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Hey guys! Welcome to the last post by Tara Sonin, the Marketing Manager for Paper Lantern Lit. We hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little more about book packaging. Today, Tara is just going to answer the questions readers have left for us Thanks for dropping by, Tara!

Thanks, Publishing Crawl for hosting our final post in the Behind the Page series! We loved reading these questions and hopefully provided satisfactory answers. You can always ask us more questions on Twitter @Paperlanternlit, or email [email protected].

1. What social media advice would you give to a non-published author who’s in the process of finishing her first novel?
First, I want to commend you for already thinking about your social media strategy before you’ve started the process of querying and publishing your book—it’s never too early to get a jump on the game!

My advice would be to think strategically about social media: what platforms and processes will allow you to a) reach the most readers without b) uprooting your entire life? Think about your schedule, obligations, and priorities: what is most important to you about social media. Don’t over extend yourself. What do you want to communicate? If it’s blogging about your writing process, create a schedule and stick to it. If it’s sharing photos and behind-the-scenes snapshots into your life as a writer, take an Instagram course about how best to position and filter your photos. If it’s connecting with other writers and forming friendships, Tumblr and Twitter might be the place for you to communicate directly with people in your community. But most importantly: do not try to perfect all of them at once! Pick one, get really good at it, and make sure you highlight your success on that platform when you query agents. Good luck!

2. Can you speak to how your writers have gotten excited about your ideas? 
The most important element of our process is finding a writer that gets jazzed about the material; the world, the characters, the conflict, everything has to speak to them in an authentic way. That can happen in a number of different ways. Eleanor Herman, author of LEGACY OF KINGS, was already a historian when she started writing this YA series…but it was her first time actually creating characters from scratch, as most of the other people she’d written about before actually existed! We really saw her shine and have a lot of fun building the quirks and emotional lives of made-up people. Julie Leung, author of MICE OF THE ROUND TABLE, an upcoming middle-grade fantasy series, was a huge Redwall fan before signing on to this project, so any opportunity to write about forest creatures and mice made her really excited! Just because the ideas originate with us doesn’t mean that we don’t want our authors to connect to the story and have fun writing it—that’s what really gives the book life.

3. Do writers get to shop from your list of plots?
There’s no database of “plots” that we have on file. We brainstorm stories organically, as ideas come to us, and search for writers on a project-by-project basis. We also don’t usually generate projects “for” specific writers. That said, we are always open to working with writers who approach us and are interested in our business model—if we have a project in development that we think will fit with your style and interests!

4. Have you ever found that your chosen author already had characters or concepts weirdly and coincidentally overlay with your developed plots? 
This phenomenon is pretty popular. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about it in her book BIG MAGIC: that many people can actually come up with the same story, at different times, in different places. That’s because, when you think about it, there actually is a finite number of permutations that stories can take, at their “blueprint” level. For example: Girl meets Boy. Girl and Boy hate one another. Girl and Boy eventually get along. That would be just one example of a common story thread you see over and over again, interpreted by other writers. We’ve never actually found that our authors already had WIP’S exactly like the books they are writing for us, but interests certainly do overlap! M.E. Castle, author of the Clone Chronicles series (and the forthcoming FAKESPEARE) is super interested in sci-fi, space, and robots—which was why it made perfect sense to us that he be the one to bring Popular Clone to life!

5. How do you choose your writers? 
Unfortunately, there’s no standard formula or equation I can give you, because the process is different for every project! However, in general, we audition multiple writers for each project, searching for things such as:

• Do they take risks, and do those risks pay off?
• Is the tone consistent with what we’ve asked for in the spark?
• What is their command of language like? Do they have proper grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure?

Once we review auditions, we look at the author as a whole: do they have a social media platform? Are they engaged in the publishing community? Do they have an agent? None of these things are automatic yes’s or no’s, but we like to get a sense of authors and their commitment to the craft—because once we sign a contract with them, we are committed to making them a success. Then, after reviewing the samples and discussing our needs for the project, we hopefully find a writer!

