By John Gilstrap

As I read Reavis Wortham’s excellent post regarding titles and covers last Saturday, my first thought was, Hey, I’ve got a different squint on such matters. I think that’s what my post will be about on Wednesday!

My second thought was, Wait. I already wrote that post.

And, as luck would have it, on the day when I should be writing new material for this post, I’m swamped with Life Stuff and don’t have time to pen a whole new post. So, here we go with a post that first appeared on TKZ on November 4, 2020:

Whoever coined the trope that you can’t judge a book by its cover had to have been an academic. Certainly, the trope-coiner was not a reader of novels. Yes, it is true that some great novels come encased in ugly wrappers, but few of them find a broad readership.

What follows is based on zero research and even less science, but it reflects quite a few decades of personal observation.

People buy books in steps.

First, they have to know to look for it. This is the unicorn hair in the mix. I don’t know what drives me to look for a book. Certainly, there’s word of mouth, and I read a lot of books for blurbs, but I don’t remember the last time I went into a bookstore blind–without a target I was looking for–and scoured the shelves, hoping to be attracted to a cover. I don’t think I’ve ever done that in the virtual world, where online bookstores are not, in my opinion, very browsable.

Next, there has to be an instant attraction. Perhaps it’s the author’s name—which highlights the importance of “branding”. But that instant attraction is just that—instant. It’s fleeting. There and gone. This is where the cover comes in, highlighting the reason that genres exist in the first place. The title is important here, too. A thriller has to look and sound like a thriller. Ditto a romance or horror novel. In that brief second of instant attraction, the artwork makes a connection and causes the reader to move to the next step . . .

They read the plot description. In just a few words, the pressure is on to pull the reader into the story. To make them gamble their hard-earned money that the ride you’re going to provide is worth the money. How do they make their final decision?

They read the first pages. Yesterday, PJ Parrish posted a terrific primer on the elements of a good opening. Here’s where that pays off. Boom! Decision made, one way or the other. There’s neither the time nor the real estate to flub the opening and make it better later.

So, where is the cynicism?

Okay, here it is: The covers and titles needn’t have much to do with the actual plot of the book. They work together to accomplish their jobs in a glance, and then they are forgotten. They work in tandem to convince a potential reader to take a chance, and if you, as the writer, do your job to entertain, no one will notice. Some examples from my own work:

Hellfire is the Jonathan Grave book that hit the stands back in July. What does Hellfire even mean? The story is about two kids who are kidnapped to keep their mom from revealing a terrorist plot after she has been arrested. The word itself–Hellfire–is an oblique reference to an air-to-surface missile system. And it sounds cool. It positions the book properly in the minds of readers who generally enjoy the types of books I write.

The red cover makes it distinctive on the shelf–unless or until red becomes the cover du jour for the current crop of cover designers. It also lends itself well as a Facebook cover image. But if you really look at the image and its various elements, it could be for a reprint of All’s Quiet On The Western Front, or it could be a story about Satan.

Other examples from my oeuvre (today is Pretend-I-Know-French Day): The second book in my Jonathan Grave series is Hostage Zero. It’s the title that broke the series out, and the phrase means nothing. None of the hostages are numbered, and none of them launch a plague, as in “patient zero”. It just sounded cool, and that’s why we went with it. The cover of Friendly Fire features the White House, yet neither the president nor his team are involved in the story. What we wanted to do is establish the book and its author as being “inside Washington”.

My point here is that storytelling and marketing are entirely different skillsets, with only distantly related goals. As an author, my job is to entertain my readers by giving them a helluva ride. To get that chance, I need to convince them (trick them?) into picking out my book from among all the others on the shelf.

Your turn, TKZers. Do you have any tricks you’re willing to share about how you convince readers to take the plunge?

“It is easy to be wise after the event.” — Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes

By PJ Parrish

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of my old stuff lately. It’s all in prep to get the last of our backlist titles re-packaged and up for download. What a chore — and eye-opener — this has turned out to be.

