The Suspense is Kinda Killing Me

Hello, Friend!

Shelley Burbank here, author of the Olivia Lively, P.I. Mystery Series and currently couch surfer extraordinaire.

At the Atlanta Botanical Garden

I’m writing today from Atlanta, and it seems to be my lot to end up in places without internet on the days I have a Type M blog due. While in Maine, I visit certain people who do not subscribe to any internet service providers, period. To work when I’m there, I drive 15 minutes or so to the small public library where I take over the children’s area table to plug in my Chromebook and log onto their server.

The librarians are kindly older ladies. They don’t seem to mind my being there for hours at a time. I’m grateful.

Here in Atlanta, the internet went down in the whole building last night. It’s a big apartment complex in a nice part of town. So now, a veteran of lost connections and travel, I’m typing this on my phone and will find some way to post. There’s a library branch nearby. The weather is nice. A walk will do me good, plus I’m curious to visit.*

Thank goodness for public libraries!

I tend to take technology/connectivity for granted these days; I bet most of us do. We notice how intertwined we are with the ‘net only when it stops working. It feels like a lost limb. It feels untethered.

In a way, it feels free.

I’m old enough to remember the time before Netscape Navigator and the World Wide Web. When we wrote papers and stories on electric typewriters and listened to music on the radio via airwaves, not streaming. Was life better then? Is it better now? Who can say?

Publishing changed dramatically after the internet and the ebook and Amazon. There are pros and cons. Pro: It’s easier than ever to produce a book and list it for sale, bypassing gatekeepers, and keeping a greater percentage of profits. Con: It’s TOO easy. Everyone is doing it. We have a glut of books. A surfeit of stories. An excess of content. Only a few writers can make a living, ‘cuz capitalism, baby. Supply has vastly outstripped demand to the point a 100k novel is worth less than a Dunkin.

It’s disheartening.

I’ve been thinking about this state of publishing, figuring out my place in the literary ecosystem, wondering whether it’s worth doing anymore. Have I given it my best shot? I haven’t yet put my indie novella project up for sale. I’m reluctant. It’s not the book biz I wanted to be in when I started, back when trad publishing was viable for someone who worked hard and had some talent.

But now I realize that era—roughly mid-20th century to 2010–was a unique period in publishing history. Before the 1900s, authors usually paid to print their own books. Writing itself was time-consuming work, too. No word processors. No spellcheck. Can you imagine hand-writing multiple manuscripts? (On the other hand, newspapers serialized novels and magazine actually paid for stories, so…it’s all relative.)

In some ways, the writing lifestyle we see now is a RETURN of an older way, not a new-fangled situation at all. The tools have changed, that’s all.

(For much more on this, please read The Untold Story of Books by Michael Castleman. It's an excellent history of publishing over the last 600 years. I've read it three times.)

What happens, though, when authorpreneurship depends on the internet working rather than on typesetting by hand and steam-driven printers? What happens when the tools are increasingly held in the hostage-grip of big tech companies? When , at the end of the day, we are “content creators” for the machine?

I wish I had a clear vision of what MAY come beyond this era. I don’t have a crystal ball. However, something like an idea is beginning to form. It’s nebulous. It’s the opposite of rapid release and BookTok. It’s not traditional publishing with the Big Five, either.

It's about being an artisan and creating beautiful pieces that will hold their value over time. Read: don't count on the money. 

In a way, I suppose, my attitude reflects a loss of faith in the literary economy of that earlier era in which I grew up, the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when writers like Stephen King and Danielle Steel could fumble around at first, earn their break, and then go on to establish long, fruitful careers publishing one or two books a year. (Steel now pumps them out every couple of months. Her readers—myself included—don’t seem to mind. Still, she established herself as a name brand back in the 20th century and what we call traditional publishing.)

Back then, mid-list writers who did not become household names like King and Steel still managed to earn a basic living from solid advances and a long tail of backlist royalties—if they stuck it out for a couple decades.

Can't see around the next bend. Can you? 

Those days are over. Something new is ahead. What’s coming? I don’t know, but I can feel it. The hairs on the back of my neck are rising. It could be good. It could be devastating. We’ll know when we know.

The suspense is kinda killing me.
____
*The internet came back before I left the building, so I am now finishing up from the comfort of the couch. I might still walk down to the library just to take a peek.