6. Do publishers still have ‘wish lists’ and their own content ideas for you to work with?
Plenty of publishers have their own IP (Intellectual Property) that they produce in-house, without the assistance of a packager. In general, we don’t work with publisher IP. However, there are times that an Editor will approach us looking for Concept X, and if we are excited about that concept and think we can bring it to life with trademark PLL flare, then we’ll pursue it!

7. Do you partner with overseas creators?
Absolutely. Thanks to technology today, it’s really easy to get in touch even if there’s a time difference. If you live in another country, don’t be discouraged! Plenty of authors active in the American YA community are actually from overseas.

TARA SONIN is the Marketing Manager for Paper Lantern Lit. She received her B.A. in Theater and English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Barnard College, Columbia University. Tara recaps The Vampire Diaries for Vulture Magazine and writes romance under the name Taryn Scarlett. When not dreaming up catchy marketing campaigns and reading all the books she can get her hands on, Tara is usually found in Zumba classes or singing an eclectic repertoire of show tunes.

by

E.C. Myers

—

When I discovered that two of my favorite childhood authors, Franklin W. Dixon (The Hardy Boys) and Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew), didn’t actually exist, my world turned upside down.

If this is a shocking revelation for you, I’ll give you a moment to take it all in.

Okay, still breathing? Good. Granted, the news may not be all that surprising considering that Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books are still being published today, around ninety years after the series first appeared in print. Not impossible, perhaps, but highly improbable that “Dixon” and “Keene” are still with us and churning out these adolescent adventures, though Frank, Joe, and Nancy haven’t aged much.

It turns out that the true creator of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and a host of other classic characters from Tom Swift to the Bobbsey Twins, were dreamed up by a man named Edward Stratemeyer. He pioneered the concept of “book packaging,” hiring freelance writers to pen books under pseudonyms, according to his plot outlines. The first to write books as Dixon and Keene was a man named Leslie McFarlane.

A writer “ghostwriting” as another author is one of many ways a novel can be written as a “work for hire.” Sweet Valley High fans, I have more bad news for you: Francine Pascal did not write all those books herself! If you’re skeptical whenever a celebrity “writes” a book, you have good reason to be.

But there are many other kinds of projects that are considered “work for hire,” some of which even allow the author to claim what glory they may, including your favorite media-tie-in novels. The authors behind those Star Trek novels are real people! In fact, some of them are friends of mine, and I vouch for their authenticity.

Et tu, Francine Pascal?

It gets a little trickier to know who the creator is when a publishing company develops a series in house and hires a freelance author to write the books, either under their own name or a new pseudonym. You might be surprised when you check the copyright page of a book you love: If the copyright is given to the publisher instead of the author, chances are it was a work-for-hire novel, and the author doesn’t own the rights to the plot or characters.

You might experience a moment of disillusion, but does it really matter? Probably not. The author did write the book after all, and hopefully well, and most writing is a collaborative process between authors and publishers, as well as with other writers, editors, and agents. The important thing is whether the book is any good — as with any book.

In some cases the freelance author might have been given a very detailed outline and set of characters and been tasked with connecting the dots; in other cases, she might get minimum direction and have to come up with a story and characters to fit the premise on her own. There are projects that fall somewhere in between. Moreover, most writers pay the bills by writing lots of things other than their own books — that’s simply called getting “work.” Blog posts, speeches, thank you letters, greeting cards, instruction manuals… Credit can’t always be given where it’s due, and sometimes the only place a writer needs his name to appear is on the “Pay to the Order of” line on a check.

If you’re a writer, you might be interested in getting a work for hire assignment of your own. So how does that happen? Typically a publisher will reach out to an author directly or through an agent, or you might get the opportunity through your network of contacts. If you are invited to audition for the project, you would need to submit a sample chapter or two, following guidelines from the publisher (which were developed internally by one or more people). This gives the publisher a sense of whether your approach and writing style are a good fit for their vision, and to compare what you can bring to the project versus other authors vying for the job. I’ve auditioned for a few of these, and I like to write a chapter from very early in the book and one from the middle, which is a chance to show some growth in the protagonist and introduce a variety of settings, characters, and relationships.

