isn't going to view the character in the same way regardless of intent.
The author created the characters. She has the final say. Period.
Readers, however, are welcome to interpret the books as they please. If you take five people and give them a book, they will almost certainly all read it a different way.
The problem comes when readers insist that their interpretation is God, and how dare the author announce something about the character that disagrees with their personal interpretation. That's not okay. They aren't the ones who created the story in the first place.
If you only knew the debate that's shaking fandom now to its roots! There's the "Dumbledore is asexual, as per the books" camp, and there's the "Whatever JKR says is gold" camp. I myself am in the "Why the heck couldn't she put that in the books" camp. Dumbledore being gay may not make much of a difference to the story, and may not have any bearing on the plot, but his being in love with Grindelwald certainly does. In the King's Cross chapter, when Dumbledore is essentially in confession with Harry (at one point he says, "I have no secrets from you any more") why couldn't he have said words to the effect of, "I loved Grindelwald. It blinded me to who he was"?
My guess is that either this is one of those things JKR makes up off the top of her head in interviews (not uncommon, and there was a lot of criticism for the stifling heteronormativity of the HP books after DH came out), or she coldly and calculatedly left out overtly outing Dumbledore in the books so as to not lose readership. Both options leave me with far less respect for JKR than I used to have.
As to who owns the characters now? It's us. The NYT gets to keep believing Dumbledore was asexual. Crazy fanfiction writers get to keep believing Dumbledore had a hot affair with the giant squid of Hogwarts lake. Some of us will reread the books with Dumbledore-loved-Grindelwald in mind. Others will burn their books because OMG, this guy dresses flaboyantly and makes stupid jokes and is SO GAY it's disgusting. Still others will snicker a bit when they read Dumbledore saying, "Let us now step out into the night to pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
Once published, characters belong to the reader's imaginations alone. I, for one, wish JKR would shut up and stop giving out arbitrary details about them.
Nathan--
What an awesome question!
When I'm submitting my clients' work, of course the characters are all THEIRS. But as a lifelong booklover, I can definitely see the other side as well. Reading is such an intimate experience. I defy anyone to tell me that Mr. Darcy isn't mine...ALL MINE!
Wow, suddenly it's 1989 and I'm sitting in Professor Reed's Critical Theories class. There are two key essays here by Wimsatt and Beardsley. The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy. My education was heavily steeped in the New Criticism with a minor dose of Deconstructionism (which could be viewed as the fulfillment of New Criticism). The New Critical line would be that all that matters is what's in the text. To move on to Deconstructionism, we add in the idea that, there is no outside the text. So Rowling's statement is part of the text, but it doesn't have a privileged status because she wrote it. The Barry Trotter books, fan sites and even the comments on this blog could be considered part of the whole broad text. A good deconstructionist critique has a sense of play (in both the sense of "playing with toys" and play as freedom of movement) about it, which is somewhat unsettling in that there is not fixed meaning, but probably is closest to the truth about literature: After all, with Rowling's statement, the meaning of the text has changed whether you want it to be or not, just like reading a biography of an author can change one's perceptions of that author's work.
"Ownership" is such a fascist bourgeois concept. Just let it go.
:-)
Gee, I always saw Dumbledore as having no sexual orientation -- at least, none at the point where the series begins. He's always seemed kind of like the Zen Master who has risen above earthly desires.
But that brings to mind a question: does anyone else think Rowling may be setting us all up for her next series, starting with Dumbledore's student days?
Personally, I'd like to have some things left to my imagination. If it isn't clear in the books, the writer should leave it alone.
But this is a consequence of the publishing world becoming a business, IMO. Despite Rowling's reluctance to be in the spotlight, she has to give interviews, book signings etc., and is expected to say something interesting every time. And with a crowd of fans assaulting her with backstory questions, she found a good opportunity to get media coverage.
It's clear that fansites and blogs like this cover it, but I'm amazed that this was on every major news website and in big newspapers. THIS IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER! People die daily of AIDS, war and famine, and Dumbledore hits the headlines.
It's time Paris Hilton did something stupid again.
Who owns fictional characters?
I do! (Bwahaha!)
Pay me.
I believe writing is like every other art: a collaboration. I put into it what I think ought to be there. You're free to fill in the rest, and get out of my words whatever you want. There doesn't have to be any correspondence between the two.
The books never stated he was gay. I never thought of him as gay, or indeed gave any thought to his sexuality. Now that she's finished writing the words, I can read them any way I like. Her comments in the press may indicate what she intended, but that's not the way the character of Dumbledore played in my head.
Of course, all this ignores the legal ramifications. If she owns the copyrights and trademarks, then in a very real sense she owns the character and I can't take my interpretation out for a walk among the words without proper authorization.
I think that Orson Scott Card said it best in his introduction to his 1991 edition of ENDER'S GAME:
"The story of ENDER'S GAME is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together."
I read that many years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. It bothers me a lot that Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay like she did, and I think readers are certainly free to interpret his character as asexual or however else they want to, as long as it is consistent with the (mostly scant) textual evidence regarding his sexuality.
Now, if Rowling had made this revelation in due course as part of one of her novels, that would have been a different matter. She's perfectly free to do whatever she likes with her characters in the context of her writing, and that's a license held exclusively by her as far as I'm concerned. If she had revealed him to be gay in the context of the story, I would have been fine with it, although admittedly I prefer the vision of him as a great wizard above sexual concerns, as the times article notes. But it would have been her choice, since it was her work.
I think it's rather cheap in general for authors to explain backstory outside of their actual novels. Certainly it's not a problem with minor details such as specific age, birthplace, etc, that just wouldn't come up in the story -- but anything that seemingly flies in the face of textual evidence, or comes as a shock, or even seems a stretch based on textual evidence (as this does) shouldn't be revealed outside the narrative, in my opinion.
This would be like if George Lucas had revealed in an interview that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, after only making the original movie. How horrible would that have been? Certainly there was foreshadowing for that revelation, but if it had been revealed outside the narrative of the movies it would have seemingly lost all truth and meaning.
