Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

Put a Funhouse Mirror in the Middle of Your Mystery

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Once you wrap your head around the concept of the mirror moment, you’ll find them popping up all over the place.

Quick review. At the midpoint of a novel or movie, you’ll usually find a moment within a scene when the Lead is forced to look himself. There are two kinds of looks: The “who am I?” look and the “I’m probably going to die” look.

The first is when there’s a character arc to the story, the Lead transforming over the course of the narrative. He is a different person at the end. Like Rick in Casablanca, who goes from sticking his neck out for nobody to a man willing to sacrifice his life for a greater good. The mirror moment is when he drunkenly insults the woman he loves, Ilsa, who has tried to explain to him why she left him in Paris. When she leaves, he has a moment (shown visually) of him thinking what a lousy bastard he is.

The second kind of mirror moment is when the Lead is fundamentally the same person at the end, but has been forced to grow stronger. Katniss Everdeen and Richard Kimble are examples of this type. They both have a moment in the middle where they are thinking I cannot possibly survive.

Now, in a series mystery you may have the type of Lead, the Sleuth, who doesn’t change fundamentally at the end of each book. Holmes, Poirot, Marple. Also, physical death may not be on the line.

In that case, you can make the mirror a “funhouse” kind, where everything looks confusing and distorted. Thus, you can always have your Lead considering the frustrating mix of clues that are just not adding up. Could this be the mystery that finally goes unsolved for our hero? (This is professional death for the sleuth).

I recently saw a funhouse mirror in Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey Spillane. Mike Hammer is not your sensitive, New Age guy. So in the middle of the book Hammer is going over the case with his gal Friday (and love), Velda. She’s been gathering information, and lays it all out. It’s a funhouse mirror:

If ever there was a mess, this was it. Everything out of place and out of focus. The ends didn’t even try to meet. Meet? Hell, they were snarled up so completely nothing made any sense.

A funny side note. Once you’re aware of the mirror moment, you’ll find actual mirrors showing up. I was amused to find this on the very next page of Kiss Me, Deadly:

I went into a bar and had a beer while the facts settled down in my mind. While I sat there I tried to keep from looking at myself in the mirror behind the back bar but it didn’t work. My face wasn’t pretty at all. Not at all. So I moved to a booth in the back that had no mirrors.

So when you write a mystery, or a thriller with a mystery in it, you can always have your Lead, in the middle of things, thinking how nothing makes sense. More, how this is the biggest challenge of his life to date. Your readers will be right there with you, wanting to know how it will work out. Which it will, at the end, in satisfying fashion. Which is your best marketing tool, for as the Mick himself said, “The first chapter sells your book. The last chapter sells your next book.”

Comments and questions welcome.

Have Fun in the Writing Game

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On this day in history, in 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame selected its first group of inductees. They were inarguably the five best players of their time: Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter. Babe Ruth, the greatest slugger. Honus Wagner, the best all-around player; Christy Mathewson, the most skilled pitcher; and Walter Johnson, the man with the greatest (and most feared) fastball. No one seriously questioned this inaugural class.

But during the first two decades of the 20th century, the question of who was the best player of all boiled down to a choice between Cobb and Wagner.

Thy Cobb, the ultimate (and many considered dirtiest) competitor.

Honus Wagner, quietly dominant as both hitter and fielder.

Cobb, an outfielder, trim and fast as an antelope.

Wagner, a shortstop, bow-legged and built like a beer truck.

Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner in the 1909 World Series

The one time they faced each other was in the 1909 World Series. Wagner’s Pittsburgh Pirates beat Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in seven games.

In one game, Cobb got to first base and yelled at Wagner. “I’m gonna steal second, krauthead!” The mild-mannered Wagner said nothing.

On the next pitch Cobb took off. The catcher threw the ball to Wagner, who knew Cobb’s penchant for sliding into bases spikes high, often ripping flesh from an opponent’s leg. Wagner gracefully avoided Cobb’s dreadful skewers and slapped his glove across Cobb’s face. Cobb was out and with a bloody lip for his troubles. (This account comes to us through oral history. If it isn’t true, well, it should have been.)

In the series, Wagner outhit Cobb, .333 to .241.

I bring this up because I am a baseball history buff, and recently ran across a YouTube video of Honus Wagner, age 59, talking about how he still loves being around the game of baseball. It was during spring training for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933, and Wagner, now a coach, was out there taking batting practice and fielding with the young players.