First, it’s a lot of grunt work. Some of our books are so old they hail from the dark ages of Word Perfect. (For the record, the BEST word processing system ever designed). There is no manuscript that I can feed into the Amazon maw. So here’s the primitive process:

1. Dig around in the dusty bins of the house to find an old paper copy of the book
2. Send it to our book scanner (Blue Leaf in Ballwin, Mo). Our guy Brad then rips the book apart, scans it, and sends us a Word document.
3. The manuscript comes back surprisingly clean. But it has quirks. The spacing is off at times, “t” often comes out “st” and Louis’s name is sometimes Louie. So I have to CAREFULLY read every single line. This is hard to do because:

• I am a bad copy editor.
• Reading for typos is like taking three Ambiens.
• I get caught up in the story and miss the typos. This is sometimes a good thing because I hit a passage and think, “Damn, I’m good!” This is sometimes a bad thing because I hit another passage and it’s, “What the hell was I thinking?”

Once I have a clean manuscript, I ship it off to my sister Kelly who has mastered the art of formatting. (If you don’t know how to do this, hire someone who does. Please. If you are self-pubbing, one of the biggest turn-offs to readers is shoddy formatting. It screams amateur.) So, Kelly makes it pretty with perfect chapter breaks, drop-caps, correct page numbering and a table of contents. We write new backcopy and design a new cover  (you can’t use your original publisher’s).

Covers, as we’ve talked about here, are important. Again, hire a pro! If you have series, it’s best to brand them with linking graphic devices, type faces and colors. We chose black backgrounds and an odd type face. Here a sample of the covers, original and new, for book we’ve just finished.

The left one, from our publisher Kensington, was adequate. But it looks dated now (design trends mutate!). I always disliked it because the only image is a nondescript (purple?) house that had no relation to the story. In our re-branding new covers, we’ve used a human figure on every book because we think it gives the reader a person to begin to bond with, be it a victim, protag or villain. (Also the necklace the dead girl wears turnss out to be a big clue).

So Thicker Than Water is available in ebook and very pretty trade paperback. Click here.  Now we take you back to our regular programming.

I’d like to return to my first point, way back in the first paragraph. Because this is what I really want to stress for you guys out there who are struggling with getting your first book out there in the world.

Eye-opening.

That is my biggest take-away from this experience of getting our old stuff back out there. Because no matter where you are in your writing, rewriting or editing process, you have to be willing to have your eyes opened. And your ego closed.

You really have to be ruthless in rewriting. You have to make hard choices, sometimes about passages or whole chapters that need to be cut. You have to recognize that your plot foundation might be shaky. Or that your characters are cardboardy. I always tell folks one thing, going into a new story:

Write the first draft with your heart. Then write the second, third, tenth or twentieth draft with your head. We’ve now re-published ten of our old books. Yes, we did some rewriting on all of them. The first one, Dark of the Moon, we have yet to re-publish because we believe it has fundamental problems that need more than a normal rewrite can solve. Here’s some of the things we learned in this process with our freshman effort book:

We got preachy. Our protag, Louis Kincaid, is biracial. The issue of race is, at times, important in the plot but more often than not is tangential to the story. Still, a couple times we allowed Louis to sound pedantic. Here’s the thing about themes: The more dramatic your theme, the more you need to underwrite. Go at your theme — be it bigotry, spouse abuse, environment, gay rights — obliquely, and always through the lens of your characters, not through your writerly narrator. You can make your point but you can’t be didactic.

We fell prey to stereotypes. Dark of the Moon is set in a small southern town in 1983. Our dialogue was too dialect-dependent. Our characters came across as one-dimensional. And we managed to have nothing positive to say about the town itself. Remember: your setting is a character. Treat it with respect.

We lost track of “book” time. This was an issue in our first two books, wherein we didn’t account for lapses in time. We neglected to tell readers that X-days had passed or we didn’t account for holidays like Christmas. (Hey, readers notice that little stuff). The sequence of events must be clear in the reader’s mind. We now use timeline boards and chronologies.

We didn’t know what we wanted to say. I’m going out on limb here and say all good books have themes. I don’t think we understood this until about book 4. Yes, you want to entertain readers. But beneath the grinding gears of plot, even light books can have something to say about the human condition. A romance might be “about” how love is doomed without trust. A courtroom drama might be “about” the morality of the death penalty.

We missed the theme in Dark of the Moon. Only now, as we rewrite it, are we understanding that the theme is every person’s search for home. For Louis, it was literally going back to the southern town where he was born and then understanding that it wasn’t “home” at all. The entire series now has a theme — Louis, a man who has walked uneasily in two racial worlds — trying to find his spiritual home.

