Deborah LeBlanc

RETURN TO THE STORYTELLERS HOMEPAGE

I have to admit that, more times than not, I get myself into some crazy situations. I’m not sure if it’s just the adventurer in me or some kind of karmic backlash that’s always ready to send me crashing into something weird. Either way, about two and a half weeks ago, the universe offered a new set of escapades that were pretty cool. Well, two of them were anyway. One involved having my picture taken, which always makes me nuts. To put it bluntly, some folks belong in front of the camera, others should stay behind it. I consider myself a member of the latter group. But, unfortunately, I needed updated pictures for a new book cover and had little choice. All that said, though, I still had a riot of time with the photographer. He was a funny guy, very professional, and determined to capture the ‘true essence of my spirit.’ Poor guy. Someone should’ve warned him about that before he accepted the gig.

We spent hours traipsing through swampy terrain and multiple cemeteries, (we were chased out of one cemetery by a seventy-year-old grounds-keeper on a golf cart!) his camera ever-clicking. The guy did more twists and squats with that camera than I’ve done in my entire lifetime. After about three hours, I realized that we’d sort of fallen into a three word code pattern that seemed to work relatively well. If he wanted me to smile, he’d say, “Teeth.” If he wanted a more serious look, he’d say, “None,” which meant don’t show any teeth. And the third word was “blink,” which he said right before snapping a picture. With eyes as big as mine, the act of blinking tends to take a bit longer than the average person, which is why most of the pictures taken of me show my eyes closed. He caught on to that really quick, though, and got the blink out of the way first, then snapped the picture.

When that long day finally ended, the final picture count was 276. Now I had to go through all of that mess and choose a handful I thought were decent enough to toss out in public. Argg!

After much gnashing and grinding of teeth, I eventually settled on three. They’re below. If you had your druthers, which do you think would work best in a book?

The next stop in last week’s adventure was Boston, where I joined a film crew to shoot a pilot for an upcoming Discovery Channel program called, Something’s Out There! (Lawd, another camera!)

Our first stop was Blood Cemetery in Hollis New Hampshire, where the ghost of Able Blood is purported to roam—during the day! Rumor has it that Able killed his entire family back in the late 1800s, and remorse keeps his soul from finding rest. Next stop, Gallows Hill in Salem, Mass, where many women and men were hanged during the witch-hunting frenzy, back in the late 1600s. Due to confidentiality agreements, I can’t reveal what was found…yet….but I can say that one specific piece of paranormal investigating equipment, namely the ghost box, had quite the two day workout! Below are a few pics of that adventure . . .

Now after all the ghost hunting was done, and most of us were slap-happy from exhaustion, one of the hosts of Something’s Out There!, Tim Dunn, found the perfect place for some of us to unwind. A shooting range! But the piece de resistance was when he handed me a fully automatic M10 and said, “Wanna give this a try?” Does a duck quack? YAY!

Kind of hard getting back to the same-ol’-same-ol’ after a week like that, that’s for sure!

Ya know, sometimes we get so caught up in all this writing and work hoohah that we forget about what’s really important. Someone sent me a reminder the other day that really struck home, and I thought I’d share it with you. Because at the end of the ‘day’, you know the day I mean…the one where you clock out for good… all of life’s lessons will come home to roost. Did we learn from them? Ignore them? Did they matter more than the friggin’ deadlines that give writers premature wrinkles and gray hair? Here are five pretty important lessons for any one lifetime….

 1 – First Important Lesson – Cleaning Lady.

      During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one:

     ‘What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?’

    Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50′s, but how would I know her name?
     I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade.
     ‘Absolutely,’ said the professor. ‘In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’
     I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

 

2. – Second Important Lesson – Pickup in the Rain

      One night, at 11:3 0 p..m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rainstorm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride.
      Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car.
      A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 60s. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab.

      She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man’s door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home with a special note attached.
     It read:  ‘Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits. Then you came along.
     Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband’s bedside just before he passed away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others.’
     Sincerely, Mrs. Nat King Cole.

 

3 – Third Important Lesson – Always Remember Those Who Serve.