It’s wonderful to see! Here he is, smacking fastballs and scooping up grounders. And not like some old man. His swing still had power, and his fielding was beautiful.

Then we see him coaching a runner at third, clapping his hands, chattering, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

He is having so much fun. He played the game because he loved it, not because of the peanuts players were paid in those early days. He did eventually get paid the princely sum of $10,000 a year. (In 1930, Babe Ruth managed to squeeze $80,000 a year from the Yankees. When a reporter asked how Ruth could accept a larger salary than President Herbert Hoover, and during the Depression yet, Ruth said, “I had a better year than he did.”)

So…have fun when you write! When I’m typing, I try to stay loose and let the words flow. I tell myself, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

You know who was the Honus Wagner of writing? Ray Bradbury. You can sense the joy he had when writing his stories. He talked about the need for this mindset, especially in Zen in the Art of Writing. His prime output was the 1950s, but he never stopped, all the way until his death in 2012. “Every morning,” he wrote in Zen, “I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”

That’s the sense of play we need to nurture.

Yes, there’s work involved with this craft. Of course. But treat it like practice. You can still have fun knowing the effort it making you better.

Another thing about Wagner (which was the opposite of Cobb) is that both fans and fellow players loved him. On the field, he played fair. Off the field, he was humble and thoughtful of others. He famously demanded that the American Tobacco Company stop distributing his baseball card with their product because he didn’t want his likeness to entice kids to smoke. As a result, the few of those 1909 cards that remain are the holy grail for collectors. Last year one of them sold for $7.25 million.

Remember that, writer, when you put yourself out there on social media, which pretends to “reward” rudeness, confrontation, and ranting with “likes.” That becomes a drug from which you will inevitably crash.

Keep it fun, keep it clean, keep writing.

So what about you? Do you do have a sense of fun when you write? Is there anything you purposely do to keep it that way?

And here is that two-minute clip of the great Honus Wagner, talking about the game he loved:

Three Things That Can Sink Your Novel

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We had quite a deluge recently in L.A. The good news is we’re out of drought conditions. The bad news is that mudslides and traffic accidents had their predictable increases. Also, a 40-foot sinkhole on a major street opened like the jaws of a subterranean monster, swallowing two vehicles. As reported on local news Channel 5:

A mother and her teen daughter had to be rescued and taken to the hospital Monday night after their Nissan, along with a pickup truck, fell inside the sinkhole.

The passengers in the pickup were able to escape their vehicle uninjured, but the truck landed on top of the Nissan, trapping the woman and the teen.

It took first responders with the Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles County Fire and Ventura Fire about an hour to pull the mother and daughter from the sinkhole in a dangerous rescue operation.

“It was a dynamic rescue,” LAFD Cpt. Erik Scott said. “The cars were shifting, moving. Firefighters did an outstanding job with the calculated rescue. We lowered ladders and ultimately did what we call a high angle rope rescue where we had our big aerial ladder truck, lower a firefighter on a rope, secure a harness, lift those people to safety.”

Here’s what that looked like (click to enlarge):

Thank God no one was seriously injured. And since I can’t turn off my metaphor machine, I found myself thinking about another kind of sinkhole—fiction blunders that can bring the reading experience to a dead stop. Such as:

The Tiresome Lead

A quirky, even interesting, Lead character can quickly wear out his welcome if he goes unchallenged by a little thing I like to call plot. Unless that character faces some trouble, and soon, I’m not likely to wait around. (Sorry fans of A Confederacy of Dunces, but I tried three times to get into this book, and the over-quirked and obnoxious Lead who just roams around whining and jabbering sank me every time.)

Think about another annoying Lead—Scarlett O’Hara. When we first meet her, she’s sitting on her porch flirting with the Tarleton twins. A couple pages of this and we’re almost ready to move on, until…a disturbance. The first sign of trouble for Scarlett—Ashley is going to marry Melanie! That leads to her plan to corner Ashley at the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, which becomes an argument, which leads Ashley storming out, thence to Scarlett throwing a china bowl at the fireplace…at which the voice of Rhett Butler comes from the sofa, “This is too much.”

Three pages later, Charles Hamilton tells her the war has started, and in his clumsy way asks her to marry him. To spite Ashley, she says yes. Hoo boy, is she ever going to have trouble now.