Gratitude Past and Present

Happy Thanksgiving all readers everywhere. What could be a bigger blessing than a free press and the right to read anything we want? My favorite activity is reading. I can even remember the first book I ever read on my own. Ironically, it had to do with Thanksgiving.

I had finished all my school work. Our class room had three grades together. The teacher was occupied with the older kids. We had just learned the alphabet and were beginning to read. She said I could choose something from the books on a special shelf. So I picked one.

The name of the book was Hoot Owl. There was a little pilgrim boy who wandered off from his friends and family who were preparing a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. The little boy got lost in the woods. But he was rescued by a kindly little Indian boy named Hoot Owl who was happy to help him find his way back home. Elated, the community joyfully urged Hoot Owl to invite his parents and their friends to join them for the abundant Thanksgiving feast. The Indians accepted and everyone became great friends.

The ending made me incredibly happy. I simply glowed with the realization that our Pilgrim fathers were magnanimous generous people and the native inhabitants really, really appreciated all of our friendly gestures.

Yeah. Well. You've got to remember, this was first grade--a long, long time ago. I wonder if the book would get published nowadays. Besides, the big underlying dazzling magic was that their were books right there in our humble class room that actually had stories. I didn't have to put up with Spot and Jane and that wretched ball any more.

Usually, in a Thanksgiving post, I express my heartfelt appreciation for my family. That's still my biggest blessing. But right up there in the gratitude category is my reverence for libraries and the access we have to books in this country.

Thank you, thank you librarians everywhere. God bless all the writers who keep books on the shelves and the readers who keep us going.

And God bless little Hoot Owl who warmed my heart and made my first book such a happy experience.

Pirates Ahoy and Closing Fast

I have my email program set to alert me anytime someone writes something about my mysteries. It's a handy little gizmo. Whenever Deadly Descent, Lethal Linage, or Hidden Heritage comes up, I get an email.

The past week I've received a number of messages offering my books for free. It burns me up! Someone has pirated my books. Again. This is so unfair. I don't earn a cent from this kind of operation. I'm going to paste in the contents of the email:

If you want to get Lethal Lineage pdf eBook copy write by good author ... The Lethal Lineage we think have quite excellent writing style that make it

Lethal Lineage PDF eBooks Free Download | Page 1 Lethal Lineage (Lottie Albright Mystery #2) by Charlotte ... Lethal Lineage has 35 ... Carol said: LETHAL LINEAGE Poisoned Pen Press 2011ISBN. Flag as irrelevant

Some English, huh? And please note that it's really my book. Not some other book by the same name. It's clearly labeled as part of the Lottie Albright Series. I would be willing to bet that this company is not based here in the USA.

All of the large publishing houses attached to the giant conglomerates (the Big Five) and large independents such as my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, send Advance Reader's Copies (ARCs) to reviewers associated with magazines and newspapers well in advance of a book's publication date. Librarians also get their share of goodies. Publishers hope that libraries will order the books for their patron’s enjoyment, and that bookstores will stock the book. ARCs are in paperback and they are surprisingly expensive to produce.

It's well worth the expense and effort to have a book reviewed in one of the big four magazines that are especially influential in the trade. They are Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. A good review in Mystery Scene sends us over the moon. Needless to say making the New York Times is almost too much to hope for. That's here in America. I imagine our Canadian friends could contribute a lot more venues.

Imagine the disappointment when three months before a book is published and available for sale to readers, a paperback version of this book is offered on Amazon by a third party vendor at a low price. How does this happen? Well, some reviewers offer their ARCs for sale perhaps even before they have read it. They have a little side business. But the bottom line is that there is no bottom line. The author doesn't make a cent from the transaction.

Pirates are an entirely different matter, although the outcome is the same: no money for the writer. Since my books will be downloaded for free, I'm a bit bewildered as to who makes money on this kind of a deal. There were more links I could have clicked on. I suspected that would be a mistake so I didn't do it. The free books could have been a ploy to collect information and numbers they had no business using.

If you are reluctant to spend the money for a book, please support your local library. This gives an enormous boost to authors. Librarians only stock books the patrons want to read. If no one ever checks out our books, eventually they stop stocking them.