      In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.
      ‘How much is an ice cream sundae?’ he asked.

      ‘Fifty cents,’ replied the waitress.

      The little boy pulled is hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it.  ‘Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?’ he inquired.

      By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient.

      ‘Thirty-five cents,’ she brusquely replied.

      The little boy again counted his coins.  ‘I’ll have the plain ice cream,’ he said.

      The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The  boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies. You see, he couldn’t have the sundae because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

 

4 – Fourth Important Lesson. – The Obstacle in Our Path.

     In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it.
     Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did     anything about getting the stone out of the way.

     Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded.     
     After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King, indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand.
    

 Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

 

5 – Fifth Important Lesson – Giving When It Counts.

     Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her five-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.
     The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister.
    

     The boy hesitated for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Yes I’ll do it if it will save her.’
     As the transfusion progressed, the boy lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, ‘Will I start to die right away’.
     Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her but he had chosen to save her anyway.

Now I ask you, when looked at that simply . . . ain’t life grand? 

A few weeks ago I was sitting in an airport, thumbing the keypad on my Blackberry at the speed of light, when a lady standing near me commented—“Can you imagine what life would be like without those gadgets?”  

 

Without looking up, I blurted, “Yeah, we might actually have one.”

 

A long pause, then she chuckled. A small half-laugh that held an undercurrent of resignation, one that said, Yeah, I know what you mean, but what can we do?

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against new technology. What I have a hard time wrapping my brain around, though, is how some of these gizmos, which were supposedly created to save us time, wound up taking up more of our time? And they not only take it, they demand immediately attention, like a bratty kid pitching a fit for a candy bar in a grocery store. All those bells, whistles, buzzing, snorting, bee-bopping, raps and taps, each alerting us to emails, texts, phone calls, and heaven only knows what else while we’re eating dinner, watching a movie, or even sleeping. And like that’s not bad enough, once those suckers have their hooks in you, it takes major willpower to break away from them. Ever try to stay away from emails and the internet for a week? Tough, ain’t it?

 

But I guess, like with most things in life, there’s some good and bad, give and take with each of these gadgets. My personal challenge with them has been perception—and reality. Without question, they often have me overwhelmed and overworked at times. And that alone has kept me from reaching out to embrace yet another new fangled piece of technology that seems to be all the current rage—the Kindle.

 

When the reading units first came out, the reviews were pretty good, most people touting the virtues of their convenience and ease of use. As good as the reviews were, though, I shook my head and reached for a nearby book, happy for the feel of the paper between my fingers and the smell of the ink on the page, something I knew no electronic reader could give me. I used other excuses to stay away from the readers, as well. Like I hate reading from a computer screen. The glare kills my eyes. Not only that, Kindle sales reduce overall revenue to authors because the cost for a book’s Kindle edition is lower. Even worse, the sales for these units are not accounted for by BookScan, which is a relatively new sales measurement system being used by editors and agents in the publishing industry. With all of that in hand, I held fast to my convictions . . . until recently.

 

As this very moment, sitting at the corner of my desk, is a box from Amazon. It arrived at my office half an hour ago, and it’s still unopened. <Sigh> Yes, this is my confession—I fell prey to Amazon’s incessant, glory-rallying advertising of their latest and greatest—Kindle 2. No glare or eye strain they promise. 16 shades of gray give a reader the illusion they’re reading from an actual book. One quick click of a button and the pages turn as they would between your fingers. No computer connection needed to download books as the K2 contains its own wireless system. AND, of course, don’t forget that by using a K2 you’re helping to save the planet. Save the tree, the spotted owl – - the red-breasted, wooly mammoth caterpillar!  Yep, they knew all the right things to say to break down many of my defenses. So, I gave up the ghost and bought one. Never thought I would. Actually fought the inclination like a cat trapped in a shoebox, but—obviously—like that same doggone cat—curiosity won out. <Sigh>

 

I can’t give Amazon all the credit for my moment of weakness, however. The airline mentioned above played a part in it as well, with their $25 per checked bag policy and $50 for anything over 50 pounds. Add to that smaller allowances for carryons, and it was getting to the point where I had to often times decide whether to bring the two paperbacks I’d been reading or my shampoo and cream rinse. The books or a blow dryer. The books or my makeup bag. Argg!