I believe that the author has the exclusive right to do anything they want with their worlds and characters, but only in the context of their narratives themselves. Once those pages are in the hands of the readers, the readers are going to make their own inferences and come to their own personal understanding, right or wrong. A later work can certainly cause readers to revise that personal understanding -- all the best sequels do this to some degree -- but this is expanding the story, not clarifying it in interviews or endnotes. At least, that's my take.
The author gets first dibs on the character, but when she gives him to the reader the character belongs to them.
In this case, JK is done with Potter Books. If she wanted a gay wizard, she could have made one, but she gave him to the world, announced that she's done, THEN said he's gay. Doesn't even matter now--she didn't bother to say it when it mattered.
Without the readers, where would authors be?
the author has the final say: after all, there's so many cut scenes between the original and the final book that the author still has in their head that the reader doesn't ever get to see: of course they know all the innermost secrets that may never even appear on the page!
Guys, while you tell us about what makes up a fictional character, why not talk about something supposedly real?
Many people have different opinions about me. Some might see me as a very loving person, some as an intelligent one, some as a complete SOB (to put it nicely). Who's right? Who gets to "decide"? It's a ridiculous concept from the start. After I'm dead people will still have opinions about me, so it's not as if it's really my call anyways.
So, tell me, why is a fictional character all that different? Why would you treat something that your senses tell you is "real" any different than what your imagination cooks up?
There's never any one "right" answer, and there's no such thing as "ownership". You see the world one way, and I another. Claiming anyone has a claim that is more valid than anyone else is a very silly thing to say.
(I'd stick to the pithy translations of my ideas into ordinary speech, but no one seemed to get that, either).
Roland Barthe said the author is dead as soon as his or her text is published, because then, provided the book is read at all, people will (mis)read it, appropriate it, etc. As for Dumbledore, I see him not so much gay as a healthy participant in our homosocial society, where men invest their feelings into other men. Dumbledore chases after Voldemort and Harry Potter for seven long books. No, wait, he dies at the end of the sixth book. But anyway he dies happily, struck by a phallus...umm a wand. And he is buried, hugging another...umm wand, the one he got, after he castrated...umm defeated another wizard (I forget his name). Maybe that's what Rowling tried to tell us.
Frankly, I'm much more shocked and concerned by A.A. Milne's bombshell confession that Senator Pooh's anti-Heffalum voting record ran completely counter to his late life Woozle dalliances.
Stuffed yella HYPOCRITE!
Heh, how funny, my boyfriend and I had a big debate about this last night because of the Dumbledore being gay thing.
My take: It's very important to note that the actually quote was "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." Not, Dumbledore is* gay. Whether he is gay or straight is relatively unimportant to the story. So much so that it is never addressed. I've come to think of it as being similar to having a character whose eye color is never mentioned. It's obviously a trait that is there, but it's not so important to the character that it was mentioned. So if I think of them as having blue eyes, my boyfriend thinks of them as having green eyes, and JK Rowling thinks of them as having brown eyes, does it matter? For each of us it's one little detail from our imagination that helped cement who that character is/what they looked like.
As a writer those are the types of things that I hope help make a character more real for my readers. If it was important I would just put it out there and if not, well, using your imagination is a huge part of what makes reading great. Why read if not to take the author's world and explore it, making it a little bit your own?
So Dumbledore being gay? I think it suits his character and I always thought of him as such, so it's no change to me. My boyfriend who wants so badly to think of Dumbledore as straight (not because of a homophobia issue but because he always thought of Dumbledore as "getting all the ladies"), let him. Let the little nerdy boys' imaginations run wild and cement those characters and give them hope for growing up to be big nerdy men who can get a woman. :D
I think that the character belongs to the author, which is why they can kill them off in the middle of a heart-wrenching series.
However, and isn't there always one of those or their first cousin "but", readers develop an emotional stake in a character. The characters in the books become what they see in their minds eye. An author could write a story and very clearly describe the character only to have someone come back and say, "I thought she had brown hair, not blond."
I think this emotional stake is why so many readers become disillusioned by writers when they change a character the reader has come to love. So in the case of ownership, I side with the author but I can empathize with the reader completely.
In the case of Dumbledore being gay, I feel that it doesn't have much bearing on the overall theme of the stories. I’m not a fan of J.K. Rowling (let the lynching begin) but I have suffered through three of the Harry Potter books looking for the same thing that people raved about. I think it is just silly to go back after all is said and done and say, “Oh, by the way, Dumbledore is gay.” It leads to that whole problem about readers feeling betrayed by the writer after they have placed their trust and given the characters an emotional stake in their literary lives.
Sorry about this, it became more of a rant than an opinion.
A book is a collaboration between the writer and the readers isn't it? Surely the author only 'owns' the character, or any other aspect of the story, until s/he shares the story -- then it can't be taken back.
It sounds like some people feel Rowling tried to take Dumbledore back from them. In this case, though, she was sharing her backstory for Dumbledore, responding to a question about whether he had ever loved anyone. Rowling's answer was basically, "Yes, but maybe not who you'd expect." Maybe, in the sixth book, Dumbledore should have said to Harry, "I knew a boy who's hair..." Then the scriptwriter and everyone else wouldn't have been so confused. Personally, I'm glad he didn't camp it up around school, but I'm glad he found someone to love.
For the record, the exact quote from JK is:
"Dumbledore is gay, actually."
In books 1-6, JKR didn't give any hint Dumbles was gay, but in book 7, she DID. When I got to the end of book 7, I immediately thought, "Is Dumbledore gay? It seems like he's gay."
After all, as a young man, he had a fascination with Grindelwald that made more sense if it was a crush, and Elphias Doge was more devastated by Dumbledore's death than a mere friend should have been. The clues WERE there.
Plus Dumbledore wore that natty purple suit, y'know (book 6).
Notwithstanding legalities, I’d say it’s a combination.
That said, keep in mind that I’m basing this opinion on fan fiction, which I write, so I am familiar with those “rules”. If it’s in the book, it is canon. If it is implied, it is canon, but up for interpretation. But if it never came up anywhere in published form (not including press releases ;) ), it is author canon. The author could later change their mind, or find that a particular characteristic doesn’t work after all once he/she tries to write it in; but once it is published, it becomes canon.
