A Little Princess – it’s all about Class

I meant to post this last week, but as I write this I’m still battling the flu that’s been sweeping our house these last couple of weeks, so I’m a little behind. On the plus side it’s given me lots of time to read stories to my daughter (after all, when you have a young child who is very ill, you end up spending most of the night sitting up with them anyway) and over the last week or two we have been working our way though ‘A Little Princess.’

This was one of my favourite books as a child, and so far E is loving it too, but re-reading it as an adult is making me see things that I never noticed before. Mainly in terms of class barriers.

Now, when I was in school and university we looked at books such as ‘The Age of Innocence’ in terms of class and the expectation and conventions of society, but, looking back, we really should have started with books like ‘A Little Princess’ – books that influenced our thinking on class barriers without us even reaslising it.

Immediately Sara is set apart from the other children, with her teachers afraid to show dislike to her in case she is taken away and they loose money. This is a fear of the higher classes that can be seen in many books, but the fact that Sara is a child wielding so much power is slightly unsettling as an adult.

But even when Sara’s fortunes change, and she is considered to be little more than a slave, she is still treated like a lady by Becky, who refers to her as ‘Miss’ at all times. And when the Indian Gentleman next door starts to send her gifts etc, he only ever sends then to Sarah – lavishing her with comfortable and expensive things, while virtually ignoring the only other occupant of the attic – the blatantly working class Becky.

What bothers me though, is the fact that, when Sara and Becky move next door, Sara is to be treated like the princess that her wealth commands, while the huge hearted and selfless Becky is going simply to be another servant. Admittedly one with slightly better clothes.

The moral of the story, though my adult eyes, seems to be that the rich will always win.

This class divide is fascinating from an adult point of view, and I can’t help but compare it to modern children’s books. For instance, compare Harry Potter and Ron Weasly – surely the modern equivalent of Sara and Becky. How incredibly patronised and angry would readers be if, after all they had been through together, Ron went to work for Harry at the end?

Perhaps that comparison doesn’t play across so well, given that the stories were set in vastly different times with, supposedly, vastly different attitudes towards class and wealth.

I’ve found in many of the books I’ve recently, particularly young adult books, that there are characters, usually love interests, who are at polar opposites of the social or wealthy scale, and I find it interesting to see how that balance is weighted.

Most books are, at the end, a product of their time and we should always bear that in mind when we read something that makes us uncomfortable or infuriated. But remember, most books, despite what your  English Lit teacher might have told you, aren’t written to convey a moral, political or religious message. They are instead written to tell a story. To entertain.

Now, go read!

 

Are you okay / OK / O.K. ?

Sometimes there is no right or wrong way to do something. Okay is just such an example. After overhearing a rather heated discussion this week about it, I decided to look into the matter further. Just what is the correct form?]

Well, it turns out that there isn’t one.

No, seriously. You can use okay, OK or O.K. and it really doesn’t matter.

According to Wikipedia:

The earliest recorded claimed usage of okay is a 1790 court record from Sumner County, Tennessee, discovered in 1859 by a Tennesseehistorian named Albigence Waldo Putnam, in which Andrew Jackson apparently said:

proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for an uncalled good, which was O.K.^[1]

In the early 1800′s there was a fad for comical abbreviations that were derived from misspellings, and it’s thought that ‘OK’ was derived from a misspelling of ‘all correct’ ie. ‘oll korrect.’

But wherever it came from, the fact remains that there is no ‘right’ was to spell it.

Alright?

Not really. (See what I did there?)

Alright is another of those words which tend to get the heckles up, and again, it’s not quite as straightforward as it first seems.

Alright is generally considered to be a misspelling of ‘all right’ and while many consider it to be incorrect, it’s usage is popular and it’s listed in the dictionary. But we should consider the connotations of the two words, for instance, the use of ‘all right’ implies that the subject is ‘all correct’ while the use of ‘alright’ generally gives the implication of something being ‘good enough.’

I’ll be honest and say that I’ve seen both of them in print, which does nothing to help stem the confusion. From what I’ve heard of others, often it’s a matter of house style as to which is adopted. Sorry I can’t be alot (groan) of help on this one.

I know, I know. The linguistic jokes are getting old.

Next up is the super deadly important issue of single and double quotation marks.