 

So, here I sit, staring at a yet to be opened box, wondering if in buying this new gizmo I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face. The read might be easier and the pages might turn faster, but no one’s touched the issue about revenues and sales numbers for authors. And what about the feel and smell of an actual book? Nothing can give a reader those sensory pleasures but the real deal.

 

Oh, well, too late now. It’s a done deal. So–<sigh—grin>–here goes nothing . . .

 

 

 

It’s no secret that in nearly every format—print, audio, electronic distribution, and film—authors are usually shoved to the back of the line when it comes time to distribute the revenue generated from their work.

 

But times just might be a-changin’—

 

Recently, Elaine English, an attorney and literary agent based in Washington D.C. circulated news that offers writers a glimmer of hope. Here’s an excerpt of what she had to say—

 

Google’s announcement, back in 2004, that it intended to digitize all the books in the world had the industry virtually apoplectic. Google had started had started with digitized books that were clearly in the public domain. It then began negotiations with publishers to license rights to new titles as they were issued. But the most controversial component was the Google Library Project, where Google launched its efforts to scan the entire collection  of certain university libraries whether the titles were covered by valid copyrights or not. Google’s position was that fair use protected both its scanning of the book as well as the maintenance of an electronic copy so long as it was used primarily for searching and indexing purposes.

 

It didn’t take long for the courts to get involved. In September 2005, the Authors Guild and five individual authors filed a class action suit, claiming that Google’s actions were a blatant violation of copyright law. The next month, the Association of American Publishers and five individual publishers, McGraw Hill Co., Pearson Education, The Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley and Sons, also sued Google. While each side publicly remained convinced of the merits of its legal positions, behind-the-scenes discussions began to take shape, ultimately forming the current settlement that now awaits final approval of the federal court overseeing the lawsuits.

 

The Authors Guild, in announcing the settlement in late October, state that its goals throughout the discussions had been to “find authors more readers” and make sure they got paid. AAP President and CEO Pat Schroeder called the settlement “an historic, landmark agreement” that provides “a great 21^st Century solution.”

 

According to both the AAP and the Guild, the settlement increases the ability to distribute content in digital form, while at the same time it allows both the authors and publishers to receive compensation for and control over how their intellectual property is accessed online. Google gets to continue to digitize every known book. Public libraries get to participate in this revolutionary new means of data access. And readers presumably get access to a wider array of information. A win-win for all!

 

Under the terms of the settlement, Google will establish a Books Rights Registry which will collect and distribute the revenues earned from the Google’s Digital Library Project. Some compare he Registry to ASCAP and BMI, which have handled music licensing fees for years. The Registry will maintain a database on all rights holders and will be able to identify the copyright status of all scanned works. The Registry, established as a separate not-for-profit organization, will have an equal number of authors’ and publishers’ representatives on its board. Once things are up and running, administrative fees to operate the Registry will come from revenues collected, but at the outset Google will contribute $34.5 million to underwrite its initial costs.

 

Revenues will be derived from institutional licensing fees (fees paid by colleges and universities to have access to the Google library database of works, generally based upon the number of enrolled students and faculty), the purchase of online access to each work, fees for printing pages from the works at public access terminals, and even advertising that accompanies a user’s viewing of the work. More than 60% of these revenues will go to the Registry for distribution to authors and publishers. Initially, Google will set the fees it charges users. However, the price for purchasing access to copies can be changed by either the author or the publisher of the work.

 

Because Google had already digitized millions of books under this program before a settlement was reached, Google has also agreed to pay $45 million in damages to those authors and publishers whose copy-righted books were scanned before they had the opportunity to opt out. If an author owned all rights to the work and it was scanned prior to May 5, 2009 by Google, the author stands to get approximately $60 per book (or more depending upon how many claims are actually filed). This money is intended to reimburse the author for any copyright infringement that may have occurred prior to the settlement. However, an author who accepts a share under the damages portion of the settlement also gives up his riught to later remove the work from the Google Library Project.

