Do We Need New Formatting Guidelines?

I'm sure you've seen them, on our website and other websites and in many publishing how-to books: formatting guidelines. Margins of 1 inch all around. Courier typeface, 12-point. Etc., etc.

But in the age when most editors and agents may be reading your manuscript on a Sony Reader or other electronic device, do we need new formatting guidelines?

In our office, I have a Sony Reader, which does a great job with Word documents. It reads them fine and resizes on the fly. But my intern's Kindle only reads PDF files and the type is tiny unless we reformat them carefully to be read in the Kindle. Obviously the best solution would be for Amazon to enable Word document reading on the Kindle, but I suspect they won't be doing that for a while.

So, should we start requesting that manuscripts be formatted differently so that we can more easily read them on the eBook readers? Or is it the job of the agent or editor to reformat and convert so that we can read them?

Z

Authors, Expand Your Horizons

Imagine my surprise when I ran into one of my favorite authors in the elevator at a recent writers' conference. Imagine my surprise when it was F. Paul Wilson, bestselling horror and action author, and the convention was a romance writers' convention.

I didn't really get the chance to chat with Paul that day, but I followed-up by email because I was curious to know why he was there. After all, the RT Booklovers Convention is a hardcore (no pun intended) romance writers convention, complete with plenty of "man candy" walking around (i.e., the models who are often featured on the covers of romance novels) and a faery ball one night. And if you've ever read an F. Paul Wilson novel, you know these are fairly "manly" novels. I still remember reading THE KEEP years ago, as well as one of the earlier REPAIRMAN JACK novels.

I've often thought F. Paul Wilson was one of publishing's most underrated authors. He's a rock-solid writer and entertaining as hell. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up one of his books if I actually had the time for recreational read. But I was still stumped as to why he was at a romance writers' convention. So I asked him the question in an email, and here's his response:

I realized on tour that half the people at the stops were female.

Heather Graham convinced me to go to RT. I arrived 3-4 years ago with 500 copies of an RJ book to give away. To that time my website had been logging 1.8 million hits/month. After my 1st RT it jumped to 2.8 and hit 3.5 by the end of the year. My backlist soared and I've returned every year since. These are voracious readers.

So what's the lesson here for authors? Expand your horizons, if not in the type of book you write (Paul's not writing bodice rippers just because he's found an audience among romance readers), then in the way you market your books yourself. Perhaps join RWA and attend a few conferences. Consider playing up the romantic subplot in your book a bit more. Add a few tasteful sex scenes (an art for sure!). In the end, as always, give the reader—especially the romance reader—what she or he wants and you will be rewarded.

Z

Keeping It Real

I recently attended the RT Booklovers Convention in LA. This was my first time at this particular convention and it was an eye-opener in many ways.

For starters, let me admit that I'm not as steeped in the romance-writing and reading world as many in publishing are. Even though romance accounts for at least half of all the books published in the US, my areas of concentration have leaned more toward "boy" books.

That said, a good book is a good book and as a Consulting Editor for Forge Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, I worked on a few titles that fell into the romance category. As an agent, I've represented a few titles that also fell into romance. My take on romance is pretty simple, actually. I look for well written books that happen to have romance plotlines. Because, in the end, it's all about the writing.

Working with Author Coach clients, I've found that many authors seem to get the need for a good romance, but sometimes they fail to make their romance believable, and I think that's a pretty big error. Even the broadest plots (e.g., US Navy SEAL saves woman from terrorists and carries her off into the sunset) need to have enough reality thrown in to allow the average reader to "buy in" or have a willing suspension of disbelief.

So when writing your romance, ask yourself if your story has enough realistic elements to make it work for readers. Because if it's just about a forty-five-year-old woman running off to the islands with her twenty-year-old boy-toy, my guess it may not.

Z

Holy eBook Editions!

I recently received a royalty statement for one of my client's titles from HarperCollins. It's seven pages long! This seemed a bit extreme to me, until I realized that pages 3-7 were all detail for eBook editions:

• 9 copies of the Adobe E-Book
• 8 copies of the Mobipocket edition
• 2 copies of the Microsoft Reader edition
• 6 copies of the Palm Reader edition
• 10 copies of the Sony Reader edition

Now, this tells me a couple of things:

1. Don't hold your breath waiting for the eBook revolution. Thousands of hardcovers were sold and only a handful of eBook copies.

