Back in the 70s there was an effective ad campaign for the investment firm Smith Barney. It featured John Houseman in his Professor Kingsfield garb (if you don’t know who John Houseman is, or Professor Kingsfield, go watch The Paper Chase, a movie about Harvard Law School that won Houseman an Oscar). Here’s one of the ads:

That tag line became famous. They make money the old-fashioned way—they EARN it.

It was great alternative advertising, countering the young, fast, Maserati-driving, Rolex-wearing rah-rah hype of the day. The ads reminded people that you don’t make money for long with get-rich-quick schemes. The only lasting value comes from hard work. (Let’s put aside for our purposes here the fact that Smith Barney itself seems not to have listened to its own spokesman.)

I thought of that ad the other day as I read a post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch about writers trying to “game the system.” I recommend you read the whole thing, but here are a few reflections that track with my own thinking on the issue.

Kris’s post was prompted by an announced change in the Kindle Unlimited program on Amazon. Currently, writers in KU are paid from a common fund, triggered when 10% of a downloaded piece is read. Which means a payout happens when 500 words of a 5000 word short story are clicked through by a KU borrower. And the same amount when a 100,000 word novel gets to the 10,000 word mark.

Theoretically, then, a writer can put out a ton of short work, or serialize a full-length novel, and increase his or her payouts. Bloggers have been dispensing strategic ideas to get the most out of the program.

When that happens to their business, Amazon tends to shift things around.

As they have now. Starting next month Amazon brings a new formula to KU. Payout will be on a pages-read basis. So that 5000 word short story is only going to be making a fraction of what it once did. Not everyone is happy about this. See here for further details.

The new plan does reward full-length novels that people want to read all the way through.

Imagine that. Just like when writers had to earn money the old-fashioned way. They had to EARN it!

These changes are still going to bring out strategies to use digital output and SEO tricks and algorithmic ping pong to squeeze money out of readers and their discretionary income. Note, I’m not talking about wise marketing and the fundamentals of digital commerce. This is about trying to make bank from chicanery rather than superb storytelling.

Kris Rusch is having none of it:

In the beginning, I tolerated gaming the system. I used to think that writers would get by it. Some writers do get past that idea that they can game their way to success. Some writers do game their way to success. But I have learned that every writer who games his way to success has short-term success.

And then that writer gets caught or the system changes or the bottom falls out. Most writers quit at that point. Last summer’s Kindle Unlimited Apocalypse took out hundreds, maybe thousands, of writers who had some success. Many of them left writing altogether.

Some of them found a new way to game the system, still with Kindle Unlimited, figuring out the new algorithms and what those writers “should” be writing in order to win the big prize—which is, either, some imagined (unprovable) bonus to their bestseller rankings or part of the Prize Pool. Ooops. I mean the Select Global Fund. Or none of the above. Honestly, I haven’t made much of a study of it, because, as you can tell from my tone, I don’t think it important.

The remaining writers who were gaming the system and got nailed did the cliché thing and turned lemons into lemonade. They learned that they were approaching their business wrong, and they took the collapse as an opportunity to build a foundation underneath their writing career.

What “bugs” her about all this is “the contempt these writers show for the craft of writing.”

In other words, gaming a system, like Kindle Unlimited or the New York Times bestseller list is extremely disrespectful. It doesn’t require the writer to get better, to become a better storyteller or to build a fan base. It only means that the goal—whatever that goal is—means more to the writer than having readers does….

They disrespect readers. These writers want people to buy their books (or borrow them for a fee, as in KU), but these writers don’t care if the readers read the book.

They want a reader’s money and they want to give the reader very little in return for it.

I hope this sentiment reaches writers coming up who are tempted to concentrate more and more of their time and effort on gaming, and less and less on the hard work of learning the craft.

I’ll always maintain that the most satisfying writing career, and the one most likely to last, is the one that EARNS its place at the table.

Yes, the old-fashioned way.

Do you agree?

By Elaine Viets

“She’s awake,” announced Julia.

“It’s about time,” replied her husband.

“Why is she even here,” Susan inquired.

She sighed. He whispered. She volunteered. He requested. She laughed.

I lost track of the plot, but I was fascinated by the synonyms for said. The novel was truly gripping as the author performed verbal gymnastics to avoid this four-letter word.

Characters inquired, interjected, blurted, agreed, argued, insisted, demanded, relented, confirmed, continued, conceded, spewed and squealed – yes, squealed.

That’s when I threw down the book and roared: “What happened to said?”

If I wanted to read a thesaurus, I’d get out my Roget’s.

Said is the wallflower of the writing world. It’s nearly invisible. That’s why we love it. Said showcases your dialogue. Said doesn’t get in the way of your story.

Said doesn’t try to do what’s physically impossible: You cannot talk and laugh at the same time. You cannot squeal a sentence. And spewing is too disgusting to contemplate.

My editor chopped “she laughed” out of my first novel, though she did let me say, “She said with a laugh.”

Here’s what I’m trying to say: If you want snappy dialogue, don’t clutter up your story with ridiculous verbs and impossible acts. Let it be said and be done with it.

I used said to start “Checked Out,” my new Dead-End Job mystery. Here’s the first chapter. Said gets the novel off to a good start, if I do say so myself.

Checked Out Chapter 1

“I need your help,” Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley said. “My late father misplaced a million dollars in a library book. I want it back.”

Helen Hawthorne caught herself before she said, “You’re joking.” Private eyes were supposed to be cool. Helen and her husband, Phil Sagemont, were partners in Coronado Investigations, a Fort Lauderdale firm.

Elizabeth seemed unnaturally calm for someone with a misplaced million. Her sensational statement had grabbed the attention of Helen and Phil, but now Elizabeth sat quietly in the yellow client chair, her slender, well-shaped hands folded in her lap.

Helen studied the woman from her chrome-and-black partner’s chair. Somewhere in her fifties, Elizabeth Kingsley kept her gunmetal hair defiantly undyed and pulled into a knot. A thin, knife-blade nose gave her makeup-free face distinction. Helen thought she looked practical, confident and intelligent.

Elizabeth’s well-cut gray suit was slightly worn. Her turquoise-and-pink silk scarf gave it a bold splash of color. Elizabeth had money once, Helen decided, but she was on hard times now. But how the heck did you leave a million bucks in a library book?

Phil asked the question Helen had been thinking a little more tactfully: “How do you misplace millions in a library book?”

“I didn’t,” Elizabeth said. “My father, Davis Kingsley, did.”

“Was it a check? A bank book?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s a watercolor.”