New Review for TWMD

A beautifully written and insightful review of The War Master's Daughter has just been posted over at The Action Prose, a great in-your-face writing and life blog by @RanceDenton.

"To suggest that Elly Zupko’s The War Master’s Daughter is merely a historical fiction novel would be to ignore a great number of its evident strengths.  Simultaneously, pigeonholing the novel into any specific genre would be to discredit its willingness to step outside its comfort zones. The greater part of The War Master’s Daughter is confused about what genre it may actually be, but that doesn’t draw away from the novel’s overall quality.  Zupko’s book is a fantastic independent offering the intense strengths of which outweigh the few moments where its footing occasionally wavers.
..."[read more]

It's the End of the World As Wayne Knows It

Since I've done almost nothing but rant and argue and complain for the past eight posts, here's something on the lighter side.

My friends and I--team Liquid Squid--participated in the 48-Hour Film Project last year. I encourage you to check out the organization and read about the details of the contest. It basically boils down to:

• Friday = beer and pizza fueled screenplay writing, constrained by contest-wide parameters including a specific character, prop, line of dialogue, and genre
• Saturday = coffee and doughnut fueled acting and filming, constrained by location, available equipment, and daylight
• Sunday = adrenaline fueled editing, constrained by flagging energy and a looming deadline

The result is a short film that may or may not be coherent. But damn did we have fun--and we won "Best Use of Prop"! This was our entry, It's the End of the World As Wayne Knows It. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (8 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal. This is the final post in that series.

8.

Edan: “I’m Busy. Writing.”

Elly: “A Successful Writer Does More Than Write.”

Lepucki’s final argument falls so flat that it completely exposes her as a writer who herself has found little success. Here she laments how busy she is, and how she only has six hours a day to devote to her “new” novel (apparently she gave up on the “old” novel). Therefore, she is—I think she’s saying—too busy to self-publish. Well, I can’t argue that if you don’t have a novel to publish, you can’t publish a novel. You have to get busy writing before you can get busy with everything else that publishing entails. But that just can’t be what she’s saying. She wouldn’t have written an article anti self-publishing if she wasn’t considering publishing something, right? It’s more like, “I’m not publishing this first novel I wrote, because I want to write another one first.”

Wait, that can’t be right either. I mean, we all like to write. We all prefer crafting characters or metaphors or nuanced arguments to hammering out (ugh) query letters. But I’m pretty darn sure that nearly all of us write with the ultimate goal of having other people read our writing, and not to stick that writing in a drawer. I don’t think she’s planning to write tome after tome just to lock them away, unread, Salinger-style.

So if her argument is that she’s too busy writing to independently publish her drawered work, then she is simultaneously making the argument that she is too busy to get someone else to publish that work. Any writer who has at least attempted traditional publication knows there is serious legwork involved in the process. If you’re “too busy writing,” you’re too busy to: send out query letters, secure an agent, work with agent to edit your work, work with agent-found editor to further edit your work, write jacket copy (a lot of writers have to do that now, even at trad pubbing houses), schedule your book tour, do your book tour, write marketing pieces, start a blog, do blog posts, do guest blog posts, and on and on.

The traditional publishing does not mean your job as an author is only to write. Everyone knows that the better you get at a job you love the less you actually get to do of the stuff you love. If you write well enough to be published, you transcend being “busy writing.” You are no longer only writer. You are promoter, marketer, public speaker, blogger, internet personality, etc. etc. Unless, again, your goal is not to have anyone read your work, you’d better find the time to write and the time to do everything associated with being a published author.

We may all dream of the day when our lives consist solely of channeling the muses and allowing our perfect and aesthetically transcendental words flow from our fingertips like the tears of a small child hugging his puppy goodbye. But the reality is that being a writer is a job, like any other job, and with all jobs comes the crap we don’t like to do. If you’re too busy to do the crap, you’ll soon find yourself little reason to bother with the good stuff. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (7 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

7.

Edan: “Is it Best for Readers?”

Elly: “Let the Readers Decide.”

The essence of Lepucki’s argument here is that the self-publishing revolution is creating a “slush pile” that is publicly available. To parse it out, what I think she’s trying to say is that there is a lot of crap being self-published, and she doesn’t want to be lumped in with said crap. I think. She uses the example of her brother-in-law learning that she hadn’t sold her book, and warning her against self-publishing because it could only lead to the book being ignored in favor of something someone’s friend posted about on Facebook. I think.

I’m not sure I get the point here. Given a book of the exact same quality—i.e., the same exact book—the b-i-l wouldn’t buy it if it were self-published. But he would if he read about it on The Millions or heard about it on NPR. Huh? Sounds like a man who can’t make his own decisions about what he likes. Is this a person you really take advice from? Is this a person whose advice you really pass on to your reading public?

I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record here, but seriously: I’m all about letting readers make their own decisions rather than letting their world be curated by a small, elite group of media who have other interests at stake than creating a culture of superb, enduring literature. To repeat myself, this is why I offer the first 15% of my book, The War Master’s Daughter, for free. If people are captivated by the story, they can purchase the rest. If they don’t like it, they become one of the statistics on my dashboard that shows me how many people have downloaded the sample but chosen to spend their money and time elsewhere.

Let the readers decide what they consider to be crap. I think Stephenie Meyer is crap. I think most of the books sold in grocery stores are probably crap. But that doesn’t mean my view of the entire publishing industry is colored to believe it’s all crap. Perhaps the degree of crappiness in self-publishing is higher, but I think the concomitant intellectual offensiveness tied to said crappiness is higher in traditional publishing. Lepucki trusts the curation of the same folks who put out The Time Traveler’s Wife, which sold millions of copies. Millions. That book seriously stunk it up, and I am offended that people even recommended it to me. But it's not going to stop me from buying another traditionally published book. That would be a comically poor foundation on which to base my choices. 