I know you’re tempted to dismiss theme as mere enhancement. Le cerise sur la gateau, as the French say. But it’s essential. Try this experiment: Write the back copy for your work in progress — three paragraphs at most. Ha! Can’t do it? Well, you might not have a grip on what your story is about at its heart. Now often your theme doesn’t show itself until you’re well into your plot. Well, that’s okay. But when it begins to whisper, listen hard. Good fiction, Stephen King says, “always begins with story and progresses to theme.”

Eyes open, crime dogs.

I was signing with Don Bently (bestselling author of the tom Clancy, Jack Ryan Jr, the Vince Flynn Mitch Rapp series, as well as his Matt Drake novels) in Alpine, Texas the weekend before Thanksgiving. During a lull, we settled back at our tables and visited with the owners of Front Street Books about all things writing.

We decided that next year we needed to add a couple of other authors to the mix and expand the signing into a mini-conference held during their art walk, complete with a panel. Names came up, and a plan began to gel. The conversation then turned to what we were reading, and someone handed me a new novel by an author I’ve never read.

The cover immediately caught my attention, and that skewed our topics to That Thing that causes authors to gnash their teeth.

The Cover.

Yep, That Thing which should attract buyers’ attention, but it often lost in interpretation. We all have “cover stories” to share. Many are filled with frustration, angst, and downright anger. As Don and I traded war stories, patrons collected around us and the discussion widened. We all agreed a cover should reach out and grab readers by the shirt, yanking them close to the shelves so they can pick up what authors worked so hard to produce.

“I often buy books by the covers,” one lady commented.

“That’s how my Bride sometimes buys wine,” I added.

Someone shouted huzzah, and a glass of wine appeared in my hand. The signing was definitely on the upswing and we settled in to swap ideas and our favorite book jackets.

As a new author well over a decade ago, I didn’t realize there would be so much to argue about, and that I’d have so little input. The original cover for The Rock Hole is still out there for some reason, because as you all know, nothing ever vanishes from the internet. They floated this one out there and I found unspeakably odd.

Standing up on my hind legs and argued with them. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s your cover.”

“It looks like someone skinned a flamingo’s head and neck. I don’t remember including flamingos in my novel.”

“It’s a blood smear.”

“From a flamingo?”

“No, from…something.”

“No.”

“Well, first time authors don’t usually have a lot of say in what our artists produce.”

“Then I won’t say a lot. Different art would be nice.”

We volleyed for quite a while until they came up with something more suitable and I kinda liked the bloody shoelaces.

Other covers came and went for that series, though none of them excited me. It wasn’t until Laying Bones came out that I thought they understood what I was doing. They finally got it right on the re-release for The Rock Hole.

I’ve heard authors say the covers of their books had nothing to do with the contents, and they had to push back also. And I should have known the importance and argued even more in those earlyyears, because my first job was shelving books in a public library and I knew what caught my attention even back then. They called us pages, funny on several different levels, but I always noticed covers as they came through and still recall several novels I read, because the art was so good.

Then there were those earlier years, when I bought books off the spinning rack in the drugstore, or at a tiny independent bookstore near my house for sixty cents. It was always the cover that caught my attention, then I’d read the back.

It’s the same today, and due to reduced shelf space, many times only the spine is exposed. Whenever a book is placed outward, the dust jacket will either catch someone’s attention, or fade into the background.

I didn’t buy the first edition of Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, when it released in 1985, because I didn’t like the jacket. People told me how great that novel was, and I finally bought it, despite my original revulsion at the depiction of a cattle drive.

When Florida Roadkill, by Tim Dorsey, released in 1999, I snatched it off the shelf and have been a fan of his work ever since.

Which leads me to another important part of marketing. The title. There’s always a lively discussion at my house whenever I’m coming up with what to call the latest work in progress. With the help of my Bride, we hit upon something that works for us, but doesn’t always tap the button at the publishing house.

More discussions ensue. For example, my first traditional western will release on April 23, 2024 under the title of The Journey South. The working title was Hostile Territory, which I loved. However, my editor called to say they’d already assigned that one to another author.

“Blankety Blank already has that title.”

“But I like it. My book takes place in the Indian territories. It’s perfect.”

“You’re right. It was perfect, for Blank’s book.”“

But I want it.”

“Your character’s taking a prisoner south from the territories to Texas.”

“Going South?”

“A movie that starred Jack Nicholson.”