Example: S.E. Hinton once commented that her character of Sodapop, in The Outsiders, died in Vietnam shortly before his 19th birthday. People went nuts. Girls were crying themselves to sleep. It later came out that, no, it was the boy who the character was based on that died, and she gave this information to Rob Lowe during the filming of the movie to help him better connect with the character. Still, fans were assuming this was canon, and anything that diverged from this future was wrong.
I think that S.E. might be wishing this little bit of information had never gotten out because of how blown out of proportion it was. In a recent radio interview in which she was asked about her thoughts on fan fiction, Ms. Hinton stated that we should feel free to create our own back stories, futures, etc. for her characters, as the only canon that really counts is what is in the book.
Now, at the same time, I also think that there is a certain window of expectations that readers view the story through. For some it is a little wider than for others (I’m actually picturing a bell curve here), and it’s easier to interpret the story more loosely. As individual as this is, though, the closer you get to the edges, as either the author or the person interpreting the characters, the less believable you’re going to be, and the more people will be telling you that you aren’t being true to the character(s).
Oh c'mon! It was there all along!
The purple robes. The tastefully decorated study. Thin, neat, lifelong bachelor. Grindewald. The way he could host a killer party.
Right at the part in Book Three where Harry walks in and catches Dumbledore watching the Bravo Channel marathon in the pensive, I was all "AH HA!"
I'm tellin' you, JK was dropping hints like Snoop drops the beat.
That's easy. No one. Characters, like people, can't be OWNED. (unless you're into slavery but that's a whole other thing)Just because I've created an individual doesn't mean they belong to me. Nor do they belong to the reader. Like any author there comes a point when my characters run ahead of me, bent on doing their own thing. All I do is follow. If that isn't freedom, I don't know what is!
Aloha,
The author owns control over the lives and personalities of his characters. The readers get to judge those personalities, deciding whether to love them or to hate them.
I have read every single HP book, even travelled over to Oahu to see the movies on large screens, but at no time did I ever wonder(or care) who Professor Dumbledore was doing. It has never been an issue.
Of course, I never ponder the sexual preference pendulum of the other octogenarians I see either.
I think fictional characters are open to interpretation, but since the author decides what they actually do, I'd say it is their character when it all comes down to it.
And as a die-hard Harry (technically Voldy, but he died in 7 so I hated the book) fan, I'd just like to comment to the Dumbledore discussion: How much does this really change the story? Everything still happens the way it always has, its not like the words are going to rearrange themselves to be like, "Dumbledore is SO gay!" He's still Dumbledore, he still did everything Rowling said, and he is still the same person. I don't get why people make such a big deal out of it. Besides, Voldemort had been just such a better character and history and everything up until he dies... :P
"Hissy hissy, little snakey,
Slither on the floor.
You be good to Morfin,
Or he'll nail you to the door." <3
I think the key words are, "...on the page." It's absurd to me that Rowling is carrying on about her characters after the series as ended. Especially since the prologue was so disappointing telling only what one character does for a living. (Neville, herbology instructor.) When I find out if Steph Plum marries Joe Morelli it had better be in a book and not Janet Evanovich (be right back, I need to genuflect for a mo') OK, I'm back... Right then. Not when Janet Evanovich mentions it to Oprah or Ellen while tucking her breast back into her shirt.....
I thought the story was that Rowling's quote came after she saw a script for the upcoming movie, where the screenwriter had written something in about Dumbledore in his young days and his affections for a young woman. Her reply was that it needed to be scratched out because he was gay, and would therefore not have had the girlie crush. At least, that's how it was reported here.
I wonder is Rowling 'discovered' this about the character late in the series as she was reviewing the earlier books. Granted, it seems a biggie, and she does seem to have planned out all sorts of little details about the later series before she published the first book. But when I'm revising, I discover new, sometimes major, things about my characters or events. I love that process, and it's not a problem during revision, but in a series where the first books are already published an author can't really revise, only add on -- and carefully, at that.
Nathan... a suggestion....
Since Ginger was such a hit, how about some other CB agents as future guest bloggers...
Maybe we can hear from a co-worker looking for other genres different from what you and Ginger are looking for? Like thrillers? Mysteries? Someone who doesn't mind a dead body or two! :-)
Or chick lit agents? WF? Historicals? Literary? Humor? Vampires?
Josephine-
Um, I represent all of the genres you listed, but yes -- I'm hoping to have some other agents brave the blogspot and will hopefully have some more guest posts. Stay tuned.
Nathan,
I checked out your Publishersmarketplace.com page.
One question: Are the books you display at the bottom of the web page all the books you have sold since joining Curtis Brown in 2006?
Quite a few of the PM agent sites list the books they have sold recently, even if they haven't yet gone to press.
It would be very helpful for those of us considering working with you to know how many books have you sold over the past year and what kind of books they were.
Admittedly, I've never read any Harry Potter books or watched any of the movies. The premise never interested me. Still, I really can't understand what the fuss is about. Why does it matter what his orientation is? It's much ado about nothing.
I don't think anyone but the author, the publishing profressionals in contract with her, and anyone licensed by her should make money off the characters. However, once a book is released, the characters belong to everyone to interpret and enjoy or not.
Anon-
For various reasons (which I'll blog about at some point) I don't always report my deals to PublishersMarketplace, and thus I think if I listed the deals I handled at the bottom of my page it would be misleading because it would be incomplete. But this is something I'm always happy to talk about with my prospective clients.
I create a whole backstory and history including likes and dislikes for my characters- even though none may ever reach the page it allows me as a writer to be able see them more authentically- The author initiates this process by writing the book -- the reader completes this process by reading it and provides their own reality - Who's right?
Whoever's head you're in!
I'm not a Harry Potter reader, but I guess my answer is that in an increasingly metatextual world, fictional characters take on an existence of their own, and as readers, we choose how to take it. If you want to read/watch then let your imagination take it from there, great. If you want to check out blogs, web interviews, deleted scenes, commentary tracks, etc., then you're likely to be introduced to new information about the "author's intent." If you're interested in it, then it's a real part of the character. If you're not... then stay away from it. Of course, when there's a media blitz about it, it's harder to ignore.
