Private Mars Rocket II

There are scams targeting everybody in every walk of life, but in my other job, writing, I find there are several persistent types of scams. Anon, a list, but first a general thought as to why.

Writers have a story they want to tell. They think it's a good story, because they like it, and they usually have somebody else who tells them that they like it. (That somebody may be their mother, who kept their kindergarten fingerpainting on the refrigerator until it yellowed with age, but Dear Old Mom is a somebody.) So, it is very easy for a writer to become convinced that if they just Got The Word Out people would buy and like their stuff. Alas, this is not entirely true - you can get the word out to me about your gay Regency romance until you're blue in the face but I'm not buying it. (Not saying there's not a market for that, just that I'm not a member of that market.)

Herewith cometh the list:

1) Interviews: This is (to me) a fairly new one. Somebody with a Filipino accent and a bad VoIP line calls you and asks you to appear on a TV interview. A bit of Googling on the interviewer's name will produce a number of hits proclaiming them to be an "award-winning TV journalist." A deeper look will reveal that these links are self-referential and that the person in question used to work on-air for a major market US TV station but is no longer affiliated with it. The scam is that if you want your interview to stay up on their sparsely-visited website for more than an instant, you need to pay. You are also heavily encouraged to pay for (scattershot and spam-y) marketing to drive traffic to said website.

2) Marketing & PR firms: This is a more ongoing and broader category. It runs the gambit from the Filipino calling you to be a publicist and represent your book at international book fairs to websites promising to market your book to their "thousands of online followers." Frankly, since I don't like to talk to marketers on the phone, I have no idea if the "publicists" do anything. The online folks will at least put your ad on their feed, but I find that I typically have better uses for my money. (We all have people we follow on socials who are constantly plugging something - when was the last time you actually clicked on a link they sent you?)

3) Publishing sites: This is the granddaddy of them all, going back to the "vanity presses" of yore. The harder they work to proclaim that "we want to get you published" (bonus points if they mention "New York publishing gatekeepers") the less likely it is that you'll get anything of value back. Basically, you (over)pay, they deliver just enough so that you can't sue then they laugh all the way to the bank.

Again - writers have a story they want to tell, and there are a host of people who promise you that they can help. For a price, of course.

I am in Westville for the weekend because I have a book reading / signing at the St. Joseph Township Library on Monday at 6:00 PM.

In related writing program-related activities, I have an author interview / spotlight up on J. Scott Coatsworth's site. You can read it here.

I haven't done a link salad blog post for a while, so here goes nothing.

1) I have a new book coming out (a suspense novel, Strawberry Gold, all your buying options at the link)! I did an interview with The Authors Show which will be airing on November 14, a week from today.

2) If success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, failure also has many people looking to assign blame. Here's another one The Real Reason Kamala Harris Lost.

3) The case of the 8 million missing Democratic voters. Spoiler alert - California is still counting.

4) On a lighter note, Douglas Berneville-Claye a genuine real-life scoundrel.

First, my latest novel, the thriller Strawberry Gold, will be out on December 16. In the meantime, I have electronic copies available for people to review – please DM me if you are interested.

Second, over the weekend I had some time to kill and access to a bookstore, so I bought and read C. J. Box’s novel Three-inch Teeth. I was vaguely familiar with Box’s work, having watched the TV series based on his novels. I did not know that this book was #24 in the Joe Pickett series. Reading the book, I learned a couple of things.

First, I saw how to write book #24 of a series and making it readable to somebody who had not read the previous 23. Second, and this is not a spoiler as it’s in the first chapters, but I saw something that will hopefully help me on my latest WIP. Specifically, there are two independent sets of villains in this book. The reader knows this, but the characters don’t, and watching everybody twist around was neat.

Not related to Three-inch Teeth but to my WIP, I had an epiphany. I need to be very clear and explicit, at least in my mind, as to what motivates my characters. Fortunately, I recently became a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). One of the things we learned in that course was how to build Personas. These are fictional people who buy and use our products. So, in my copious free time, I shall be building personas of my characters.