“Dammit!”

We cussed and discussed ideas until settling on the new one. Then they sent their concept and I agreed.

The Only Saloon in Town is in the can and I’m waiting on the cover art. It’s kinda nail biting, because I already have an image in my head that won’t be anything like their art department comes up with,but that’s half the fun of this job.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A great way to understand and retain a subject is through the Feynman Learning Technique. Regardless of topic, the technique leverages the power of teaching for better learning of timeless ideas. It’s also used for new work, like clearly understanding the plot in your story.

It’s said you don’t really know something until you can build it. It’s also said you don’t really understand a concept until you can teach it to others. This is where the Feynman Technique shines.

The Feynman Learning Technique is a proven method for learning and understanding concepts by teaching them to others, as if you were explaining the subject to a beginner such as a sixth grader. It’s designed to help learners (future teachers) truly understand and retain information, rather than simply memorizing it for a test, then swirling significant stuff down the drain of post-exam obscurity.

This learning and teaching technique is named after Richard Feynman, an American theoretical physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1965. Mr. Feynman was nicknamed “The Great Explainer” for his phenomenal ability to understand complex subjects and break them down into simple terms and explain them in a way that a sixth grader could grasp.

Think about the plot in your current work in progress. Or take any plot in a past work. Or maybe an idea for a story you have floating in your mind. Would you, off the tip of your tongue, be able to explain it to a kid and have them immediately get what you’re about? Using the Feynman Technique might make this easier.

There are five key steps in Feynman. They’re actually quite simple when you think them through. In logical order, they are:

Step 1: Selecting the topic. For a story this would be genre and the general plot line.

Step 2: Breaking it down. This would be the arch, chapters, scenes, characters, key dialogue, mood, and theme.

Step 3: Explain it simply: As brief as possible, what happens to the characters.

Step 4: Fill in the knowledge gaps. What you’ve left out that’s important.

Step 5: Refine and simplify: What the bare bones is that a sixth grader would get.

The Feynman Technique goes beyond learning an existing topic. It opens a window into a different way of thinking that allows you to tear ideas apart and reconstruct them from the ground up. It also allows you to supercharge your learning from others.

You’re probably wondering about a real-world application of the Feynman Technique. I certainly was when I first discovered this imagination and knowledge enhancement tool. So, for this exercise let’s look at using Feynman to explain the plots of four highly successful stories — The Firm by John Grisham, The Stand by Stephen King, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I’ve read these four books, but that was quite some time ago. Today, I wouldn’t be able to concisely explain their plots to a sixth grader, and I don’t have time to reread them in order to write this blog post. So, I’ve done what I’ve done so often in the past year, and please don’t judge me harshly for it. I’ve turned to my research assistant, Chat GPT, and gave it some prompts.

Q — Using the Feynman Learning Technique, please explain the plot of John Grisham’s book The Firm to me, assuming I’m a sixth grader.

A — Sure, let’s break down the plot of “The Firm” by John Grisham for you, imagining you’re a sixth-grader:

Meet Mitch: Okay, so there’s this guy named Mitch. He’s super smart, just finished law school, and gets a job at a fancy law firm. Imagine Mitch as the hero of our story.

Exciting Job, Shady Secrets: Mitch is excited because his new job pays a lot and seems perfect. But guess what? The law firm has some secrets. It’s doing things that aren’t so good, like working with some really bad people.

Big Problem for Mitch: Mitch finds out about these secrets, and it becomes a big problem. The FBI, like the police but for really big crimes, wants Mitch to help them catch the bad guys at the law firm. Now, Mitch has to decide what to do.

Hard Choices: Imagine Mitch feeling like he’s in a tough spot. If he helps the FBI, he could be in danger from the bad people at the law firm. But if he doesn’t help, he might be in trouble with the law.

Adventure and Danger: So, Mitch starts doing some detective work of his own, trying to gather evidence against the bad guys. It’s like a big adventure with lots of danger and excitement.

Smart Moves: Mitch is really smart, so he comes up with clever plans to outsmart the bad guys and the FBI. It’s like a game of chess where he has to think ahead to stay safe.

Happy Ending: In the end, Mitch figures everything out and helps the good guys catch the bad ones. He’s a hero, and things get better. But Mitch also learns that sometimes doing the right thing is tough.