And perhaps that's why I never got into Harry Potter. I knew that my reading of it would be overshadowed by the publicity and public discussion.
The author gets final say. I mean, come ON, the author invented the character. The reader is the end-user.
Nathan, the Guardian has the other quote. I suspect they're both from different parts of the conversation.
As for me, I think Rowling had just as much right to answer her reader's question as the reader did to ask it. Whether other readers wanted to know is beside the point (and something to take up with reporters and editors instead of the author). The two of them were continuing the conversation of the book.
Epilogue. I meant epilogue. Since my epilady incident and my steadfast refusal of epidurals I have struggle with that suffix, er, prefix.
Sure she owns her characters - but don't sneak me info after the fact. It just sits funny with me, not sure why. Probably because I did feel so invested in the world she created. I don't want dribs and drabs coming out. I literally and metaphorically closed the book on Harry. Enough. Do you think I need a life? I do.
I read the first three or four Harry Potters, and Dumbledore’s sexuality never crossed my mind. On screen, however, he was definitely played with a touch of camp.
This leads me to wonder what it must be like for an author (generally, not just regarding Gaydore), who is in the process of writing a series at the same time as the preceding novels are being interpreted in film.
On the question of ownership: give life then let go.
I read the first three or four Harry Potters, and Dumbledore’s sexuality never crossed my mind. On screen, however, he was definitely played with a touch of camp.
Which leads me to wonder what it must be like for an author, who is in the process of writing a series at the same time as the preceding novels are being interpreted in film.
On the question of ownership: give life then let go.
Property is theft. Intellectual property is just... um. Intellectual theft?
No, wait. That's stupid.
I think on a legal level, if JK Rowling doesn't own Dumbledore, she's not the business person she seems to be (which is to say, extremely savvy).
I tend to disagree with the poster who said she blew it. I think that representing Dumbledore as overtly gay in the novels would have hurt sales, and that answering the news conference question as she did probably helped sales.
I also tend to believe that this particular revelation enriches the subtext of the novel. And the fact that people are having this conversation three weeks (or is it only two) after the news conference says something about the strong emotions Rowling has evoked about her characters, which, you know: good writers do that.
It also, to bring us to the philosophical underpinnings of Our Gracious Host's question, says something about the feeling of ownership of these characters that her readership already has. As I said, Rowling almost certainly owns the rights to her characters, and if she wants to write a Young Dumbledore series in which his sexuality is frankly discussed, she can, and good luck stopping her.
But I doubt she will (v. her savvy business sense).
However, at some point, I suspect that we will all be dead, and people will be reading Harry Potter books. At that point, of course, there will be people talking about Dumbledore's sexuality with footnotes and citations and erudite examples. They will surely get an A when they make a sound argument, regardless of their actual position on the subject, for that's what college is all about.
Their subsequent (or perhaps preceding) essay will be on the sexuality of Hamlet. Yeah, there are people who care. Amazing, huh?
Here, incidentally, is a link to an unofficial transcript of the Q&A session where she dropped the bomb. Don't know if the <a> tag works here, on blogger, or if that lt gt thing will either. Here's hoping for the universality of HTML.
peace
Matt
Since I have absolutely ZERO interest in Harry Potter, I'm just going to answer the bigger question of who owns fictional characters.
My answer: The author, through and through. They created the character, they thought up the story; it's their world.
That being said, there's nothing stopping the reader from thinking of the characters differently than the author intends. Like my dad said when I told him my cousin considers me and my guy friend dating, "She can consider whatever she wants. She can consider you guys MARRIED if that's what she wants to believe."
Self-delusion, people. It's a beautiful thing.
Seems to me that if Dumbledore being gay or straight doesn't affect the story, there's no need for it to be spelled out in the books. This was all because some film-maker wanted to add in a girlfriend for Dumbledore, and he never had one. Ghoul friends, maybe.
Do the books say whether Harry Potter is white, black, yellow or brown? The cover art and the films say he's white, but is it specified in the books, I wonder?
As to whether an author owns characters, I'm more worried about whether the characters own me. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
I think v.l. smith put it most succinctly. While your children may be linked to you genetically, and while they may have spent their earliest years with you, at some point they grow up and join the real world. "They become influenced by new people and new perspectives."
Writers can do their best to shape a character, but ultimately, characters belong to the reader. After all, a character may come alive on a page, but they will only speak once a book is opened. It's the reader who brings them to life -- in their own mind.
So perhaps it's joint ownership?
Author hands down! Unless I disagree with the author, and then it is the reader, absolutely! ;o)
To me it is a matter of intent vs. impact. what we say or write vs. what we mean in our heads against the way it is accepted in someone elses mind. (Cnfused?) I write with the ultimate desire to touch someone in the world, even if it is just one. The story boils through their mind and comes alive. It is the reader who ultimately creates the character. And they will create the same one that I did if I did my job right.
Haha; I just had this discussion in my Humanities 200 class! The point that was brought up was that the author has no power over the characters once they have actually written down what they wish to write down. That they can't have a power-trip over making sure that every little detail is understood. Or, that there is "no reality outside of the book". So, if it's not there, it's not there, and it's free game!
I don't know how much I agree, but I like the idea of "no reality outside of the book"; that's why fanfiction is so awesome, because it builds alternate worlds outside of the reality.
When I read the last HP book, I thought the relationship was not all that subtle. So I wasn't overly surprised when JK announced Dumbledore's sexuality.
Authors generally have a pretty good idea of the background and history of their characters (it's all the false starts we have :P) and if the author says such and such a character is gay, then in their world he is. How the reader's choose to interpret this is a different story. The writer has no control over that.
Personally, I'm happy that she outed him, because I like being right. *grin*
As long as the author's statements aren't directly contradicted by the text, then I think the author's words have weight.
Even better is if the author's extratextual comments are actually supported by the text.
I like that different people take different things from characters. It's one of the joys. A perfectly formed, unread character is a sad, sad thing indeed.