JSB Sinkhole Avoidance Technique #1: Give a disturbance on the opening page, even a subtle one, to shake the Lead out of her placid existence. Then start to pile on the troubles.

The Distant Doorway

It is not until the Lead is forced into the confrontation of Act 2 that full engagement is realized and the main plot begins. Dorothy has immediate trouble with Miss Gulch, who takes Toto away. But it’s not until the twister dumps her in Oz that the story proper begins.

JSB Sinkhole Avoidance Technique #2: Push your Lead through the Doorway of No Return (what some call Plot Point 1) no later than 1/5 into the book (the 1/4 mark is more applicable to screenplays). In GWTW the war breaks out at the 20% mark. (I’m amused at how Margaret Mitchell keeps things moving. The first chapter after passing through the Doorway of No Return begins: Within two weeks Scarlett had become a wife, and within two months more she was a widow. So much for Charles! Let’s move on to Rhett.)

Stakes Less Than Death

I’ve written here before about death stakes. Unless the conflict is a life-and-death struggle, the plot will not engage as it should.

Now, there are three kinds of death. Physical (an obvious one for thrillers), professional, and psychological. Your novel needs one of these as primary. The others can be added below the surface.

For example, Harry Bosch faces all three at one time or another in the Michael Connelly series. I would argue that the primary in most of the books is psychological. For Bosch, his employment as a cop is often on the line (professional) but he is obsessed with cold cases and seemingly “unimportant” victims. “Everybody counts or nobody counts,” he tells a police psychologist in The Last Coyote. “That’s it. It means I bust my ass to make a case whether it’s a prostitute or the mayor’s wife. That’s my rule.” Why? Because his mother, a prostitute, was murdered when he was eleven, and the case went unsolved. To keep from dying inside (psychological death) Bosch gives his all to the forgotten victims.

JSB Sinkhole Avoidance Technique #3: Brainstorm all three types of death for your Lead. Not all may apply, but it’s a good exercise. For example, in a cozy mystery professional (or vocational) death for the sleuth is usually the primary. Miss Marple is faced with a seemingly intractable mystery. Usually there’s not someone out trying to kill her (though maybe that was in a book or two, I don’t know). You, perhaps, might find it a nice way to up the stakes in your cozy.

Avoiding speed bumps, potholes, and sinkholes is part of our craft. And if I may offer a commercial to help in this regard, consider 27 Fiction Writing Blunders – And How Not To Make Them and Plotman to the Rescue: A Troubleshooting Guide to Fixing Your Toughest Plot Problems. I’m here to help.

Any other sinkholes you spot in fiction?

And please drive safe, especially in the rain.

Can You Spot The Errors?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

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I’ve had to take care of some life matters this week, so I’m going to re-post a little “test” I once posted. Time to play again!

Below is a bit of writing I made up based on errors I see all the time in manuscripts and published (even traditionally!) books. Heck, I’ve been guilty at one time or another, especially in my early years. Some of these are technically not “errors,” as they may be grammatically correct. But they’re what I call “little writing speed bumps.” They disturb the reader’s fictive dream, usually in a subconscious way. The more bumps, the less enjoyable the reading experience.

Learn to spot them in your own writing, however, and you can smooth out the road.

So here we go. Read the following and jot down all the speed bumps you can find. Don’t look ahead to the answer sheet yet. You’re on the honor system!

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

He gazed at a beautiful boat.

“How do you like it?” his wife said. Carol was dressed in a red sweater.

Carol luxuriated in the softness of the sweater. Her smile was soft and warm.

John turned from the window and embraced his wife.

“I can see you do,” Carol laughed.

Kissing Carol full on the mouth, John whispered, “I like you even more.”

Carol Harper was forty-two. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, she had studied folklore and mythology, before finally deciding to major in business. Her first job out of college was with an advertising firm in New York.

“I like you too,” Carol said lovingly.

“I like you so much,” John repeated, “that I want to take you out to a nice dinner tonight.”

“A nice dinner, John?” Carol expostulated. “Tonight?”

“Yes,” John winked. “Tonight.”

How’d you do, class? Now, take this quiz home to your parents and return it with a note saying they’ve seen it …

… or not. Below is the excerpt with my answers provided. Some of them have footnotes that you can read below the excerpt. Have a look, then open up a discussion in the comments.