So, that’s “The Firm” in a nutshell. Mitch, the smart lawyer, gets caught up in a tricky situation with a not-so-good law firm, but he uses his brains to make things right in the end. Pretty exciting, huh?

Q — Using the Feynman Learning Technique, please explain the plot of Steven King’s book The Stand to me as if I’m a sixth grader.

A — Certainly! Let’s break down the plot of Stephen King’s “The Stand” for you, imagining you’re a sixth-grader:

The World Changes: Imagine a world where something really bad happens. A super contagious sickness spreads, and a lot of people get really sick. It’s like a big sneeze, but way scarier.

Meet the Good and Bad Guys: In this world, there are good people and bad people. The good folks, like a guy named Stu and a lady named Fran, try to survive and help others. But there’s also a really mean guy named Randall Flagg who wants to take over.

The Journey Begins: Stu, Fran, and some other good people go on a journey. They’re like a team of superheroes trying to find a safe place where they can start over and be safe from the sickness and the mean Randall Flagg.

Superpowers and Challenges: Along the way, some people discover they have special powers. It’s like having superhero abilities. They face challenges, like finding food and avoiding the mean guys who want to make trouble.

The Big Showdown: Eventually, the good guys and the bad guys have a big showdown. It’s like the final battle between superheroes and villains. Who will win?

Starting Over: After all the excitement, the story shows what happens when the good guys try to build a new, better world. It’s like hitting the reset button after a big adventure.

Happy and Sad Moments: There are happy moments when the good guys succeed, but also sad moments when they lose friends. It’s like a rollercoaster of emotions.

The End and New Beginnings: In the end, the story wraps up, and you see how the characters’ lives change. It’s like finishing a really good book and feeling both satisfied and a bit sad that it’s over.

So, “The Stand” is like an epic adventure with good guys, bad guys, superpowers, and a lot of ups and downs. It’s about survival, friendship, and starting fresh in a world that’s been turned upside down. Pretty cool, right?

Q — Using the Feynman Learning Technique, please explain the plot of J K Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as if I were a sixth grader.

A — Absolutely! Let’s break down the plot of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” for you, as if you were a sixth-grader:

The Ordinary Kid: Meet Harry Potter, a regular kid who lives with his not-so-nice aunt, uncle, and cousin. He doesn’t know he’s special yet.

Mysterious Letters: One day, Harry starts getting these super mysterious letters, but his family won’t let him read them. It’s like a big secret.

Hagrid and Hogwarts: A giant man named Hagrid shows up on Harry’s birthday and tells him he’s a wizard! Hagrid takes Harry to a magical school called Hogwarts, where he’ll learn all about magic and make new friends.

Magical Classes and Friends: At Hogwarts, Harry takes cool classes like Potions, Charms, and Flying on broomsticks. He becomes friends with Ron and Hermione, and together they have all sorts of magical adventures.

The Philosopher’s Stone: There’s this super special thing called the Philosopher’s Stone that can make you live forever. Harry, Ron, and Hermione find out that someone is trying to steal it, and they want to stop them.

House Points and Quidditch: At Hogwarts, students earn points for their houses by doing good things and lose them for breaking rules. Harry also plays Quidditch, a magical sport on broomsticks, and it’s a big deal.

Facing Danger: Harry discovers that the bad guy who wants the Sorcerer’s Stone is really dangerous. With Ron and Hermione, he faces challenges and puzzles to reach the stone before it falls into the wrong hands.

The Final Confrontation: In the end, Harry faces the bad guy, who’s trying to use the stone for something very dark. It’s like the big boss battle in a video game.

Victory and Celebration: Harry and his friends manage to save the day! There’s a big celebration at Hogwarts, and they earn a bunch of house points for being heroes.

Back to Normal… Almost: After all the excitement, Harry goes back to live with his aunt and uncle for the summer, but now he knows he’s part of this amazing magical world.

So, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is about an ordinary kid discovering he’s a wizard, making friends, learning magic at Hogwarts, and facing danger to protect something really important. It’s a magical adventure full of friendship and bravery! Cool, right?

Q —  Using the Feynman Learning Technique, please explain the plot of Harper Lee’s book titled To Kill a Mockingbird as if I were a sixth grader.

A — Certainly! Let’s break down the plot of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” for you, imagining you’re a sixth-grader:

Meet Scout and Jem: The story is about a girl named Scout and her brother Jem. They live in a small town called Maycomb in the southern United States during the 1930s.