Encourage your readers to judge a book on its merits, not on its company. And don’t tell your readers what is “best” for them.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (6 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

6.

Edan: “The E-Reading Conundrum; or, I don’t want to be Amazon’s Bitch”

Elly: “Smashwords.”

It’s almost so easy to refute this argument that it’s difficult. In this section, Edan talks about how independently published e-books are only available through Amazon. This is wrong. I sell my e-book through three venues—including Amazon, BN.com, and my own website, through which I have sold copies and have reaped 100% royalties—and a distributor (Smashwords), which, at no cost and actually a very high value for all the advice freely offered, converted my e-book to half a dozen different e-book formats at literally the push of a button. Smashwords pushes to Barnes & Noble, the Sony e-reader, the iPad, and more. And they take less of a bite than Amazon. They’re pretty much awesome, and if you don’t know about them, 1) you haven’t done your research, and 2) you’re really, really missing out.

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (5 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

5.

Edan: “I Value the Publishing Community”
Elly: “I Am an Artist, Not a Jobs Plan”

Here, Lepucki discusses all the value that the “publishing community” (agents, editors, publicists, proofreaders, etc.) bring to a book. She presents an interesting POV from author Peter Straub, who says in part that “[if the author doesn’t have his work edited] what is being said about the status or role of selflessness before the final form of the fiction as accepted by the audience, I mean the willingness of the author to submerge his ego to produce the novel that is truest to itself?”

I admit don’t have a really strong, acerbic argument against this. I don’t think Lepucki is wrong, nor Straub. It’s just not how I feel about it. I love to write, but I also love to edit, and to do layouts. I have writerly friends, whose opinions I trust with my whole heart and mind, who help me bring my writing up to the next level. I don’t pay them. They’re in it for the love of reading and writing. I use the tools I have at my disposal to have the ultimate say in how my book reads, looks, and feels. I don’t want to let go of it, pass it off at any point where I will lose control over the final product to someone who does not in fact have in mind the “true self of the novel” (whatever that means), but rather has in mind what will sell the most copies to the most people.

To me, writing is, at its essence, a solitary activity. It demands a disciplined, independent spirit. Painters don’t have “editors” or “proofreaders” who come in at the last minute and fix all the little “mistakes.” It’s a control thing; it’s an integrity thing. Perhaps, yes, it’s an ego thing. But I wrote the book. It didn’t write itself. Talk like that is a little foo-foo for me. And really, is manufacturing perfection by putting something through a series of hands really staying “true” to the novel?

Some writers do not have publishing skills beyond being an awesome writer. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I do have other skills, and I also like to have control over my work. I choose to be independent of the “community” because I can be. I’m not in this to have a little skimmed off the top for the agent, then for the editor, and for a proofreader, a graphic designer, a publicist, etc. etc. I did the work. I want to be in control and I want to reap the rewards of—and take the knocks for—owing everything to myself.

Why I’m Not Giving You a Copy of My Book For Christmas

Selling is hard. It takes a very special breed of person to sell things for a living, and I am not that breed. I suppose there is a bit in my mutt blood somewhere—I work in Business Development, which is a fancy way of saying I sell my company’s services on behalf of the company. But when selling my own wares, I find the whole enterprise kind of skeevy.

When I sell for my company, 1. I sell in writing, and 2. I sell them, the company. For me, it’s much easier to sell something or someone else. I can brag about them on their behalf—and believe it, too. I can do this, and I’m good at it, because it doesn’t make me feel: (check one or more below)

• Egotistical
• Self-serving
• Self-involved
• Boorish
• Tasteless
• Clueless
• Impolite
• Embarrassed/shy

Those are things I feel when I try to tell someone about my book face-to-face. Those are things I feel when someone hands me $15 cold hard cash for a copy of my book. It’s an overwhelming sense of “Oh God I hope they are buying this because they want to read it and not just to make me feel good.” I don’t want people to give me money to make me feel good. I want them to exchange money for the joy of reading—it’s a transaction, not a favor. I want to know that they at least anticipate the joy of that reading (even if it is a glimmer of voyeurism at reading the inner thoughts of someone they know personally or professionally).

And so, the inverse of this is true. Just as I don’t want people to force the book on themselves because of a feeling of compulsory politeness, I neither want to do the forcing. As I’ve stated before on this blog, I am very aware of the reality that not everyone likes to read, not everyone who likes to read likes novels, and not everyone who likes novels will like THIS novel. Just because you like me doesn’t mean you will like my writing, and THAT’S OKAY. I am not so egotistical or desperate that I think every single person in the world needs to read my book. That would be silly. I don’t call myself a “soon to be best-selling author” as some in my circles do.

I want to find my audience and I want them to find me. I want this process to be organic. I want people to hear about the book, read the free samples, and get so sucked in that they can’t not buy the rest of the book. I want to build trust in my audience that I’ll deliver on the promise made in the premise I am not selling anything other than a great story and all that comes with that. . I want people to review the book and not my sparkling personality.

Sure, there’s a part of me in the book. Maybe all of me. But whether someone buys the book, owns the book, reads the book, or not—that is not a reflection on me as a person. It is a reflection that they are not my audience, and that is okay.

So if you want my book, you have to buy it or borrow it or ask for it for your birthday. If you want it, you and I will find a way to make that happen. But it won’t be in any Christmas packages from me this holiday season. Not only is it probably the most self-serving and impersonal gift I could imagine (“you’ll like it because I wrote it!”), I want my readers to want to read the book more than I want them to own it.

“Thus ends the ringing endorsement of my own modesty,” she said humbly.