2. Sony may have something going for it.

Of course, Kindle, the Amazon reader, may kick its butt next period, just on the basis that it's prominently featured on the Amazon home page and essentially has a captive audience, as doesn't everyone buy books from Amazon?

It somewhat amazes me, though, that a huge company like HarperCollins is creating all of these eBook editions and dealing with accounting for them. Think of the millions of dollars in extra paper and mailing costs for the royalty statements alone!

Honestly, after all of the hullabaloo, agita, mishigas, and general bloodshed over the royalties for eBooks, when I look at these statements, I have to shake my head in wonder. Was it really worth it? Did publishers really need to piss off authors and agents and maybe even lose deals over eBook royalties? Consider that most of the books published this year will be out of print before eBook readers are commonplace (are you dropping $300-$400 for one anytime soon?). So unless you happen upon the next Catcher in the Rye that will stay in print for decades and decades, was there really a risk in not getting eBook rights? I think not. Then again, I'm not an MBA sitting high in an office building in New York. Perhaps some combination of the smog and the altitude lets them divine the future of eBooks more clearly. But until eBook readers come down to less than $100, it all seems a bit pie in the sky to me.

Coach Andy

If You Want It Done Right, Do It Yourself

I was looking up a client's book on Amazon.com today and noticed how screwed up the various links are and how many editions are missing covers and have incorrect information. Granted, you'd expect the publishers to check this stuff out and fix the listings, but the truth is a lot of the information comes from different publishers and sources and sellers, etc., and, in the end, only one person is likely to know the full story of what's happening with your books: You.

Amazon has a link to let you fix catalogue information and upload images and do other things to fix your listings. I presume BN does also, though I spend little time on that site. My opinion is that every author with a book on Amazon or BN.com should be reviewing their titles monthly. Click every link and see what happens. Be responsible for what's being published about you and your books.

As a published author, you no doubt recall that the publisher sent you page proofs to review. This is partially to make you responsible for any typos in your books. Sure, there's a proofreader going over it, but you have the final responsibility for reading your proofs as carefully as possible. The same goes for Amazon and BN and any other site on which you or your books are listed. Is this a pain? Yes. Is it something your publisher should be doing? Yes. But if you want it done right, this is definitely one situation in which you should do it yourself.

Coach Andy

Plan Your Work Then Work Your Plan

It was a late night Wednesday night. Some time ago—I can't imagine when—I got a copy of Master of None, by N. Lee Wood (Aspect). It could be the editor, Jaime Levine, gave it to me, or perhaps I picked it up at BEA. I have no recollection. In any event, it has followed me around from house to house for a while now and I recently picked it up and started reading it. And I'm glad I did. This is a book from which many an author could learn a thing or two.

First, I should mention that it's science fiction, but it's socio-science fiction, so the spaceships are at a minimum, and even the science isn't too prominent.

What I liked about this book was how well the author controlled the viewpoint and how engaged I remained throughout the novel, despite very little action. The characterizations and setting descriptions held my attention. And, of course, I wanted to know what would happen to the protagonist.

Interestingly enough, the reviews on Amazon.com were mixed and the book is out-of-print only four years after it was published. The comparisons in the reviews to Margaret Atwood didn't really work for me, though. I was thinking of Octavia Butler's style when I read it, though it's been years and years since I read Octavia Butler, so perhaps I'm misremembering.

I was about half-way through this book on Wednesday, having been reading it in bits and pieces, when I picked it up about ten-thirty. I finished around two-forty in the morning. Yikes! So much for my beauty sleep. But it did hold my attention and I found the ending satisfactory, if not overwhelmingly satisfying.

One of the reviews on Amazon, I noticed, commented on some of the racial elements of the plot, which to me were very minor, but I found it interesting that he seemed to think the world was based on Arab society. Apparently he has never visited India or even been to an Indian wedding, because the world clearly seemed to me to be stealing from Indian culture and not Arab culture.

Regardless, I think it's well written and it thoroughly held my attention long into the night, which is generally impressive to me.