Fiction is a tender dance between author and reader. The author leads, hopefully gives the reader a few good twirls around the floor, and the reader follows in his/her own style to complete the turns and help execute a graceful dip or lift at the end.
Adding details about characters after the fact is like the leader trying to throw in a few fancy steps after the last pas-de-deux; it's anticlimactic and should have happened within the context of the dance. If JK really wanted Dumbledore to be gay, she should have written it into at least one of her books. I read them all and never got that about him. But knowing his orientation would have made his inner conflict ever so much sharper and understandable.
The thing that's frustrating about this debate (not the debate on this blog, but the greater Dumbledore debate) is that it feels like it's about homophobia, not character representation.
JK Rowling was ASKED a question about Dumbledore's love life, so she answered. It's not like she randomly issued a press release about his orientation.
If she had been asked a question about his favorite type of pasta and she said "linguini with pesto sauce" would there have been an outcry like this? "No, I thought it was fettucini alfredo!" "How can she say this, it's not in the books?" No, people would have accepted it as a detail of his background that helped her make him more real on the page.
If his sexual orientation didn't matter in the books, it shouldn't matter now. Just like in real life, it doesn't change anything about the person.
My feeling is that no matter how hard I try, I eventually wind up giving up control of my characters, hell, my whole book. My intentions only get me so far, and while, I hope that most readers will understand it as I do, there may be more than a few who interpret it in their own peculiar way. If someone wants to read my novel "The Vampire of Alpine Canyon" (sorry for the plug)as a perverse portrayal of Santa Claus, there's little I can do. No matter how many circles I run screaming "I didn't SAY that!" they're going to insist otherwise. I am hopeful any alternative interpretations are intelligent ones.
This reminds me of a story a friend told me: Her father had been a hobo riding the rails during the Great Depression and used to bore her for hours and days on end with his stories of the hardships he faced during that time.
She always dreaded having to listen to these stories . . . until the time came when she read "The Grapes of Wrath." by John Steinbeck. After she finished, she ran to her father in tears, crying: "I've just read 'The Grapes of Wrath!' Now I understand everything you went through!"
Her father glared at her: "That man was a lousy, stinking Communist," he said. "Everything in that book is a lie."
She never wrote about Dumbldore's oreination in the actual books therefore since she not writing them any more I do not think she can change anything like that. Although there was a part about people gossiping on whether Harry and the wizard had a thing going everyone who was reading knew that wasnt true because all the main characters Harry, Ron, and Hermione all were straight and had relantionships. Anyways I'm sure out of everyone who ever read those books not everyones going to have heard about what she's said. Thank you for bringing up this topic so I can form my own opinion.
This question (and you're not the only one asking it, Nathan) is interesting in itself to me. I mean, really the point is: who cares about Dumbledore's sexuality? Harry Potter certainly didn't, and that's why it wasn't in the books. Ardent fans (I'm one of them) want to know about everything in JK Rowling's head, and they do care.
But JK's revealed a lot of backstory that wasn't in the books. Why is Dumbledore's gayness the "revelation" causing a discussion about authorial control? I think the discussion says much more about our culture than it does about Dumbledore. And, ultimately, people are putting their own ideas of gayness into their reading of Dumbledore now.
So...the answer the question is: both - the author, JK Rowling, gave us more information about one of her characters and readers are still interpreting the books the way they want to.
Nathan: OK. Point taken. You are casting a wide net with your posted submission list and especially with the "anything else" you happen to like. I understand as a young agent you're eager to keep your options open, submission-wise.
But some agents who represent mysteries prefer the cozy kind to the hard boiled, or historical romance to erotica, and I'm sure if I knew enough about SF, I'd list some differences.
I know in the past you said "Fight Club" was male ennui, but I always thought of the Richard Ford and Richard Russo books that way - I thought of "FC" as urban fantasy (I only recently got an education in what UF means). Sometimes a writer's idea of what a genre is is different from the agent's.
BookEndsLLC agent Jacky reps a cozy mystery writer friend of mine. I have a referal from my friend, but I doubt I'd ever submit to her because my stuff is hard-boiled.
My approach to agents is to read their clients' books- I have a better sense of what my chances with an agent are by reading their clients' books and asking myself - realistically - if my book is similar to theirs.
Late...always late.
While it's a nice thought to give in to letting the reader have their say, the problem with that is there will be endless readers (or so the author hopes) and that makes for endless, and inconclusive, interpretation.
So then, for sake of finality, if for some wild reason finality becomes necessity, Author-ity.
Well, the author owns the character and certainly thinks all manner of things about her character. But "book" isn't fluid...it exists in black-and-white on the page. If Rowling always thought of Dumbledore as a big fluffy sheep, it doesn't change the fact that the character in the book was not written as a big fluffy sheep.
If what the author thinks is in direct conflict with what she wrote (as it is in this case -- she thought of his motivation in a pivotal moment in the book being motivated by young romantic love, but wrote it as being motivated by loyalty to a friend during a dark time in Dumbledore's life...and wrote it just about the bluntly too) then one of two things happened.
(1) The author chose to write something different from what she always thought -- for whatever reason, it fit better, it was less controversial, whatever. In which case, she intentionally chose something different from what she always thought -- which is an author's right. Though it means the character in print is now ... well, the character.
(2) the author can't seem to figure out how to put the character in print the way she always saw him -- which is just bad writing.
Pretty much, there isn't a third option in a case where what was written is very clear and blunt where the author has never played games with other characters in similar situations (for example, Snape's feelings for Lilly were never presented loyalty to a best pal). She has no history of making you guess if characters were motivated by loyalty or romantic love (well, except in who Harry would end up with, but that was part of the fun and eventually revealled in the books) so ... there is no logical reason to have written the character contrary to how she saw him and still hold on to how she saw him.
Dwight said The purple robes. The tastefully decorated study. Thin, neat, lifelong bachelor. Grindewald. The way he could host a killer party.
What does any of that have to do with being gay? Or are we dealing in stereotypes here...
I'd say the author owns the characters--she wrote them knowing all their secret backstories.
Great page on PM. I'm a short story addict (especially flash)--The Star Above Veracruz might be up my alley.