I still have nightmares from my thesis days (science folks are scary sometimes) about getting the formatting exactly the way the university wanted it, or risk loosing marks for incorrect referencing. So, no pressure there.

My university wanted double quotation marks and single quotation marks for quotes within a quote. Confusing? Not really, here’s an example:

“Bill agreed that while the ‘intention was sound’ it was ‘fundamentally flawed’ in it’s execution.”

In this example the words in single quotation marks are the words that ‘Bill’ has said – you’ll see this short integrated type of quotation used a lot in journalism and academic papers as a way to keep the piece flowing without having to write the full quotation. And yes, if the quote comes at the end of the quotation then there are three quotation marks “‘ just to confuse you.

In general fiction use it’s common to see both double and single quotation marks – just pick a book of your shelf and see. Unless of course it’s a Roddy Doyle book, in which case good luck with that.

Generally single quotation marks are more common in the UK, while double quotation marks are more common in the US. Although to be honest, it’s not really that big a deal, but if you are concerned about it then you can always use the find+replace function.

 

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Each year Amazon have run a competition for novelists, aimed primarily at unpublished writers the ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) is a competition which allows writers to submit their novels. The price is a big advance and publication with Penguin.

For the last two years the competition has been split into adult and YA categories, with each winner getting the top prize.

The competition runs in several tiers – firstly the ‘pitch’ is read – this is  a short paragraph about the work, no more than 300 words. If it sounds interesting enough then the book goes through to the second stage.

If it passes round one, then an excerpt is judged – between 3000 and 5000 words of the book. Again, the best will go through to the next round, which is judging the full book.

The books entered  must not be under contract with a publisher, or have been published. However, books which have been self published are allowed to enter.

The judging panel for the adult books consists of includes novelist Linda Fairstein,  Anne Sowards, Executive Editor of The Berkley Publishing Group; and Donald Maass, literary agent.

The judging panel for the YA section is made up of author Andrea Cremer,  Regina Hayes, President and Publisher of Viking Children’s Books; and Charlie Olsen, literary agent for InkWell Management.

The competition has produced some great novels in the past and is well worth considering.

http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Novel-Award-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=332264011

Entries are open until 5 Feb 2012

I wanna be Popular

Earlier this week I was talking about display sites with a friend and I was asked whether they were worth the effort or not.

It’s a tough question, but I’ll try and answer as best I can.

A couple of years ago HarperCollins set up a site called Authonomy (www.authonomy.com), where writers could post their books to be read and reviewed by others. Readers could ‘vote’ for books by adding them to their shelves, and the top five books every month won a review be a HC editor.

This was a pretty big thing, and a great idea. It meant that new writers could get their work read and showcased and stand a chance of getting it seen by an editor at a Big Six publishing house.

Back in the day, when the site was pretty new, I posted half of a novel there. (An early version of ‘Worth’) that received some good feedback.

Since then then HarperCollins have launched Inkpop (www.inkpop.com) which is the same idea but geared towards YA writing. It still has the same idea of uploading and reviews, but, unfortunately, it still has the same problems.

Problems you say?

Well, yes.

Here’s the thing – both sites work by reader votes. How do you get reader votes? And that’s where the problem lies. In the past when I was on Authonomy there was a culture of trading votes and reviews. It became a popularity contest and folks on the message boards were getting uber competitive with one another. What started out as a great idea quickly turned into something else.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea is still a good idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

Although I write YA, I hadn’t made the switch to Inkpop – mainly because I got a book deal for the book I’d loaded on Authonomy, so I didn’t see the point, but primarily because I didn’t have the TIME.

And that’s a major issue. The amount of time it took in terms of networking was enough to put me off – that was time I wasn’t spending querying agents or editors, or writing the next book.

I think the big draw of the site is the chance of getting your work read by an editor. But honestly you’re chances of getting your work read by an editor are much much higher if you just query in the first place.

I’ve read a couple of comments recently that the site is used more as a tool to gauge the market, but honestly I think the book charts are clearly showing that. In addition, the boon in SP means that the market is reaction faster than ever to consumer tastes.