 

Google intends to post a preliminary list of books that it has scanned, and notices will be mailed to rights holders on or after January 5, 2009. Authors affected by the settlement will have until May 5, 2009 to opt out of the class of covered authors (i.e. preserving individual rights to sue Google). The settlement also proposes a deadline of April 5, 2011 for requests to have individual works deleted from the database. A hearing is currently scheduled for June 11, 2009 when the court is expected to rule on the fairness of the settlement.

 

To see details of how the settlement will work, go to www.googlebooksettlement.com.

 

This certainly deserves keeping an eye on . . .

 

Deb

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting and felt my cell phone vibrate on my hip, indicating a call. I glanced down at the ID, saw it was a friend of mine from Florida, and made a mental note to call her back as soon as the meeting was over. I should have known better. This particular friend wasn’t one for idle chatter, so when she called six more times in the next ten minutes, I knew something was up and excused myself from the meeting to return her call.

She answered after a half ring, and instead of offering her customary ‘Hey,’ she shouted, “Congratulations!”

I glanced at the phone to make sure I’d dialed the right number.

“Girl, I’m so happy for you!”

“Umm . . . thanks?”

I heard her breath catch. “Oh my God, you mean you don’t know?”

All I knew was a group of people were waiting for me, impatiently I might add, in the boardroom across the hall.

“You hit their list, girl! You hit the list!”

“What are you talking about? Who’s they? What list?”

“The bestsellers list!”

My heart flip-flopped in my chest. “What?” There was no way Water Witch had hit any major list without me knowing. My publisher would have been on the phone in a nanosecond, blasting the news.

“The bestsellers list!” she shouted again. “I swear to God! I’m standing right in front of a sign that says; Number 8 Bestseller- Water Witch – Deborah LeBlanc.”

“Where are you, the Family Dollar Store?”

A loud tsk. “As if! I’m at Publix.”

“You mean the supermarket Publix?”

“Yeah! Hey, I’ll take a picture of it with my camera phone and send it to you.”

And she did.

Of course I was happy to see Water Witch sitting on any bestseller list, but the odd thing is, no one seems to know how it got there. My publisher didn’t know and neither did my agent. When both contacted Publix’s corporate office to find out how their bestseller status was determined, (i.e. how many copies have to be sold before it hits that list) all they said was, “We can’t release that information. It’s proprietary.”

Well, crap!

Oh, well . . . proprietary information or not, being on that list still made me do the happy dance. And isn’t that what life’s about? Grabbing all the happy dances when and while we can.

In light of the disastrous news reported daily on television, Wednesday, December 3, 2008, will forever be known to authors as Black Wednesday. To everyone in publishing, the sky did indeed appear to be falling. Random House, Simon and Schuster had major layoffs, and smaller publishing houses announced they would reduce the number of manuscripts they usually acquire. In a matter of minutes, that doom-n-gloom news seemed to be on every author/reader blog and website. After reading all the reports and commentaries, one could easily be tempted to swear off writing forever. But I’m a staunch believer in the ‘it’s never all good and never all bad’ theory. I sort of see life like a seesaw. You straddle the middle and work like hell to maintain balance when that sucker dips too low to the right or left.

With that philosophy in mind, I wanted to share a note from a literary agent that might help put a few things into perspective—help you collect a little balance if you will . . .

From:Janet Reid, Literary Agent

“It’s been an interesting year and the onslaught of layoff news yesterday, that caused more than one normally balanced writer to use the phrase “Black Wednesday”, was the icing on the cake. Remember when Borders decided to turn more books face out on the shelves last spring? That meant publishers got a deluge of returns: less space, fewer books. Then the credit crunch. Then the automakers took a nose dive, then the retail season reflected all that.

Yup, publishing responded by cutting the quickest thing to affect cash flow: jobs, salaries, expense accounts.