Legally, due to copyright, the writers own the character (unless they give up said rights)... However, seems to me that once that puppy gets published, the readers get to have their way with the characters, just like they do with the meaning and intent. No matter what the author says it was intended to say, the public ultimately defines the work. Just like poetry.
Kinda makes you wonder about Frodo, doesn't it? But we can't ask J.R.R. why he never married.
Personally, I suspected Dumbedore was gay anyway. And I didn't care. He made certain choices during his life because of love, and they influenced the outcome of the book.
Readers don't own the characters, but they are welcome to their own interpretation of the characters.
Kinda makes you wonder about Frodo, doesn't it? But we can't ask J.R.R. why he never married.
He never married because he was slowly dying and he knew he was dying -- and he also knew that he could never give him himself fully to life in the Shire again. Besides, he was raised by Bilbo, a confirmed bachelor.
I think JK made a mistake in the way that she informed her audience. It was like an afterthought . . . If the series wasn't finished, it would be a different story. I don't care if Dumbledore is gay or not--it doesn't change the story for me--but she should've had the guts to write it into his character. I don't think did. Or if she "thinks" she did, she didn't do it well. Pointing out an obscure sentence/scene after the fact just doesn't make sense.
For me it is simple. Don't remove yourself so far from a situation in over thinking it. A persons first reaction to anything seems to be the path to a truth.Intuition is a valuable tool and can simplify so much. Start as that being "square one" and follow that path unignored.
I just began reading Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" this afternoon. (Stay with me, this is going someplace.) From her Preface, written in 1817: "The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed...as not of impossible occurrence....I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations."
The reason we're drawn to memoirs of survival is because we want to believe it is possible to survive. So when we find out the person is lying--not just forgetting the facts of her history--we feel betrayed for investing not our money, but our faith and hope.
I don't read memoirs because I don't trust them--not since taking a class my senior year of college on "the autobiographical novel." By the end of the semester, I realized there is no such thing as pure truth when it comes to memories. One of the students presented her senior paper and had the whole class crying over her battle with cancer when she was younger. The next day she confessed she never had cancer, and the teacher knew this when she took on the assignment. The professor's point was to show us that the truth doesn't matter as much as our reaction to the story. It just served to piss most of us off, though.
I'm sure there are plenty of good memoirs out there that are as close to the truth as the author could honestly recall the facts, but I would much rather invest my time in a novel that, like "Frankenstein," preserves human nature through any combination of its principles.
As for what can be done? You know what can be done. Publishers know and agents know. There have been 85 posts already and everyone who's written in knows. Whether anything will be done about the false memoirs is a completely different issue. As long as people buy them, wanting to be suckered in, there will be a market.
a truth is an individual belief and is interpreted by each person differently (everyone percieves their own truth by seeing things differently). My policy is to ponder a truth and then move on, life is to learn and enjoy. Every person is entitled to their own truth, whether other people agree or not.
If she had submitted her "false memoir" as simple fiction, would any agent or editor have taken it up?
Isn't the really sad part about this that she had to lie to get published?
After reading through Nathan's post and the 88 thoughtful comments, I have to weigh in with my opinion(s). Sad to admit, we have created or allowed, perhaps even encouraged, a culture of lies, half-truths, deceits, frauds, etc. Yes, a "fake" memoir is despicable, but how can we make such a fuss over this while accepting the lies and deceit we live with daily from politicians and business? We desperately need to create a new society based on truth, honesty and integrity, and this requires a positive change in human consciousness--a change few are ready or willing to make. With money and power more important than basic human integrity, how can we expect anything different than what we have?
Peer pressure is possibly our strongest tool for creating a culture of truth and fairness, but than can work only when we live to such high standards ourselves. Then we can demand it of others.
Tweaking the conversation a bit:
"If anything, isn't this is all a byproduct of the drive by publishers, and in our culture in general, to want an author to be the "perfect package?" Someone whose life story is just as compelling as their work, who isn't just someone with a skill for words but someone who embodies their own work, this whole brand thing...."
Too right, too too right. Novelist as beauty contestant.
Z
I disagree with using Peer Pressure as a tool. Our happiness is based on our own perceptions and decisions that we have made or will make. The first lesson to be learned about people is UNDERSTANDING people. That is the first key in motivating a person. From there you can decide if that persons personality compliments what you desire. If there personality does not compliment yours it is as simple as "the glass is half full or half empty"...they are entitled to their view (with no animosity from oneself, but respect)
Sebastian Horsley, author of memoir Dandy in the Underworld, admits this privately: Jimmy Boyle and Boyle's ex-wife both deny that Boyle and Horsley ever had an affair.
Wouldn't he had to have gotten permission from Boyle to say that the affair happened? Do publishers require releases for such statements? Now, as the current generation of readers has probably never heard of Jimmy Boyle, it's not impossible that he would grant his permission.
But in the book, Horsley makes much of how afraid he still is of Boyle and how they're not in touch for years.
Sebastian Horsley is published by major publishers in the UK and the U.S. Incidentally, he's also reportedly a racist. the point being, he'll say anything to get famous. He'll now use those shock tactics to sell his so-called memoirs. So who knows what's true in THAT memoir?
But the whole problem is not fake memoirs. It's the dummy who decided to label memoirs nonfiction. They're not. They're not history textbooks-they're personal stories, based on a person's recollections and interpretations. And you have a range-from the fairly accurate to the you can't be serious-and you always will.
Isn't the issue more recategorizing them, and then letting the buyer beware? Letting the market determine the response? If more accurate memoirs sell better, well, that's part of the marketing isn't it? Let the publisher verify their hearts out so they can stamp on the cover "less lies, more filling" to get more sales. Or not.