Since HarperCollins launched Authonomy back in 2008, there have been only a handful of books which have been published as a result. Last year saw Inkpop’s first success story with Leigh Fallon’s Carrier of the Mark getting picked up by the editor who reviewed it. (you’ll remember Fallon from this post http://clairewriteswords.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/professional-is-as-professional-does/)

In all though, and I hate to say it, I really don’t feel like it’s worth the time and effort to get your book the attention it deserves. Which is a pity because, as I said, the idea is great. I think I would feel differently about it if there were more success stories, more writers getting a publishing deal as a result of the site. But the numbers are very small.

So, what do you all think?

Change is afoot – So long Pro Plan

As of yesterday CreateSpace (www.createspace.com) will no longer be offering it’s Pro Plan service for self-published writers.

The Pro Plan enabled authors to pay a little extra money ($39) for expanded distribution channels, a lower production cost and a higher royalty. Authors who had registered for the Pro Plan in the last 30 days will receive a voucher code via email which will allow them five free books for each title they signed up for the Pro Plan.

But what does this mean?

Well, the good folks at CreateSpace (which is owned by Amazon) state in an open letter on the help section of the website (CreateSpace authors will also have recieved a copy via email yesterday) that:

We’ve discontinued Pro Plan and now all authors receive the benefit of lower member order costs and higher royalty payouts previously available through Pro Plan, for free.

This is great news for authors who hadn’t been enrolled on the Pro Plan, and you should note that you can still enrolled on the expanded distribution for just $25 per title.

Authors who had been on the Pro Plan will still find that their royalties and member order rates will remain the same for titles that were previously on Pro Plan and that any of the titles that were enrolled in the expanded distribution will still be available there. If you are a Pro Plan author and haven’t enrolled on the expanded distribution then you can do so for free at any time.

So what does this mean for authors?

Well, quite simply it means that self pubilshed authors are now able to offer thieir print titles at a lower rate, and make a higher percentage in terms of royalties.

As we all know, high print costs of self published books is a problem, and part of the reason that print books have much lower sales than ebooks. Although this isn’t going to bring print anywhere close to the affordability of ebooks, it will mean that self published authors can compete more pricewise with traditionally published authors.

You can read all about it for yourselves here: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50170000000jJd9

I’ve love to hear what you all think about this.

’til tomorrow.

x

Living up to the Hype

I’ve been thinking this week how nice it would be to get a million pound advance. Think of all the shoes I could buy with that! A huge advance is every writers dream, right?

Well…

Honestly, I’m not sure.

I know, it sounds crazy right? But think about this for a minute, a massive advance like that puts a huge amount of pressure on the writer. There’s a lot of expectation, and I’m not sure that I would be able to live up to it. I think the pressure of knowing there was so much money invested in me would freak me out to the point where I would seriously doubt myself and my abilities to perform. I’d worry that it would have a detrimental effect on both my writing and my sanity.

I’ve also been thinking about what would happen if that book flopped. Although  any publisher who sinks a million quid into a book is going to do it’s best to make sure it’s a hit, sometimes, for whatever reason, books just flop. And you’re name is forever associated with that massive advance and the subsequent failure.

I think it’s much harder to a new writer to cope, and there’s a lot more risk involved with a debut author, which is why I’m always shocked at how much some debut books go for. For a writer with a proven track record there’s a loss less risk involved as they have a solid history and a fan base.

Either way, I guess I’m torn on the massive advance front. But I guess at least you would still have a million quid, and you can always change your name.

Professional is as Professional Does

There seems to be something the water in the YA camp this last few weeks, with several very public meltdowns that have done nothing for the reputations of those concerned.

At the start of the week it was Leigh Fallon, author of Carrier of the Mark, who was in the firing line, after an email attacking a reviewer was circulated though the Goodreads community. In it Fallon called for her readers to manipulate the voting systems in order to ‘bury this horrible toe rag ‘

Sadly, as it likely to happen when you send an email to your entire address book, it will eventually end up public, which was what happened here. http://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/10254573

Now, having read the review in question I couldn’t see any point where the reviewer was nasty or snarky. She gave an honest review. She didn’t like the book and took care to point out why.

But the call to vote down the review seems to have had the opposite effect, with readers swarming en masse to vote up the review, so it appears at the top of each listing. Readers, it seems, don’t like to be told what to do, and they don’t like manipulation.

Sadly, it’s not just writers who have been displaying dubious behaviour this week.