Not that kind of Ghostwriter!

If you’re given some freedom regarding the plotting of the book, you may also have to draft an outline on your own — not unlike what you would submit in a book proposal when writing on spec. This outline might include a high-level Synopsis of the whole story, descriptions of the Style and Theme you imagine for the book, a list of Characters, and finally a Detailed Outline telling the story. Later, you may need to develop a chapter-by-chapter outline as well.

Work-for-hire books generally have a tight turnaround time from first draft to publication — we’re talking months instead of years — which can be very appealing in terms of getting your books on shelves and money in your bank account. But it also means you have to write both quickly and well, so it might not be for everyone. On the other hand, for some it could be a dream come true. Once I found out that Franklin W. Dixon was actually a bunch of different authors, I wanted to be one of them. And hey, I’m pretty sure I have at least one great Star Trek novel in me…

What are your favorite work-for-hire books or authors? Have you written a work for hire, or would you like to?

—

E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and a public library in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning young adult novel FAIR COIN and its sequel, QUANTUM COIN; his next YA novel, THE SILENCE OF SIX, will be published by Adaptive in November 2014. You can find traces of him all over the internet, but especially at his blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

New term at my youth theatre, new term at college and new term for the school where I’m working as writer in residence – hence the tardiness of this post! It’s one of those, ‘If I get to the end of next week and I’m sane it’ll be a bonus!’ phases! I’ve even had to take the plunge and do the supermarket shopping on-line! But more interestingly (I hope!), it’s made me think about collaboration – the creative sort.
My youth theatre is a devising company. Twice a year, each of the five groups performs a brand new piece of theatre which they have created in collaboration with each other and with me. When I opened the company and lacked confidence, we often used a story as a starting point. I would decide which scenes were essential and possible and the young people’s input was in creating each scene from the brief I gave. There is, however, a shortage of stories to suit casts of around 16 people, all needing maximum time on stage. Hence, I have broken out of my straitjacket and now we usually devise ‘from scratch’. Three plays are well and truly off the starting blocks already, one a complex but very funny (we hope!) who-dun-nit set in a mountain holiday resort, another a picaresque tale in which two girls are thrown off a train, have to find their way home and encounter real and surreal adventures on the way (there’s a sub-plot here about an escaped convict whose story keeps crossing theirs) and the third looks set to become a complicated twist on the Cinderella theme with Cinders a down-trodden barista in a city café – I just love that he’s going to be saved by his Hairy Godfather!
Meanwhile, as writer in residence, I spent a happy day of the holidays meshing together 25 variations on the opening of the class novel so that everyone has a contribution somewhere and far more of the children’s words are included than mine! Even happier was the time spent reading it back to them. They insisted on a second reading so that that they could stick up their hands when they recognised their bit! We have negotiated plots and settings and characters and are ready to roll.
All joyful, joyful stuff – and all collaborative.
Which makes me think about book packagers and the way I have tended to sneer at their process. Teams create the briefs and teams of authors write them up. And I have tended to think that this isn’t ‘proper’ in some way – that because the story doesn’t come from some sizzling inspiration burning out from some enlightened soul, it’s a kind of cheating. A sort of artistic cop-out. Well, shame on me. Actually, of course, it’s team work. And teams get results – as we can see in any and every context, including my own ‘other’ work. Obviously, some writers are zinging with wonderful stories and it is blissful that they want to share them with us. And, of course, some book packaged books are dire in the extreme. But it strikes me that the basic concept is a good one. I am stunned by the ideas that my young collaborators come up with and the process of jig-sawing them together is mind-bending fun for all of us. So surely this should hold true for book packagers’ creative teams too? But does it?
So….book packaging – creative collaboration or artistic cop-out? Your thoughts, please!