Seriously, were it not for the nonfiction label, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
publishing companies make money off of books, and they function as marketers and distributors and are ultimately responsible for scamming readers.
indemnification deals with the relationship between the publisher and writer. it does not address the responsibilities a publishing house has to the buyers of fake memoirs.
if you buy a pair of 100% cotton jeans made by Guess (just a hypothetical!), and later discover that they are actually polyester, it's Guess' responsibility to own up to the deception.
sure, Guess probably bought the jeans from a manufacturer somewhere else, and may not have known they weren't 100% cotton, but it doesn't matter, because they stuck their name on them, just as a publisher sticks their name on a book. they are warranting to the world that the jeans are 100% cotton, just as a publisher is warranting to the world that a memoir is, indeed, non-fiction.
now, Guess will have an indemnification clause, too, and they can go after the manufacturer, but if you bought the jeans, you look to Guess for redress. why are publishers any different?
as someone who started her writing career as a magazine fact checker (after a first career as a lawyer) i agree that it's just untenable to fact check everything in a memoir.
but it's not that hard or expensive to ask for school records, family photos, birth certificate, etc. to at least prove that subject of the memoir actually existed.
is that so hard?
To Therese Walsh: unlike books, magazines sell advertising. That's probably why they can afford to fact-check each issue.
My feeling is that the loose system has been working. People are starting to get wise and investigate suspicious-sounding memoirs.
And by the way, it's worth remembering that if James Frey and JT Leroy couldnt write compelling stories no one would care either way.
Publishers should just slap a disclaimer on memoirs, the way supplement manufacturers do, i.e. "we say it makes you thin but there's no proof."
"We say it's true but there's no proof."
judi has an important point - that memoirs are not the same as other nonfiction.
I'm contemplating my own memoir - and I'll probably write it for my kids no matter what. But it's my own memory, and memories are faulty.
One day I happened upon the aftermath of a particularly bloody assassination in the Medellin/Cali cartel war. It weighs on my outlook on life to this day, and I still have a bit of a fear of police disco lights. While I remember every detail of the scene, what about the rest of it?
I think it was in January 1983, but I'm not sure. I remember it as being near 124th St and 77 Ave, but that doesn't jibe with what I remember doing before. If I get Lexus/Nexus access soon, I can research it, but that will certainly push my "memories" in a direction I didn't precisely remember.
When you make a compelling narrative out of your own life, you start from bad memories and you push them into a direction where they appear to make sense. Life itself doesn't make sense at all. I can remember bits and pieces, but I can't sew together the context under which they happened.
Wanna fact check any of this?
The problem, for me, comes in how you define "truth". Even fictional stories need to be "true", in the sense that they are representing people and cultures in a way that depicts their outlook on life. I learned as a kid in Miami that "reality" is very different from "truth", however, and that's what a good hunk of my memoir is about.
All writers must speak from "truth". I don't care if it's a memoir or fable, they have to be "true". Ms. Seltzer's story was not only not "real", it wasn't "true", and that's the problem. It wasn't her story to write far beyond not being an actual memoir. To compose a memoir is to adhere to an even higher standard of "truth" even if some of the bits that weave it together into a compelling narrative aren't precisely "real".
Does that make sense? Hopefully, it doesn't, otherwise I haven't done my job.
The point remains, however, that it's not exactly "non-fiction" in the purest sense no matter how you look at it.
erik, maybe seltzer thought she was telling the "truth" even though she had to lie to tell it. only a few people read the book, so who knows, right? maybe it was the "truthiest" fake ever.
that's not the problem.
the problem is she said she was writing a memoir and she was writing fiction.
i can't define truth, nor can i fact check whether your heart was pounding in 1983.
i can check some basics tho.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPo9sCqza98
To Anonymous:
Yes, magazines sell advertising and that advertising helps to pay for all staff, including the researchers. However, Rodale Press also has a huge book division and all of their books are also fact-checked. Umbrella situation? Maybe. Responsible publishing? Yes. Or is it just a nonfic thing to understand the importance of reputation and investing a little brainpower at the start?
I agree with Wanda: not everything can be fact-checked and some details might only seem false based on gut feel. But there certainly are facts which can be verified. Don't you think the knowledge of a pre-publication check might make the authors of these memoirs try just a little harder to be honest?
Why can't the author submit the book as fiction and be done with it?
Another small point is this: I wrote a memoir I'm trying to sell, and if someone asks Mayor Bloomberg if the stuff I said about what REALLY goes on in NYC homeless shelters is true, he will deny it. He has already denied it to me, even though I was there. But I guess the editors could find other people who were there and ask them. My point is that on some things, the VILLAIN will deny what the author says to save his/her skin. I'm sure my mother, if she's still alive if my memoir gets published will deny everything I said and most people who were witness are dead or there whereabouts are not known. And my brothers won't say anything, afraid to not get the inheritance.
just a few things to think about.
nanette
Unfortunately, my dial-up is balking at loading the just-shy of 100 comments that are ahead of me so I apologize if I'm repeating something someone else has already commented. That said...
The film industry has long used a phrase that I think the publishing industry could adopt as a new genre: "Based on a true story". In the "Based on" genre, fiction and nonfiction (memoir/history) can blend and interweave. Some few real life individuals can move through real events alongside fictional characters (think: Forest Gump).
Could give reviewers and book clubs new fodder for discussion: which parts/characters were real/which were fabricated.
Just a thought...
suzanne nam said:
> erik, maybe seltzer thought she was telling the "truth" even though she had to lie to tell it.
Yes, you are correct that she thought this - or I'll at least give her the benefit of the doubt. But it wasn't her story to tell.
Stealing someone else's story is the same as stealing their soul. If you want to honor those that really have no voice, possibly because they are dead, you have to really work at it. Anyone who's had to give a eulogy will tell you how hard it is.
I've had a moment from my childhood ripped off and used sensationally in a "Miami Vice" episode. I haven't forgiven television for that shameful act since. To be "true" is to really be a part of the moment and to depict it just as those who were there either reacted or would have reacted. It's hard stuff, but it's what makes works compelling IMHO.
You're probably right that she thought she was somehow being "true" - but I can assure you that after listening to her fake accent and reading a few bits of her work it wasn't. That wasn't her story to write, and I don't care how compelling it sounded. Besides, after three years and all that professional coaching/editing it better damned well at least sound compelling.