Most recently agent Elana Roth, from Caren Johnson Agency and her client, Kiera Cass, author of The Selection,  have been involved in some less than professional behaviour following a so-so review from Wendy Darling.

Again, the reviewer took care to explain what she liked and what she didn’t, and  gave very detailed reasons. In all, it was actually a great and very detailed review.

However, within 24 hours of the review going live, Elana Roth took to her Twitter feed to attack the reviewer, calling her a ‘bitch’ and again calling for her followers to manipulate the voting systems.

You can read the original review and the Twitter screenshots yourself here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show.html?id=231455953&page=6#comment_43376093

Now, in this situation most professionals would apologise, but no, Roth took a further jab, this time at readers:

Her comment about ‘unpublished writers’ is both incredibly patronising to readers and incredibly inaccurate. There are many published writers and many non-writers who are equally disappointed. But it’s the suggestion that anyone who finds her behaviour unacceptable is somehow motivated by jealousy that is truly pathetic.

What shocks me in these sort of instances is the apparent ignorance of the way they reflect on the individual, and those associated with them. In this instance not only does it show Roth to be very unprofessional, but it also reflects badly on the agency she works for.

And that’s something anyone who uses social media needs to realise – you are on show for the whole world to see and potential clients and employers are looking at that and judging you. THINK before you post, and ALWAYS keep your rants to yourself.

Sadly, for me at least, that’s a couple more books I won’t be picking up, regardless of how good they might be.

Remember, before you respond to anything, close your eyes and count to ten. And if you can’t trust yourself to manage a professional Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads account, then you probably shouldn’t have one.

Until tomorrow.

 

KDP Select Update

So, the figures for the first month are in, and according to Amazon there was an overall total of 295,000 borrows. Which means that for each borrow an author earned $1.70.

Amazon have increased the pot for January by another $200,000 giving a grand total of $700,000 to be shared among all the borrows.

Most of you will remember that I put Breath of the Earth (the good book) onto the Select programme. I used two of my free days, which seemed to generate some interest, with 350 total downloads over those two days. While this is nice, it’s nowhere close to Again, which massed over a thousand on it’s first free day.

I think that the difference here is that Again was listed in a popular genre, while Breath of the Earth doesn’t contain a single vampire, werewolf or angel.

That said, since BOTE offer ended, there has been a renewed interest in it, with a handful of sales each day.

I’m planning on using another free day next week, hoping to get some more downloads from all those folks who got a Kindle for Christmas.

Until then.

 

The Only Certainty

Now, they say that there are two certainties in life. One of them is death.

That’s right, we’re talking about taxes.

Authors are technically self employed and as such are responsible for paying their own taxes. The system for paying taxes varies slightly depending on your country of residence, but you’ll find all that information on your tax return form, so I’m not going into it here. But bear in mind that even if your income from writing is only a small portion of your income, you still need to register with HMRC as self employed and will still need to pay taxes on any income from being self employed.

What I am going to talk about is particularly relevant to those authors in the UK (or any other country which has a tax treaty with the US), so sit up and pay attention unless you want to loose a third of you income to the US tax system. 

In the US the standard tax withholding rate for non-US residents is 30%. This means that 30% of your royalties will be withheld for tax purposes. This is pretty easy to avoid if you take the time to set yourself up with an individual tax identification number (ITIN) which you can then use on your IRS forms to claim a reduced rate of tax. Bear in mind, you’ll still have to pay tax in the UK on the full 100% of those earnings, and not just the 70% that you received, so you don’t want to be paying more than you have to.

Getting and ITIN can seem a scary and confusing prospect, and to be honest it took me a while to get my head around it too. But it’s actually pretty simple.

The first thing is to get yourself a supporting letter from either Amazon or Smashwords which states that you will be receiving royalties from them. Smashwords will only give you this letter when your earnings reach $10. If you have a traditional publisher then they can provide you with the required letter.

Once you have your supporting letter, you will need an IRS Form W-7, which are available, along with instructions, online at the IRS website. This completed form needs to be sent along your support letter and photographic ID, either a passport or driving licence, or USCIS documentation (if you are a student studying in the US) to the IRS. If you are in the UK then you send it to the IRS at the American Embassy, 24 Grosvenor Square, London W1A 1AE, United Kingdom. If you are in another country then send it to the appropriate Embassy in your own country. The Embassy will send your passport back to and the W7 will be processed and hopefully you should get assigned an ITIN within a few months.