There has been a flurry of activity at my publishing company as of late for my newest novel, Strawberry Gold. I now have an author page and a cover. We also made a decision about the book.

I've been billing Strawberry Gold as a mystery. Now, there is a mystery to solve - where's the gold - but traditionally books in the mystery genre are focused on the solving of a crime. That's not the focus of the book, so we're marketing it as a suspense thriller. In any event, it will be forthcoming, and Watch This Space for more news!

Two updates:

1) I only accept Friends requests (on any social media) from people I've actually met in real life.

2) I traded emails with my publisher yesterday - they are currently working on projects submitted in September. My book, submitted in January, has not bubbled to the top. Quote: "it shouldn't be too much longer."

In my other job, writing, I have news. Over the weekend, I signed a contract with World Castle Publishing for them to publish what will be my fifth novel. This book, working title "Strawberry Gold" is a mystery novel set in 1986 and will be my first non-SF title. (This was formerly titled "Strawberry Creek.")

Since I literally just signed the contract (the digital ink is still drying) I don't have any details on publication dates, etc. When I do I'll post the information in the usual spots.

Over the weekend, I attended the Buffalo Theater Ensemble's production of Andy Warhol's Tomato at College of DuPage. I have two thoughts.

Thought #1 - The Play

The Buffalo Theater Ensemble, hereinafter BTE, is the resident professional theatrical company at College of DuPage, and they run three plays a year at COD's ~180 seat theater. Andy Warhol's Tomato is set when Andy was 18 and is a story of him and the owner of a working-class bar. There are only two characters and one set, and it's a serious play with Deep Thoughts. I found it enjoyable.

Thought #2 - The Business of Theater

The performance of this play was on a Friday night with (for February in Chicago) perfect weather. The ~180 theater was maybe 30% occupied, which got me thinking about finances. (As a published author, finances are always of interest.) Specifically, I wondered how a professional theatrical company paid the bills with a 30% occupancy rate.

So, I did some Googling and found BTE's website which had a couple of annual reports on it. In short, not only is nobody getting rich working for BTE, nobody's making enough money to support themselves full-time at BTE. Details:

1) The total annual budget for BTE was around $250,000, about half of which was in-kind contributions from College of DuPage. Basically, COD covers the cost of operating their (very nice, actually) theater.
2) Total payroll was around $80,000, split out over 3 plays with between 2 to 6 actors each. Now, these actors are professionals and have professional credits, including speaking roles in Hollywood movies, but they make their living via other jobs. (The actor I linked to is also a faculty member at COD, for example.)

My point here is this - being a professional is not the same as being full-time. In the arts, such as acting and writing, having a day job is very common.

A few weeks back, I attended Windycon and specifically a writers' workshop ran by Rich Chwedyk. At the workshop, Rich said something he's said at previous events, namely "maybe this story has reached it's maximal audience already." I've had some time to think (a few long car drives will do that) and I Have Thoughts which I shall share with you.

Many writers got into writing long before they actually wrote anything. They "wrote" by telling themselves stories in their head to entertain themselves. That's what I did, and for that matter still do. Sometimes, on a long drive or even a quiet evening, I'll be daydreaming / telling myself a story in my head.

The trick is knowing when a story that entertains me will entertain anybody else. At least four times now, I've guessed correctly.

So my side job is a writer, which gives me an excuse to talk about the business of publishing. Since my publisher's Kickstarter is fully-funded (although we have some stretch goals) let's talk about capital.

Publishing in the ebook and print-on-demand era has a low cost of entry. Basically, the most costly parts of the business, namely actually printing and distributing books, are outsourced to others and on a pay-as-you-go basis, the only costs appear to be getting a laptop.

"Appear to be" is doing a lot of work here. Covers cost money. Marketing costs money. Editors cost money. Even poor authors like to get paid a little bit once in a while ;-) In short, to do it right, you need up-front cash, or what the business world calls "capital."

Fortunately my current publisher understands this, and more fortunately, he successfully raised some capital for the business. To those who donated or even just shared the post, thank you.