I am arguing that "true" is in the heart, while "real" is something out there in the mist. The village of Macondo is very true, even if it isn't real. Reality, I find, is grossly over-rated by this analysis.
erik, what is this "not her story to tell" stuff? as far as i knew, the universe and beyond was fair game for fiction writers (tho seltzer claimed not to be one).
the true/real dichotomy is silly and so is the idea of "stealing someone's story." was wally lamb stealing someone's story?! was ishiguro?! (list goes on and on and on)
Because memoir falls under non-fiction, presumably it can be pitched prior to completion of the writing. The NF proposal process is somewhat different from the fiction process which dictates a completed manuscript. If somebody has a good NF idea & proposal, that might be enough to hook an agent and publisher. Which could mean that the barrier to entry, as it were, would be lower than with fiction. Once an author's been given a contract, the pressure to continue the story is greater. Who knows. I'm not condoning the practice, I'm just wondering aloud.
I'm also amused at the people who've said that obviously memoirs are faked, hanging their hats on the idea that dialogue can't be re-created with any fidelity. But isn't there a HUGE difference between reconstructing a conversation vs. claiming a completely fabricated existence, constructing supporting documents and individuals (as Seltzer did)? In many memoirs you often read the disclaimer that dialogue is reconstructed "to the best of the author's ability." That's poetic license. Claiming different parentage seems to fall far outside that particular shade of gray.
Ultimately, I don't think this is a huge crisis in publishing. I think these fakes are and will be easier to spot going forward simply because of the abundance of information out there. But I doubt there are more fakes now then ever before.
suzanne nam:
Obviously, we disagree to the point that you aren't willing to consider what I'm saying. That's fine.
Wally Lamb is a person who values "truth" in fiction very highly, and I would think that this is obvious. He is a good example of what I'm saying.
Why was this story not Ms. Seltzer's to tell? Because it is clear that she didn't know enough about her subject to be able to, as Lamb would say, let the characters do what comes naturally to them.
You may think you're a great writer, and for all I know you are. Let's just assume that. But you are not omnipotent. There are certainly subjects that would be essentially impossible for you to react to in a way other than the conventional wisdom that you were raised in. That means that by attempting to tell that story you will be recounting background noise and your own prejudice.
I could not write a story about a rich white person who went to an Ivy League school and have it come off as "true". That's not my world. If I tried, the result would be laughable. I know this.
To assume that a writer can write absolutely anything, regardless of the culture it comes from, is the root of the echo chamber that reinforces prejudice. I will accept that a writer who understands that they know nothing could, in time, be capable of becoming very wise and writing about anything. But you first have to ditch the idea that anything is open to you - then, and only then, it might wind up being accurate.
Many of you will realize that I am hinting at something without using a very loaded word. I am trying to open a mind or two, not level charges. I find it's better to change the world rather than complain about it.
Writers are invited into someone's head for a while. What do you say when you get in there? Do you offer candy or nutrition? Do you dribble poison? The relationship between the writer and the reader determines a lot of what is retained. But I happen to believe that the author has a steep responsibility to behave themselves and offer something to their host - something that is at least "true".
Erik, I must respectfully disagree with you. Did Shakespeare write truthfully about kings and peasants? About the love of a black man for a white woman?
In this age of identity politics, it seems to me we're all too willing to surrender what can most help us understand one another: the gift of imaginative empathy.
I hope that all writers possess and cherish this, and don't let anyone intimidate them into thinking they can't write about whatsoever they wish.
Not a memoir, of course! :)
In my opinion, writing a fake memoir should fall under the "breach of contract" clause in a legal agreement with the author.
Literary agecies should consult an experienced IP (Intellectual Property) attorney for help in drawing up an air-tight contract with the would-be author. An ounce of prevention here beats a pound of cure.
The burden of proof (regarding authenticity) should rest on the author, not on the agent or publisher.
Hey, all - I just thought of another reason why (lazy) writers may try to pass off fiction as a memoir. Which of the following might make a better back cover:
"After twenty-six year old Miley Richards fell from a cliff on a remote island in the Pacific while on a hiking trip with her fiance, she was declared missing, swept away at sea. But when Miley wakes from a coma six days after the fall, she finds that, in order to survive, she must allow herself to be raised by a pack of separatist, vegetarian beavers."
- OR -
"This moving memoir, written by a young woman with inimitable storytelling prowess, tells the astonishing survival tale of twenty-six year old Miley Richards. After Miley fell from a cliff on a remote island in the Pacific while on a hiking trip with her family in 2004, she was declared missing, assumed swept away at sea. But when Miley wakes from a coma six days after the fall, she finds that in order to survive she must allow herself to be raised by a pack of separatist, vegetarian beavers. Consumed by amnesia, Miley uses sheer determination and will -- and the love of six adoring beavers -- to overcome her injuries, and to allow her to tell her story to all."
Fact of the matter is, readers may not be as sharp as we wish they were. Look at the number of people who still watch sensational daytime TV talk shows! Is truth (even false truth) better than fiction?
I'm going to go ask my beaver family about it.
Cam
Nathan,
I am glad you brought up this subject.
I have numerous thoughts on various aspects of this Scandal That Never Ends, and it is lengthy to include as a blog reply. Instead, if you are interested, please check out my blog where I expanded on my thoughts previously posted on Jonathon Lyon's blog.
http://tinyurl.com/yppsx8
Take care, have a good weekend, may all your clients be trustworthy and make you proud to represent them.
Linda
How about this: move memoir in between fiction and nonfiction (kind of like poetry, which can be either or both within a single volume), and apply a "truthiness" scale (with a nod to Stephen Colbert). More journalistic gets higher rating, more, ahem, impressionistic gets a lower rating. That way you can tell whether you're dealing with a story that is "true" like your Uncle Ed's fishing stories, or true like most of the reportage on the front page of the New York Times.
Seems we writers have strong opinions about fauxmoir...
Unfortunately, I fear if you're not in the business - writer, agent, publisher - you're blissfully unaware of all this brou-haha. My literate friends had no clue of the Frey and more recent debacles involving memoir gone bad. No idea. And they still buy the books. The mainstream press just doesn't make a big deal of it.
So if you're waiting for the economics of demand and supply to kick in, keep waiting. Peace...