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

He gazed [ECHO. SEE NOTE 1, BELOW] at a beautiful boat.

“How do you like it?” his wife said. Carol was dressed in a red sweater. [POV PROBLEM. WE’RE IN JOHN’S HEAD. HOW CAN HE SEE HIS WIFE’S OUTFIT IF HE’S LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW?]

Carol luxuriated [POV SWITCH TO CAROL] in the softness of the sweater. Her smile was soft [ECHO] and warm. [POV PROBLEM. WHO SEES THIS? NOT HER. SHE’S NOT LOOKING IN A MIRROR, AND NOT JOHN, WHO IS LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW]

John turned from the window and embraced his wife.

“I can see you do,” [HOW? HE’S EMBRACING HER] Carol laughed [YOU DON’T LAUGH DIALOGUE. SEE NOTE 2]

Kissing Carol full on the mouth, John whispered [HOW CAN JOHN WHISPER ANYTHING IF HE’S FULL ON THE MOUTH? SEE NOTE 3], “I like you even more.”

Carol Harper was forty-two. [POV SWITCH. THIS IS AN OMNISCIENT VIEW]. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, she had studied folklore and mythology, [MISPLACED COMMA] before finally deciding to major in business. Her first job out of college was with an advertising firm in New York. [ALL THIS IS INFO DUMP AND EXPOSITION. IT CAN WAIT!]

“I like you too,” Carol said lovingly. [ADVERB IS unnecessary. SEE NOTE 4]

“I like you so much [ECHO IN DIALOGUE],” John repeated [REDUNDANT], “that I want to take you out to a nice dinner tonight.”

“A nice dinner, John?” [UNNECESSARY USE OF NAME. SEE NOTE 5] Carol expostulated [I HOPE I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS. BUT SEE NOTE 2 AGAIN]. “Tonight?”

“Yes, [UNNECCESARY FILLER. SEE NOTE 6]” John winked [DIALOGUE DOESN’T WINK!]. “Tonight.” [ECHO]

[FINAL AND MOST IMPORTANT COMMENT: NO CONFLICT OR TENSION ANYWHERE! SEE NOTE 7]

NOTES:

  1. An echo is when a descriptive word (an adjective or verb) is used more than once in close proximity. Here, gazed is used in back-to-back sentences. It’s not “wrong” to do this, but it’s a bump in the reader’s mind.
  1. For attributions in dialogue, use said as your default. Its job is to clue the reader in on who is speaking and nothing more. It’s virtually invisible. If you are tempted to use another word to indicate a manner of speaking, look to the context and seek to make things clear. For example: Sgt. Trask clenched his teeth. “Fall in!” he growled. We know he growled from the context and the exclamation point. We know he is speaking, too. So: Sgt. Trask clenched his teeth. “Fall in!” is enough.
  1. This kind of sentence construction is called a participle phrase. It begins with a word ending in –ing. What you have to watch out for are two actions that defy the laws of physics. In other words, can the two actions take place at the same time? Full-on kissing and whispering cannot (unless you speak fluent French. Ahem). But these two actions can coexist: Getting out of his car, John heard a woman scream. While some writing instructors hold that you should never use a participle phrase. I think they’re just fine if they a) pass the coexistence test; and b) are used sparingly.
  1. Adverbs propping up dialogue attributions are almost always unnecessary. If it’s not clear how something is being said from the dialogue itself, or the action surrounding it, see if you can make it clear. The occasional adverb is fine, but only if you truly need it.
  1. Avoid having characters tell each other things they both already know. The other character’s name is one of these. Unless, of course, the character is trying to be adamant, as in, “John, how many times do I have to tell you not to kidnap the neighbors!” But when you try to slip in exposition in dialogue, it can sound truly phony if it’s information both characters already possess: “Oh hello Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore. Please come in.”
  1. One of the best ways to make dialogue crisp is to cut needless filler words. Look for these at the start of dialogue, especially Yes, No, and Well. The sentence in the piece would have been much better this way: John winked. “Tonight.” (Why is tonight not an echo? Because John is using it as an echo. It’s intentional.)
  1. The scene is dullsville because there’s no conflict. There should be some tension, any kind, even if it’s only an emotional knot inside one of the characters. Anything that takes the scene south of normal.

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

“How do you like it?” his wife said.

John turned from the window and faced Carol.

“I can see you do,” Carol said.