Mystery Neighbor Boo Radley: There’s a mysterious neighbor named Boo Radley who never comes out of his house. Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill are curious about Boo and make up stories about him.

Dad is a Lawyer: Scout and Jem’s dad, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer. He’s a really good guy and tries to teach his kids about fairness and kindness.

Tom Robinson’s Trial: Atticus defends a man named Tom Robinson, who is unfairly accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The trial is a big deal in the town, and it shows how people can be unfair because of prejudice.

Learning about Racism: As Scout and Jem grow up, they learn about racism and the unfair treatment of people based on the color of their skin. It’s a tough lesson for them.

Boo Radley’s Surprise: Boo Radley, the mysterious neighbor, turns out to be kind and helps Scout and Jem when they’re in trouble. It’s a surprise because he’s not what they expected.

The Mockingbird Lesson :Atticus tells Scout and Jem that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because they are harmless and bring joy. The mockingbird becomes a symbol for innocent and good-hearted people.

Understanding Empathy: Through the experiences with Boo Radley and the trial, Scout and Jem learn about empathy—putting themselves in others’ shoes to understand their feelings.

Growing Up and Lessons Learned: The story is about growing up, facing challenges, and learning important life lessons. Scout and Jem become wiser and more understanding as they go through these experiences.

Final Lessons of Justice: The book teaches about justice, fairness, and the importance of standing up for what’s right, even when it’s hard.

So, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a story about two kids growing up in the 1930s South, learning about racism, empathy, and justice, and discovering that sometimes people aren’t what they seem. It’s a powerful story with important lessons about understanding and standing up for what’s right. Cool, huh?

Monroeville, Alabama – August 31, 2001 – A photo of the author Harper Lee, who wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Photo is at the house where she spends half the year. Monroeville is where Lee was born and raised. Tribune Photo by Terrence Antonio James.

Kill Zoners — What do you think of the Feynman Learning Technique? Have you ever used it? Do you see the value in plotting with it or at least clarifying your plot? And who is brave enough to take one of their stories—old, current, or forthcoming—and write out an explanation of the plot to a sixth grader?

By John Gilstrap

There’s a buzz about the internet that the traditional publishing market is dying, and that the most reliable route to authorial success is through some form of self publishing. In my experience, the rumors are in large measure perpetuated by people and bots who stand to make money from frustrated authors who want to see their words in print and are willing to pay for editing and publishing “services” that suck cash and provide no guarantees.

The argument as I hear it.

The days of Maxwell Perkins and like minded star makers are long gone. No publisher (herein after synonymous with “traditional publisher”) is willing to develop young talent. Either the manuscript arrives at the transom fully formed and ready to publish, or it will be rejected.

Agents are no longer taking on new clients. Instead, they concentrate on their current stable of authors, who make sure that the doors to the publishing industry are closed to newcomers.

The entire industry is prejudiced against (depending on the perpetuator of the rumors) white people, people of color, men, women, gays, straight people, old people or young people, and about any other demographic slice that has chosen to feel oppressed on any given day.

For those authors who have found the magic string to pull to gain access to an agent and then on to a publisher, disappointment awaits. Either the selected publisher will pay too much for a book that doesn’t earn out, thus dooming the author to a painfully short career, or they will pay a mere pittance that will have no meaningful impact on the author’s finances.

And oh, the financial abuse! For every book sold, the publisher keeps as much as 90%, and of the paltry 10% given to the author, one-fifth of the amount goes to the author’s agent. When Amazon will let an author keep 70% (?) of the cover price, who would even consider a real publisher?

The evidence is plain and clear: Advances are shrinking for everyone, and the Big Five are getting smaller every day. Clearly, that’s the sign of the industry’s impending death.

One would be a fool to even consider offering their book to a publisher.

Reality as I see it.

First, a brief reminder of where I come from: I sold my first novel, Nathan’s Run, in 1995. By the time it hit the stands, I had already sold pub rights to my second book, At All Costs. Both were sold for astonishing seven-figure advances and neither earned out. Not even close. Since then, there’ve been 26 more books, with at least two more under contract.