Oof.
Read more…

I’m a one purse at a time kind of woman. In other words, I don’t have a handbag to go with every outfit. The ones I get are typically multifunctional and fit just about any occasion. Well, except formal affairs. For those, I rummage through the forty plus bags in my sister’s closet and borrow one. Anyway, a few years ago I figured it was time for a purse makeover. I bought a small one, hoping to keep the ‘stuff’ I usually carry around to a minimum. Bad idea. In a matter of two weeks, the doggone thing was overflowing, and one of the straps broke in the middle of a grocery store, spilling mentionable and unmentionable contents all over the floor. It was a classic case of shoving ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag. I should have left well enough alone.

I view synopses the same way. Here you have a perfectly good book, and someone wants you to cram all those words, feelings, characters, and plots, into a five page summary. Argg! I hate ‘em! It’s tough enough sweating through each chapter of a book, wanting to make every scene as vivid and three dimensional as possible. How in the hell is anyone supposed to create the same effect in five short pages?

The bottom line is—you can’t. But what you can create, if the synopsis is done correctly, is intrigue. Or so I’m told. Mine have a tendency to read like a crack-addict’s steno notes. Short blasts of info that have little sequential order or logic. When I’m writing a book, I’ll do one major rewrite, then a polish before sending it off to my editor. For a synopsis, I have to do fifty-seven gazillion rewrites for it to even start making sense. Why do you think that is? I’m supposed to be a writer for heaven’s sake. You’d think I’d be able to handle a few measly pages.

Maybe it’s a psychological thing. An underlying, suppressed abhorrence for shoving ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag, spawned from the memory of that busted purse—tampons rolling across aisle 5, right up to the Frosted Flakes and that guy with the wobbly-wheeled grocery cart. Rolaids, an empty bottle of antibiotics, hair scrungies, six-year-old gas receipts, a three-year-old slice of Doublemint gum—out of the wrapper—and enough change to support Laundromats all across America, all of it tumbling over, under, and around bins, baskets, and curious onlookers.

Uh, yeah, that’s gotta be it . . .

I really don’t know why I do this to myself….reading stuff about current trends in the publishing business. Every time I do it gives me heartburn. UGH! But . . . as the saying goes– In order to win a war, you have to understand your enemy.

That said, here’s a bit of recon I received this morning…. <sigh>

FROM:

NEW YORK MAGAZINE- NEWS AND FEATURES

THE END

The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world.

HarperCollins occupies floors 1 through 22 of a giant steel-and-glass box on 53rd Street. But up on 26, the receptionist for a tiny offshoot of the company sits alone, gatekeeper to a few drab rows of empty cubicles. A glass container on a table holds a mysterious pile of bright-yellow lightbulbs.

“Welcome to our temporary home,” says 51-year-old publisher Bob Miller, ushering me into a colleague’s more inviting office. Inside, he and his staffers prepare to impart a cheery message: They’re going to fix publishing!

But first, a horror story. Debbie Stier, Miller’s No. 2 at HarperStudio (as this little imprint is called), has been collecting videos for their blog. “You want to see what happens to books after they go to book heaven?” she asks. On the screen of her MacBook, a giant steel shredder disgorges a ragged mess of paper and cardboard onto a conveyor belt. This is the fate of up to 25 percent of the product churned out by New York’s publishing machine.

Everyone’s eyes widen, as though watching some viral YouTube gross-out. “It’s like Wall-E,” says marketing director Sarah Burningham. “It’s depressing,” Miller adds. They had sent in a Flip camera with a warehouse worker. “You can see our books go through there,” says Stier. “The Crichton, the Ann Patchett.”

Miller recently left Hyperion, which he founded seventeen years ago, to start his own imprint at the urging of HarperCollins’s then-CEO, Jane Friedman. She was replaced in June, but HarperStudio lives on. For all its ambitions, it’s a modest outfit: Miller and three women, two of them in their twenties, hope to publish two books a month starting next May, having convinced 25 authors to forgo big advances in return for half of their books’ eventual profit. The books they’ll be doing aren’t particularly outré—Emeril Lagasse on grilling, 50 Cent is collaborating with The 48 Laws of Power author Robert Greene—but they’re hoping that their process will be revolutionary.