“What’s wrong with your eyesight?” John said.

So what about you? Did you see anything else? What conflict might be added to  improve the scene?

Reaching for the Brass Ring

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In the good old days of carousels, there was a little item called the brass ring. According to one source:

Brass ring devices were introduced during the heyday of the carousel in the United States – about 1880 to 1920 – as a way of creating interest in the ride. Some rings were made of steel, some made of brass; if you grabbed the brass ring, you got a free ride.

Then the lawyers stepped in.

Today, reaching out and grabbing for the brass ring has been deemed an insurance risk, so very few carousels allow them anymore.

Ah, lawyers. But I digress.

The term has come into our language to mean gaining a prestigious outcome. “His book became a runaway bestseller. He got the brass ring!” It was also something hard to come by; most people missed the brass ring…and some fell off their wooden horse trying to grab it.

I almost got one during my acting days.

My agent sent me to audition for a new TV series. So off I went to MGM Studios in Culver City. I was directed to a sound stage and given “sides”—a portion of a script to go over. I sat down with several other actors of the “young leading man” type. We all gave each other the side-eye, knowing we were competitors.

The part was for the son of a steel mill foreman. The originator of this series, Skag, was none other than Abby Mann, Academy Award winner for his screenplay for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He went to a career in TV creating, among other shows, Kojak.

One by one the actors were called into another room, where a camera was set up. Behind a table sat three people to assess the talent.

My turn came and I read my part with one of the casting folks reading the part of the father.

You never know how you do in those things. But at least I’d made it onto the MGM lot!

Gable!

Tracy!

Bell?

As I was walking toward my car, I heard one of the casting people calling my name. She told me to come back inside. They wanted me to read again.

Only this time I was going to read with the star of the series.

A few minutes later I was standing in front of another camera getting ready to read with Mr. Karl Malden.

Karl Malden as Skag.

Karl Malden! Academy Award Winner (Best Supporting Actor for A Streetcar Named Desire) and a man with so many incredible credits.

Here was my brass ring!

I gave it my best shot and floated on air back to my grungy Ford Maverick, dreaming of being able to replace it with a sporty Corvette.

About a week later I got a call from my agent. He brought me down to earth with the news that I didn’t get the part. It had come down to me and another actor. Only this actor had been in a couple of movies, and thus had “a name.” He had copped my brass ring!

That’s an actor’s life for you.

Skag had a cast member I knew personally—Powers Boothe. I’d been in a New York production of Othello with Powers, who snagged his own brass ring when he was cast as Jim Jones in a miniseries about that madman. Powers went on to a great career, including a memorable turn in Tombstone (1993).

The part I was to play went to Craig Wasson, who’s had a nice career of his own.

And what of the actor James Scott Bell? A few months after his miss he snagged a brass ring of another kind when he met a beautiful actress at a friend’s birthday party and wed her six months later.

Figuring a young family needed one steady income, I changed course and went to law school.

Some years later, I walked from my law office in Woodland Hills to grab lunch at Chipotle. Inside, sitting alone and munching, was Craig Wasson.

“Craig?”

He looked up.

I said, “We were up for the same part in Skag. I came in second.”

“Wow,” he said. “You still acting?”

“Nah, I’m a lawyer now.”

“Good choice,” he said with a rueful smile. We exchanged a few pleasantries—nice fellow—and that was the bookend to my brass ring miss.

But here’s the thing. I had at least at least touched the brass ring. My fingertip skimmed across it. That is something. And it may even be a healthy thing. A recent study found that “prioritizing goals emphasizing … personal growth, and striving for meaning in life may have positive biological correlates.”

What’s the brass ring for you? Is it to make the NYT bestseller list? To get a #1 category rank on Amazon? Or maybe just to get more than a handful of readers for the books you self publish?

Whatever it is for you, reaching for the brass ring is a positive aspiration…as long as you don’t miss the ride! The ride is the main thing, after all—the carousel, the up-and-down of your horse, the music playing, the lights flashing, people laughing.

Writing is a carousel. Enjoy it while you can.

So what if you miss the brass ring? If you haven’t fallen off your horse, you’re still on the ride. And as the old ad man Leo Burnett once put it, “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud, either.”

What’s your brass ring?

More important: are you enjoying the ride?

Reader Friday: Keep On Writing?

