Beyond the Elements of Style

Promoting Your Book in the Virtual World

Second Life can in some ways be seen as an extension of one’s “real” life into the virtual world. Unlike the popular role-playing games that dominate the Net with fantasy scenarios, it enables people to conduct themselves in very “real” scenarios … just like we do now, in many ways, but with the added visual element that is lacking in the traditional URLs through which we access information.

It may be virtual, but it is also very real. Support groups are held in SL. A professor has created a place where his students can experience what it’s like to be schizophrenic. Major League Baseball has a presence there, as does Harvard University. John Warner is using Second Life to launch a possible presidential campaign; Suzanne Vega and Duran Duran have performed concerts there; and the Linden Lab virtual world is being used to model everything from the possible layout of an office to a global response to disaster or terrorism.

And, as Toby Sterling of the AP has reported, people are paying real money for things in Second Life, which would have a GDP of $150 million if it were to stop growing today. But it’s not: it will probably pass the million-user mark later this year, and many of those users are earning a full-time living there, selling virtual things or offering virtual services.

And authors are not immune. There have already been a number of readings and signings on Second Life … and it may not be such a bad idea. Based on the numbers of people who turn up for concerts and the like, you could potentially do far better there than at your loal Borders!

There are a lot of details to arrange, the primary one being the facilitation of buying books easily and quickly when doing a reading in Second Life. I’m not yet sure of all the practical ramifications.

But — here goes. Watch this space. I’m going to give it a try! When my new book, Open Your Heart with Geocaching, comes out this spring, I’m going to try a book reading and signing in Seconf Life. I already have a character there: my name is Sherpa Voyager, and together with my partner Seeker Gray I offer occasional reviews of interesting places to visit in Second Life (check us out at SecondSeeker.com); so Sherpa will be my spokesperson. I’ll give it a try and let you all know how it goes!

I’ll make sure that Sherpa gets … beyond the elements of style!

What Sales Figures?

There was an interesting article in the L.A. Times last week about how publishers often hide the number of books that are sold.

In case you wonder why major publishers are less and less willing to take risks, the article noted that “we estimate that out of every 10 hardcover adult books, seven lose money, two break even and one is a hit.”

“The real problem with revealing sales numbers,” noted the article, “is that publishers put out too many books — and the vast majority sell poorly. Greco estimated that more than 200,000 titles were published last year, which averages out to 22 new books every hour. This is in addition to about 3.5 million already in print.”

There is an upside: the system allows small and medium publishers to quietly stay in business. Smaller publishers generally have 100% of titles in the break-even-to-profitable categories, so, while their unit costs are much higher (think up to 55% retail discounts, 15% wholesaler, 10% distributor), they make at least 5% on every copy sold after paying production costs.

The smaller publisher will also, almost always, have books in print for much longer periods. Sales may be far lower initially but they tend to grow slowly and then keep going for many years.

There are hundreds of small publishers who have been in business for years. They’ll have never claimed huge sales or paid dramatic advances, but they do pay authors.

So when you’re shopping your books, don’t feel that you need to aim for Random House or HarperCollins or Penguin: a smaller publisher might mean better shelf-life and better profitability in the end.

And that will bring you … way beyond the elements of style!

A Perfect Gift for a Writer

That’s what my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day. Perfect and thoughtful and … I could easily run out of words to describe it. So let me tell you about it, in case you’re interested in doing something nice for a fellow writer, or in dropping a hint to those around you …

Last spring I was honored with a writing fellowship that involved spending two weeks in a dune shack on Cape Cod – no electricity, no running water, and all my writing was done on a manual typewriter. Naturally, I took a great many pictures there.

What I didn’t know was that when I returned, Paul became concerned about the 150 pages I’d managed to type during those two weeks; typewriters don’t provide backups. So he scanned all the pages into his computer.

Then, this winter, he assembled a number of the photographs of the shack and the dunes and put them together with passages from the book that I was working on out there, passages he had scanned for backup protection. He created an album through iPhoto, and gave it to me for Valentine’s Day.

It was touching beyond belief. And, yes, it put him way beyond the elements of style!

Pre-Writing

I just finished editing one of the books for DreamTime Publishing’s Open Your Heart series, specifically Open Your Heart with Writing, which will be coming out in August. (Hint: Watch for it! Buy it!)

The author, Neil Rosen, talks at some length about what could best be called “pre-writing” — he says that by the time he sits down at his computer (what we used to call “putting pen to paper”), he already has a sense of where his story or essay is going. It’s been happening in his mind for a long time before he feels that it’s time to capture it.

It’s an interesting concept.

I remember that in college we were encouraged to prewrite as well. “Know what you have to say before you say it,” was the adage, which actually isn’t bad advice for all of life — have an idea of what you’re going to say before you open your mouth. It might save us all some embarrassing moments.

It also helps you, as a writer, have a sense of what your props need to be. If you’re thinking about writing a novel set during the Second World War, for example, it behooves you to do a little research on daily life during that time period, hopefully before you make a gaffe in your writing and bring something anachronistic into the picture.

Knowing ahead of time what you’re going to say can make your own first edit of your work a great deal less painful, as you’ll have already organized your thoughts, background, characters and so on around the theme or plot that you’ve devised.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t still write yourself into a corner sometimes — we all do. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to your characters as they guide you in a direction that may be different from what you’d planned. But for a good overall sense of what you’re doing, pre-writing can be a great tool. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Looking Failure in the Face

“My greatest good fortune was that I didn’t know that I was doing everything wrong. If I’d have done a single right thing I probably would have failed. If I’d known how hard - statistically speaking - it is to get a first novel published, I might have given up. What success means is really looking failure in the face and tossing the dice anyway. You may be the only person who knows the dice came up, but in that knowledge you have something that millions of people will never have - because they were afraid to try.” (Tom Clancy)

I’ve never been an avid reader of Tom Clancy books, generally preferring character development to plot, but my friend Carem loves his stories and has urged me to just try “one more time.”

Well, the verdict is in: I’m still not nuts about Tom Clancy books, but it’s another indication that you can not like one part of a person (or of their oeuvre) and still find wisdom in other things they have to say. Thomas Aquinas once said something to the effect of, “Remember the good you hear, and forget who it is that said it.” And I’m all for that.

I actually wrote a long paragraph expanding upon the Clancy quote, above, and then erased it. He said it well. Persevere, persevere, persevere.

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware Inc.