Generally speaking, I find it very hard to carve out the time to read published books. I have so many manuscripts and sample chapters around that I feel guilty reading published books. But it's important for any agent or editor to keep reading published books, for a couple of reasons:

1. If all you read is unpublished material, the slightly-less-than-drek starts to look really, really good next to the utter drek. You lose your perspective. There's a reason people eat sherbet to clear their palette between courses or crackers between glasses of wine. Reading a good, published book helps do that for editors and agents.

2. It gives you insight to the editor and/or the house. Whenever you go to lunch with an editor, she generally brings along a book or two she's worked on or that the house recently published. I remember going to lunch with Jason Kaufman, who handed me a galley of an unpublished book he was pretty pumped about: The Da Vinci Code. I wonder what happened to that one?

Authors sometimes ask what agents bring to the table. One thing is that, over the years, agents get to know editors' tastes. Ideally a good agent should be able to read a book and know that it might appeal more to editor A at Bantam than it will to editor B. They learn this partially by simply submitting over and over and seeing what sells, but they also know it by reading books that editor has published.

Before Master of None, the last book I'd finished was The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop. I believe I picked this up at Comic-Con in San Diego, from the Bantam booth. I can't say I enjoyed that one as much. The author has a great grasp of language, but the book, again, has little plot, and the society simply wasn't as interesting as that of Master of None. The characters were interesting and I particularly liked the part where a "wizard" turns the remains of a murdered woman into a battle axe for her husband to use in killing her killers. But the novel felt disjointed to me, and there was a major shift that I either was very, very tired when I read it and missed the shift, or there was a scene cut that shouldn't have been that took the reader from point A to point B. And that does happen. The author is under pressure to cut, or the editor thinks the book needs to be cut and an entire subplot or several scenes get removed, but there's something in the cut portion that needed to be retained. And if you move that element to another scene, it's no problem. But if you forget to move that element, you're screwed.

I remember a case of this in Nelson DeMille's The General's Daughter. I hope I'm not spoiling it for anyone, but when the murderer is revealed to be the general's aide, it's never quite clear how the main character reached that conclusion. It's an intellectual leap and the evidence is never quite clear on the page. I found it fairly annoying.

Such intellectual leaps are not uncommon. I remember questioning an author about something in his book once and he replied, "Well, that worked for me because I know that in the next book we're going to find out...." Um, yeah, I'm sure it did, but since the reader doesn't know what you plan to do in the next book, you need to put something on the page that makes the scene work for the reader. Or there's the case where the author starts talking about something that was supposed to happen earlier in the book, but had cut that scene and now the reference makes no sense.

Hence, we come to the importance of outlining, scene-by-scene what should be happening in your book. The index card method has the advantage of also being visual. Outline each scene on an index card and put it on a wall. If you cut a scene, put a big red X through the card. If scene 212 is dependent on action in scene 128, you can make a note cross-referencing them. That way, if you cut 128, you know you need to fix 212.

All of this is, obviously, a lot harder than sitting down at your desk and just hammering out a novel. But I'd bet money that the vast, vast number of authors who are getting published aren't just hammering it out. Sure, the outline may be in their head—and if you have a brain that can handle that, great—but it's there. When an author tells me that she "likes to see where the characters take me" or "see how the plot develops," I immediately know that this author's manuscript is more likely than not going to need quite a bit of work.

My grandfather had a plaque on his desk that said, "Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan." I have always loved that saying, even if I don't always follow it. But I should probably start selling one that says "Plan Your Novel, Then Write Your Novel." If you want to write for fun, knock yourself out. If you want to get published, you need to put in the work.

Coach Andy

Thank You for Not Smoking

Recently I received a manuscript from a client and I noticed, as I opened the box, that it stank of cigarette smoke. I was reminded immediately of a copy-editor I knew back in New York who chain-smoked while working. The manuscripts always came back stinking of cigarette smoke. When I met the guy, his fingertips were stained brown and he smelled like an ashtray. Great copy-editor, though. But the price of working with him was that you had to deal with the stink and sometimes some ash on the pages.

Now, beyond the fact that smoking is not healthy, no editor or agent wants to be stuck reading a manuscript that stinks of cigarette smoke. So if you are a smoker, figure out a way to get that manuscript printed, say by Staples's or Kinko's online services, and mailed without surrounding it with a cloud of cigarette smoke so that it won't end up with your agent or editor feeling like you just mailed him or her a full ashtray of butts.

Your agent, editor, and I thank you.

Coach Andy