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“With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has stretched your understanding. I know that. Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, [or] would never make another cent from it, I would keep on writing.” – Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

Would you?

NOTE: This was one of the books I read early in my writing journey, and found it inspiring. As of this writing the Kindle version is just 49¢.

The Year Behind and The Year Ahead

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Here is the last TKZ post of the year. We will be taking our annual two-week break, and gather again on January 2, 2023. It seems apt, then, to take a look in the rearview and also through the windshield. Where have we been, and where are we headed?

2022

What a year. Sometimes it felt like the cruise of the Lusitania; at other times, like an old wooden roller coaster about to be condemned. There were all sorts of moments:

  • Russia invaded Ukraine. Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson broke up. Hordes of Twitter users seemed unable to determine which was worse.
  • Speaking of Twitter, some car guy bought it.
  • Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.
  • Johnny Depp used the term “a grumpy” in open court.

Some notable deaths were: Queen Elizabeth, Angela Lansbury, Bill Russell, Sidney Poitier, and the last great spitballer, Gaylord Perry.

Other deaths included decorum, nuance, and rationality.

And over in the publishing world—

Print Book Sales Were Down

According to Publishers Weekly:

Unit sales of print books fell 4.8% through the first nine months of 2022, from the comparable period in 2021. Unit sales dropped from 570 million copies sold in the January through September period in 2021 to 542.6 million in 2022 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The sales decline slowed during the third quarter, falling from a drop of 6.6% in the first half of 2021. The decline also follows a year in which unit sales for the full year rose 8.9% over 2020.

Ebooks and Audio

Ebook sales are notoriously difficult to quantify, because Indie and Amazon stats are largely hidden. With trad pub, ebook revenues were down 6.7% as compared to the first eight months of 2021. Audiobooks sales, however, were up 5.5%.

Indie sales generally may not have been spared the downward trend. Why? While sales were up during lockdown mania, when people couldn’t go out to bookstores, it seems 2022 saw a reversal of this trend. Coupled with challenging economic times, sales of just about everything were down. It feels a bit like 2008-2009. One blog lists several factors affecting book sales, e.g.,

  • Looming recession
  • Inflation
  • Collective fatigue
  • Demand saturation, tapering-off growth
  • Declining old-guard ad platform effectiveness

The blog suggests that “if consumers are spending less, it might not be the time to ditch Kindle Unlimited if you’re established there and it’s been good to you, as people will cancel their subscriptions last.”

Dedicated Ebook Readers Are Dying

Nook is on life support. Kobo is mostly in Canada. Kindle still dominates, and Amazon just released a cool new model. But it appears that phones and tablets are replacing e-readers.

While that transition does not affect ebook reading per se, it does make formatting a most important consideration. Your books have to be readable on the smaller phone footprint. I use Vellum, which takes care of that problem. What are you using?

Bestsellers Are Getting Shorter

Interesting data from the analysts at Wordsrated:

  • Bestsellers are getting shorter – the average length of the NYT bestseller decreased by 51.5 pages from 2011 to 2021, from 437.5 to 386 (11.8%).
  • Long books (over 400 pages) are disappearing – the share of long bestsellers went from 54% in 2011 to 38% in 2021, a 30% drop.
  • Long books stayed 4.4 weeks longer on the bestsellers list than short books (under 400 pages) until 2016. Since 2016, short books have been on the list 1.9 weeks longer than long books.

(Mr. Rogers Voice): “Can you say ‘shrinking attention spans’? I know you can.”

That’s good news for indie writers of pulp-style fiction. Instead of two books at 90k each, they can do three books at 60k—and charge the same price for each one.

The Big Antitrust Case

You all heard about the DOJ going to court to stop the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. But did you understand it? Without going into massive detail, antitrust law (according to the DOJ itself) “prohibits business practices that unreasonably deprive consumers of the benefits of competition, resulting in higher prices for products and services.”

But the way this case was presented was to protect that slice of authors who command advances of $250,000 or more. Is that you? I didn’t think so.

The trial was marked by the testimony of CEOs and agents and one Mr. Stephen King, who said:

I came because I think consolidation is bad for competition. That’s my understanding of the book business, and I’ve been around it for fifty years. When I started in this business, there were literally hundreds of imprints, and some of them were run by people with extremely idiosyncratic tastes, one might say. Those businesses were either subsumed one by one or they ran out of business. I think it becomes tougher and tougher for writers to find enough money to live on.

