Writing distractions, reasonable and otherwise

As a follow-up to DOJ Antitrust Suit is Discouraging post, I noticed an interesting post on Charlie Stross' blog called What Amazon's ebook strategy means. While I don't like the distractions of publishing uproar, I do view it with some concern as an author.

Likewise, I'm disappointed about the lack of a Pulitzer Prize award for fiction. I've already posted some comments about it on Malcolm's Round Table. Bottom line: the Pulitzer Board should be able to do better than end up with a hung jury, especially after 2011 was viewed by many as a good year for fiction.

I began this blog when the first edition of The Sun Singer was published in 2004. By the time the second edition of the novel came out in 2010, the blog had already become more of a general author's blog than an on-going discussion of the hero's journey. My Sarabande's Journey blog, however, focused entirely on the heroine's journey and other issues in my 2011 contemporary fantasy Sarabande.

On April 4th, I uploaded a final post to Sarabande's Journey. I felt that as an author, it was reasonable to discuss my view of the challenges of a heroine's journey while the book was being written and was first out on the market. But keeping the blog going would have required a lot of extra work because the subject matter is outside my expertise. Needless to say, I am not a mythologist, a Jungian analyst or a specialist in women's studies.

Many years ago, I investigated becoming a Jungian analyst. However, my my graduate work as in journalism rather than psychology, meaning that I would have had a lot of catching up to do in terms of course work. Also, there was the matter of being able to afford it. My long term interest in the subject explains, perhaps, why I like the hero's journey and heroine's journey, alchemical symbolism and other Jungian and mythic subjects. My strengths though are as an author. So, I need to maintain that focus and not get pulled off into the themes of my work.

If I'm not careful, those themes could turn into distractions just as surely as rationalizing a "need" to keep up with the publishing industry.

Malcolm

 

DOJ Antitrust Suit is Discouraging

Bluntly put, the Department of Justice has (according to some experts) launched an antitrust suit it will probably lose. Nonetheless, several publishers have already settled rather than go through the expense and bad publicity of a protracted legal action.

The winner is Amazon. They already have a stranglehold on the book industry and it will probably get worse. The public loves the low prices, though, so Amazon looks like the good guy rather than the monopoly Apple suggests it is.

I'm discouraged by the DOJ action because even with moderate success (bullying publishers into settling), they are making it harder for writers, editors and publishers to earn a living. While some writers love Amazon, I do not. Whether they are selling books at a loss, leaning on publishers for better deals, or saying nasty things about bookstores, they are driving down prices based on the mistaken concept that an e-book is "just a file."

Readers, many of whom think they are entitled to free books, like the "just a file" view of a book. What Amazon doesn't tell readers is that the e-book file represents many hours of work by authors, editors and publishers. What's for sale here is not the file but the file's contents.

Most novels sell relatively few copies when compared with the bestsellers. So, when we say a book that took two years of an author's life to write is "just a file," we err when we suggest his/her earnings at 99 cents a copy will make him/her rich. Most authors will be lucky to sell a thousand copies. Suffice it to say, the royalties on 1,000 copies sold at Amazon's monopolistic low prices to not constitute a living wage for an author after a year or two of writing.

Odd, I think, that the Department of Justice under a liberal administration is siding with the Amazon in the room rather than all the authors, publishers and editors who are being harmed by the virtual monopoly that's already in place.

--Malcolm

Sunday's this and that

I finished reading (and enjoying) Lynne Sears Williams "The Comrades" and posted a review of it on Malcolm's Round Table this afternoon. Her historical romance is set in 9th century Wales.

Next up will be a modern-day novel set in north Florida, Rhett DeVane's "Cathead Crazy." I grew up in the Florida Panhandle, so--in addition to finding a well-told story in this novel--I'm reading about familar places from Tallahassee to Lake Seminole.

During a visit to my father-in-law's farm earlier this week, I wondered if I was going through Internet withdrawal. That's right, there's no DSL or WiFi there. Was the real world becoming less real than the online world? Perhaps so, as I speculated in The Internet is Drugs. What about you? Can you stay away from e-mail, blogs, online news and Facebook without feeling weirdly out of sync?

My friend Smoky Trudeau Zeidel, hard at work on her third novel, writes about a mid-course correction when a story that doesn't gel forced her to resort to an outline and synopsis for the first time. Since I don't use outlines, I wanted to know what happened in The Evolution of an Author.

This has been a slow and relaxing day, with time to write and post that review of "The Comrades" and work through another draft or two of my short story in progress, the fourth of the year.  As for dinner, there's some barbecue to warm up and a few recent TV shows on tape to choose from.

I hope you are enjoying a perfect spring day in your world.

Malcolm