Over the past few weeks, Stier has turned her own Flip camera on friends and colleagues, asking them to hold up those yellow lightbulbs and share their “bright ideas” on publishing. She plays us a few of the clips, including one of a publicist who delivers Stier’s intended punch line, tentatively: “Have fewer authors and sell more books?” But the suggestion that gets the biggest laugh in the office is from Stier’s 12-year-old son, who says, “So maybe you have to turn all the books into movies so nobody has to waste their time.”

“It is a very trying time. I’m kind of down about it myself.” —JONATHAN GALASSI, PRESIDENT OF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

The demise of publishing has been predicted since the days of Gutenberg. But for most of the past century—through wars and depressions—the business of books has jogged along at a steady pace. It’s one of the main (some would say only) advantages of working in a “mature” industry: no unsustainable highs, no devastating lows. A stoic calm, peppered with a bit of gallows humor, prevailed in the industry.

Survey New York’s oldest culture industry this season, however, and you won’t find many stoics. What you will find are prophets of doom, Cassandras in blazers and black dresses arguing at elegant lunches over What Is to Be Done. Even best-selling publishers and agents fresh from seven-figure deals worry about what’s coming next. Two, five years from now—who knows? Life moves fast in the waning era of print; publishing doesn’t.

So what’s causing this, exactly—this inchoate dread that’s suddenly turned “choate,” as one insider puts it? The anxiety would be endurable if it was just a function of the late-Bush economy: Sales at the five big publishers were up 0.5 percent in the first half of this year, bookstore sales tanked in June, and a full-year decline is expected. But pretty much every aspect of the business seems to be in turmoil. There’s the floundering of the few remaining semi-independent midsize publishers; the ouster of two powerful CEOs—one who inspired editors and one who at least let them be; the desperate race to evolve into e-book producers; the dire state of Borders, the only real competitor to Barnes & Noble; the feeling that outrageous money is being wasted on mediocre books; and Amazon .com, which many publishers look upon as a power-hungry monster bent on cornering the whole business.

One by one, these would be difficult problems to solve. But as a series of interrelated challenges, they constitute a full-blown crisis—a climate change as unpredictable as it is inevitable. And like global warming, it elicits reactions ranging from denial to Darwinian survivalism to determined stabs at warding off disaster—attempts not to recapture some long-lost era but to harness new, untapped sources of power. That is, if it’s not too late.

Okay, so WHY are we doing this writing thing again? <Sigh>

There’s quite a bit more about the publishing business as it relates to many of the larger houses. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can check it out here . . .

http://nymag.com/news/media/50279/

Recently, I heard from an author friend who’d just returned from a publicity meeting with her publisher and agent. According to her, the primary reason for the meeting was to negotiate what marketing endeavors the publisher would pay for when her book was released next year.

Now she was smart from the get-go. Since she’s relatively new in the business, she brainstormed with a few of us old-farts who had a couple of releases under our belts, asking what she should push for during the meeting. We discussed things like arcs, signings, co-op placement, convention sponsorships, etc, and she went into the meeting, guns loaded.

But she was the one who got shot.

She was told that pre-order sales were down and most of that decrease was due to Walmart. Evidently, the suck-the-life-out-of-small-enterprise Goliath has a new book buyer, and that buyer has been instructed to restructure their book buying process. And for Walmart that usually means the buyer is not allowed to have operational brain cells. They’re only supposed to do what they’re told. And what the buyer was told was to only purchase standard count orders from the top of the New York Times Best-Sellers list. They are no longer allowed to choose 5 off-list titles from different genres, be it romance, mystery, thriller, horror, etc. So basically, even if the entire population of Chicago decided to picket their local Walmarts because they wanted Brian Keene, Clive Barker, or Deborah LeBlanc’s books on the shelves, all the buyer can do is shrug and say, “Sorry, no can do.”

Now although I believe in free enterprise and understand that Walmart has the right to do and buy whatever the hell they want, the change in their book ordering process is going to affect MANY mid-list and beginning authors. For example, let’s say last year Walmart, as a corporation, ordered 10,000 copies of your book, and 8000 copies were actually sold. Even though sales were strong, this year, because of the new policy, they order none of your books. What do you think the author’s going to face the next time he or she has to negotiate a new contract with their publisher? That’s right, they’re gonna get squashed. If fewer books are ordered for this new title, no matter the reason, said author is going to have a hell of a time negotiating higher advances or royalty percentages.