(For a summary of the key events of the trial, see the coverage by Publishers Weekly.)

The DOJ won. PRH has decided not to appeal. In reading Judge Florence Tan’s decision, a few things jumped out at me:

  • Only 35 out of every 100 books published turns a profit.
  • “Breakout” titles — those books that “outstrip” expectations — are what make up most of a pub company’s profit.
  • The trad model is to acquire a large number of books, knowing that most titles will not be profitable, and hoping for that big home run, like Gone Girl.
  • PRH CEO Markus Dohle testified that publishers are like “angel investors” that “invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams, and only a few make it to the top.” When a book is a breakout, it allows the company to take risks in acquiring new books and “betting” on new titles.
  • And this, from pg. 19: “Self-publishing is not a significant factor in the publishing industry. Self-published books are rarely published in print and are typically limited to online distributions. The authors of self-published books cannot pay themselves an advance. [JSB: But they get a 70% royalty and get paid every month!] Moreover, individual authors generally do not have relationships with media or distributors necessary to ensure that their books are visible to a potential audience.” [JSB: How often does a fiction author get on The Today Show?]

So what does all this mean for writers who don’t command huge advances? The ever-insightful Jane Friedman, in her Hot Sheet newsletter (subscription required) says:

All along, I’ve said in this newsletter (and elsewhere) that I don’t think this case has much or any bearing on the average author’s earnings. While I can’t speak to the legal merits of the government’s case, I’ve never been convinced that blocking this merger would save anything of value that wasn’t already lost decades ago, when industry consolidation began. Nor is anyone arguing, as far as I’ve seen, that preserving the advances of authors who receive $250k+ will have positive trickle-down effects for the entire literary ecosystem.           

2023 

On Predicting the Future

“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.” – Ray Bradbury

“The only way you can predict the future is to build it.” – Alan Kay

“I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.” – Albert Einstein

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

So How Do You Earn More Dough Next Year?

1. Within The Forbidden City 

In traditional publishing, it used to be said you needed four to five books getting an increasing foothold among readers to move toward significant writing income. See The Career Novelist by agent Donald Maass.

In these latter days, however, an author has one or maybe two chances. As the DOJ case revealed, the big pubs want home runs, and want them out of the gate. They generally won’t put any significant marketing money into most books unless and until those books show some momentum on their own.

So write a home run and you’re golden.

If not, and you are shown the gate by the Forbidden City elders, there are many smaller publishers out there who will allow you singles and doubles, and a shot at building a readership.

2. Indie

Want to know what it takes to bring in some good lettuce as an indie writer? I found the information in this survey instructive (h/t Joanna Penn for the link). It confirms my own experience. It’s worth your time to have a look.

Still and all, one truth remains: the best marketing, in either world, is word of mouth, which comes from the books themselves. Meaning—

Stick to The Fundamentals

From time immemorial, writers of fiction have known that the fundamentals for success are basic: be good and be productive.

To be good means always growing in your craft. Assess your work vis-à-vis the seven critical success factors of fiction—plot, structure, characters, scenes, dialogue, voice, and meaning. Figure out what needs improving (and remove any chips on your shoulder) and then set about to study those areas and practice what you learn.

As for production, you don’t have to write a novel every month. Just be consistent. A page a day is a book a year. Determine how many words you can comfortably write in a week. Up that by 10% and make it your weekly goal. If you miss a day, make it up on other days. If you miss a week, fuggetaboutit. Start fresh on Monday.

Develop ideas even as you’re working on your WIP. Be like a movie studio, with one “green lit” project, a few “in development” and a few that are one-line pitches.

Most of all, nurture the joy factor and love what you do.

Have the mindset of the pulp writers of yore, who didn’t have time to whine or moan during the Depression. They had to eat, so the wrote. And looked at the enterprise as a business. One of those writers was W. T. Ballard, who wrote for Black Mask. In an interview later in life he said:

My views on writing as a business? That it is not much different from any other. You have to keep swinging, rolling with the punches, keep alert and attuned to the changes that take place suddenly or gradually, but always constantly.

Words for writers to live by.

Now from all of us at TKZ: Thank you, loyal readers, for another great year. We have some of the best, most informed, and most interesting commenters in the entire blogosphere. Let’s continue the conversation in 2023. May abundant blessings be yours this holiday season. See you soon!