This is by no means the end of the process though.

You now have an ITIN which means that you can start the process to claim a reduced tax rate for US earnings.

This time you need a W-8BEN form, again, available along with instructions on the IRS website. Please note that you can only claim this reduced rate if your country of residence has a tax treaty with the US.

Once you fill our the W-8BEN form you send it to your publisher, who acts as a withholding agent when it comes to tax, and remember to send it to all of your US publishers, whether you are self published or with a traditional publisher.

And there you go, you will now get 100% of your royalties. Just a shame that you still have to pay income tax on it in your own country.

So what does it all mean?

Just a short post today folks to clear up some definitions that have been causing confusion in the writing world of late. I know, I know, it’s just words right, and who cares if the terminology isn’t right?

o__O

Here’s the thing though, if you want to work in the publishing industry in any capacity then you SHOULD know the correct terms for things, there’s really no reason to get them wrong, and really no reason to make up new ones because you don’t like the correct ones.

At the end of the day, if anyone should be getting the words right then WRITER’s should.

 

1. Indie publisher / writer

This is my personal bugbear to be honest, and I see it used incorrectly all the time, mostly as a ‘cool’ description of self publishing used by folks who perhaps don’t like the connotations of the term ‘self published.’ However, ‘indie’ or ‘independent’ is a term that already has a meaning in the publishing world, it’s used to describe books that have been published by publishers and presses who are not part of the Big Six (Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin-Putnam, HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster).

 

2. Legacy Publishing

I’m not sure where this term has sprung from, but lately it’s been in use to describe traditional publishing houses. The term itself is quite negative in it’s connotations, suggesting, by the definition of ‘legacy’ that the system is old and only for the privilaged. To that extent I can almost get this one, as publishing is hard to break into, and it can seem that for many writers it’s a locked door only opened by who you know. But, it’s still not an accurate term, try ‘traditional’ or ‘trade’ if you must.

 

3. Traditional / Trade Publishing

This is the system by which publishing houses and presses operate – the work is read and purchased, often after already coming through an agent, it’s edited and produced by the publishers own team. Advances and royalties are paid, the author doesn’t pay for the work to be published. There is a contract. The publisher arranges for printing and distribution and arranges the publicity etc.

 

4. Epublished and Self Published ebooks

Not all ebooks are self published. And not all self published books are ebooks.  Self publishing is a publishing system, while ebooks are a format. Traditional publishers put our ebooks as well, and there are many great publishers who ONLY produce ebooks.

 

5. Vanity Publishers

Vanity publishers  are publishers who will charge you to publish your book. This can run from anywhere from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand pounds.  This is NOT the same as self publishing. It can be confusing for some authors as vanity publishers can sometimes be referred to as subsidy publishers or co-operative publishers. Vanity publishing is not a bad thing, although it’s gotten a lot of stick of late. A good vanity publisher will be upfront with you and not try to deceive you into thinking they are a traditional publisher, they won’t lie to you or spread misinformation about the publishing industry (I’ve heard too many new writers being told that the only way to get a book published is to pay for it to be done).

 

6. Establishment Publishing

No, I’m not making this up. Establishment publishing is a term I’ve heard a bit, mostly from anti-traditional publishing folks, to describe trade / traditional publishing.

 

7. Genre fiction

Any fiction that is not literary – such as chick lit, sci-fi, horror etc. Sometimes called popular fiction or commercial fiction.

 

8. Literary Fiction

Generally literary fiction is considered to be more ‘serious’ novels, which tend to primarily focus on characterisation and style than narrative. I’m not going to get too drawn into the differences between literary and genre fiction because, to be honest, sometimes the lines are so blurred and there is already plenty of discussion about the differences elsewhere.

 

9. Solicited / Unsolicited

A solicited manuscript is a book that agent or publisher has asked to see. An unsolicited manuscript is one which the agent or editor has not asked for, unsolicited manuscripts are often called ‘slush’.

 

That’s about all I have time for today folks, sorry it’s pretty short, but I promise more discussion about the Great Self Publishing experiment, and also an update on what’s happening with the Kindle Select book.

Bye for now though.

x