The Max Perkins editing model died long before I joined the publishing scene, and I’ve been around since the days when query letters were sent in envelopes that contained an SASE, and manuscripts were shipped via FedEx at something like $25 a pop. That’s when I learned that only bad news came in the SASE. Good news came via phone call. Even then, the burden lay with the writer to submit a near perfect manuscript to agents who requested to see a sample. Then, as today, the easiest answer to a newbie trying to enter the entertainment business, the easiest answer was/is no. Who would want to establish a long-term relationship with someone unprofessional enough to submit flawed work as their first impression?

Then and now, overworked editors depend on agents to serve as gatekeepers at two important levels. First, there’s the quality of the writing. Without a good story that is well told, there’s no good product to mold into a better product. (There’s never been hope for ill-conceived or poorly written stories).

Second, agents make sure that excellent manuscripts go only to editors who are looking for that kind of story. When a trusted agent tells an editor, “I’m giving you a 24-hour exclusive on this story before I submit it wide,” all other work gets shoved aside for the editor to read and make an offer (or not). Publishing continues to be a relationship business.

When a manuscript is accepted by a publisher, editing is less about wordsmithing than it is about project management. Once everyone is happy with the story, the editor champions that manuscript all the way through the cover design, marketing and publicity efforts. For the record, no author in the history of the world has been pleased with their books’ marketing or publicity plans.

NOTE: First novels are in large measure author auditions. Authors who work to promote their own works, make speeches and show an active interest in the advancement of their own career will see their publicity budgets grow with time.

Now, as then, agents and editors are starving for new talent, and champing at the bit to take on new authors. The crippling problem now that didn’t exist in my early days, is email. Back in the day (Good Lord, I can hear my old man voice), the sheer inconvenience and expense of submitting via mail served as a form of natural selection. And before that–as recently as the 1980s–a new draft meant retyping the entire manuscript. Talk about a barrier to entry!

Now, each agenting day reopens the valve for a tsunami of under-cooked, ill-conceived and poorly-executed submissions overloading their email boxes. I’m talking really awful, terrible drek. New authors demonstrate a shocking lack of respect for these professionals’ time. As always, the easiest answer is no. A yes has to be earned.

But according to the interwebs, nobody needs an agent anyway. There are plenty of resources they can pay to publish their terrible work on ebook platforms.

The nightmare of huge advances

I’m not going to pad the truth here. When HarperCollins and Warner Books recognized the magnitude by which they’d overestimated the marketability of Nathan’s Run and At All Costs, my career took took a kick to the doo-dads. But I got to keep the money. Let’s call that a silver lining.

And I kept writing, churning out character-driven thrillers. I was able to build on the various starred reviews of those first books, and I found publishers who were willing to hang in there because I was willing to take advances that hovered around 2% of the news-making paydays. Audiences grew, and as they did, so did the advances.

Nowadays, I won’t take an advance that I can’t earn out within 8 weeks of publication. That frees up lots of cash to be used in promotion and marketing. Over time, as a backlist grows, it acts as a kind of annuity, rendering the advance as more of a symbolic payment.

Many aspects of the good old days never made sense.

All corners of the entertainment business are driven by significant egos, all of which need stroking. Big name editors are stroked by their own imprints, authors with book tours and big advances. The huge names in this industry never earn back their advances because much of their value lies in being among the authors published by the publishing house. Ninety-nine percent of book tours lose money for the publisher, but the loss is justified by the bragging rights.

Or, so it has been for generations.

I think the most critical element in the slow implosion of the Big Five is the fact that they are now owned and run by people who don’t particularly like books or publishing. Once acquired by mega companies, publishers become another profit center among dozens of other profit centers whose profit margins are much higher than that which is possible in the book biz. The last couple of years has seen countless big-name editors released and replaced by lesser editors who demand lower paychecks. Publicity, distribution and copy editing are routinely sourced out to freelancers who have no emotional tie to the companies who hire them or the authors they edit.

The stage is set for great things.

The ossification of the Big Five is creating tremendous opportunities for new authors and new publishers that exist because they like the business of producing books. My own publisher, Kensington, remains privately owned and thriving. Newcomers like Blackstone and Source Books are making great strides in taking on new and orphaned authors and turning profits at the same time. New publishing companies are opening their doors every week, it seems.

But with new opportunities comes a shift in the author-publisher paradigm. It’s expected now that authors understand that they are small business owners and therefore responsible for a solid percentage of their book’s success in the marketplace. Writing is becoming more of a team endeavor.