For writers, it’s tough enough that the reading pool is shrinking in America. This move by Walmart, in my opinion, will only worsen the problem. Not only will readers have fewer titles to choose from, some writers are going to wind up moving on to other things because they can’t make a living writing anymore. Fewer titles, fewer writers, fewer choices.

Makes ya wanna kick somethin’, don’t it?

A few weekends ago I attended a genre conference and was tagged to sit in on multiple writing panels. The range of topics was vast, everything from how-to, to what-now. Usually when sitting on these panels, I enjoy the various points of view from the different participating authors. The operative word here is u-s-u-a-l-l-y. Protocol most often calls for a moderator on these panels, and that moderator’s job is to make sure the conversation flows smoothly by asking questions, prompting different sub-topics that fall under the main topic, and making certain each panelist gets an opportunity to speak. The challenge comes, though, when the moderator is a panel hog (meaning out of a 60 minute time slot, they talk for 55) or when the moderator relinquishes control of the panel by being too timid to divert the conversation away from a participating panel-hog. Unfortunately, both of these situations happened this weekend—moderator hog—participant hog. Arg!

Whenever these situations occur, I normally just sit back and tune out whoever’s talking. 99% of the time they rarely come up for air while jumping from one tale to the next without so much as a glance towards the other panelists. So it’s not like they realize I’m not paying attention anyway. The thing that really gets me, though, is if they’d even take a moment to look over the audience, they’d see that the majority of the folks sitting out there are either rolling their eyes, yawning and not paying attention, or downright sleeping in their chairs. What is it with these hogs? Are they deprived of attention in their everyday lives? Is it a control issue? Or could it be that they don’t realize they’re being obnoxious because no one’s ever told them?

Whatever the reason, it’s irritating as hell. Especially if they’re talking about a topic you know they know nothing about. Take this weekend’s Ms. Oink Moderator for example. The discussion was supposed to be about agents, how to get one, how to work with one, etc. This woman claimed, in a loud, smoker’s voice, that one shouldn’t be picky about the type of agent they get to represent them because agents didn’t come a dime a dozen, so they should be grateful for any agent who asks to represent them. To make matters worse, she insisted that all agents charged a reading fee now and that the majority took a 25% commission from whatever you made. HUH?!? Either this woman had gotten herself into bed with an agent from hell or she was shooting from the hip with a malfunctioning scatter-gun, hoping she looked like a sharp-shooter. NOT!

As Ms. Oink blabbered on and on, I looked at the other authors on the panel—they looked at me—we looked at the audience. Those who were listening to her appeared utterly confused. I waited until the woman drew a breath, which she only did every twenty minutes or so, then attempted to interject my thoughts on the subject. I barely got three words out before Ms. Oink interrupted, louder and more obnoxious than ever. No way was she going to let anyone get a word in edgewise.

I sat quietly for another couple of minutes, then could take no more. As she bellowed on about how part of an agent’s job was to help you promote your book once it was sold, and you should dump any agent who doesn’t, I grabbed my tote bag from the floor, shoveled the books I’d brought along into it, then stood up and interrupted her by saying loudly to the audience, “If all of you will excuse me, I’ll be leaving now.”

This woke the sleeping members of the audience and stopped Ms. Oink in mid-sentence. She looked over at me, and I noted the irritated expression on her face. It all but said, ‘Where do you think you’re going? How dare you interrupt my show!’

In response, I said aloud, “Mary, (name changed to protect the stupid) you really should get your facts straight about agents….viable ones anyway. The publishing business is tough enough without you adding bullshit to it.” With that, I left the room—amidst loud applause. Before I was out the door, every other author on the panel and damn near the entire audience were headed out as well.

I really didn’t want to get ugly with the woman, but somebody had to say something to shut her up. As far as I know, Ms. Oink might still be sitting behind that panel table in that same meeting room, ranting and raving to the walls about the obnoxious broad who dared to be so rude to her.

Ah well, such is life. Sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.

Have you ever had to deal with a panel hog?