books | Bertram's Blog

The 600-Pound Gorilla in the Publishing Industry

March 7, 2009 — Pat Bertram

When it comes to small presses today, there is a 600-pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room, and everyone is trying to ignore it. They point to the pretty pictures on the wall and to the bright new books on the shelves, but there the gorilla sits, filling the place with its heavy breathing and strong animal scent.

What is this gorilla? POD. Print-on-demand. A technology for printing a single book at a time in a matter of minutes. Because of this new printing process, small presses with vision and little capital are able to publish good books that otherwise would never reach a readership. Just a few years ago, a small press would only be able to publish a book or two. They would have to print a thousand or five thousand copies and hope to break even somehow. And of course, they would have to find a place to store them. Now, with new technologies, they can publish many books and have them printed up as needed.

Traditional publishers who still print books the old way — in offset print runs of 5,000 or 20,000 for debut authors — have no advantage over the new presses, except, of course, when it comes to promotion and publicity. They can reach vast numbers of readers. Still, in the end, 25% of all books published this way end up as pulp, so it makes one wonder if they really know what they are doing. The publisher will save a few copies of each, of course, because that way they can keep the rights to the book indefinitely, even after they stop promoting it.

To me, print-on-demand is something to be embraced, not ignored. Small presses should brag that they print as demand requires. As long as the publisher and author agree, the book can be available to the public indefinitely, with no exorbitant upfront printing costs, no storage costs, no unsold books to be pulped.

If one mentions book burning, people get indignant. Books are sacred! One cannot burn books! But who besides me (and the traditional publishers’ accountants) cares about the books that are pulped? No one — it’s an acceptable part of the business, though it shouldn’t be. It’s wasteful and shameful. So you’d think small presses would brag about printing on demand. Instead, they try to hide it.

And there sits the 600-pound gorilla. You can ignore it, but you can’t hide it. The size of the book — trade paperback — is one giveaway. The cost is another. A POD book is more expensive than a traditional paperback (though not much more expensive than other trade paperbacks). That it’s not available in most bookstores is another tell.

A POD book is special — perhaps a book that only a few thousand would love, perhaps a regional story that no one in New York cares about, perhaps a book whose time has not yet come. And every single one of them has been filtered through the publisher’s submissions department, and every single one of them has been accepted on its merits. They are chosen.

Print books are not going to disappear any time soon, but how they are printed will change. POD will become the norm rather than the exception — it’s a much better way to conduct business.

So why the reluctance to admit small presses are POD? Because of the other POD — publish on demand. These POD people will publish anything — for a price. (Some POD companies and vanity presses are owned by the major publishers. A nice scam. But a lucrative one. Why not prey on the millions of authors who want to be published at any cost?) Since I don’t want to incur the wrath of all the self-published authors out there who are doing a good job, I’m going to stop here.

Except to say one more thing.

If one cannot hide the gorilla, change its name.

Since there are two distinct meanings to POD, I suggest calling publish-on-demand PLOD and print-on-demand PROD. That way no one will ever get them confused.

(March is Small Press Month. So, this month, let us pay tribute to all the PROD publishers out there.)

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Posted in books, internet, life, writing. Tags: POD, print on demand, publish on demand, publishing, small presses, small publishers. 13 Comments »

Help Me Plan My Big Book Bash

February 24, 2009 — Pat Bertram

One of these days soon, perhaps next week, my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire will be released.

Finally.

After years of sending out query letters, after enduring hundreds of rejections, after surviving three worthless agents, I found a publisher who loves my books. Mike at Second Wind Publishing recently told a group of romance writers: “If you haven’t, you all need to read Pat’s novels — especially A Spark of Heavenly Fire. It’s loaded with multiple love stories, triangles, lost love, romantic character development, unrequited love, and even a little happily-ever-after. Thank God she’s not a romance writer — we’d all be out of business!”

Now that deserves a celebration, so . . .

I am going to throw a virtual launch party when the book is published, a big book bash here on Bertram’s Blog. Most such “parties” come across more as announcements than celebrations, but I would like mine to seem like a real party, a real celebration. Do you have any suggestions on how to make an online blog party fun and festive? How do you get people to hang around for a while, not just stop by and leave a comment? Is there such a thing as an eparty favor or an eprize or a way of simulating party games?

Any and all help would be appreciated.

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, blog party, book release party, e-celebration, Second Wind Publishing, virtual launch party, virtual party. 12 Comments »

Deception Detection: The Truth About Lie Detectors

February 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I am proud to welcome Dr. Katherine Ramsland as a guest on my blog. Dr. Ramsland has published 33 books and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University, where she chairs the Social Sciences Department. Among her books are Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Human Predator (a history of serial murder), The Criminal Mind, and The Unknown Darkness, with former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary. In April, she will published The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down 12 Notorious Serial Killers. She has also written a series of books to clarify facts about investigations, notably The Forensic Science of CSI, the Science of Cold Case Files, The CSI Effect, and True Stories of CSI. Later this year, she offers The Life of a Forensic Scientist, with Dr. Henry Lee and The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds. Dr. Ramsland writes:

The New York Times ran a commentary recently that noted the use of psychological evidence in serial procedurals. “The Mentalist” is one of the most popular shows on TV now, and “Lie to Me” has an intriguing premise about rare people who are “naturals” at spotting liars. Yet research indicates that there’s no simple formula for catching a liar. Even many people with repeated exposure to deception perform no better than chance when judging deception, but they can slightly improve their skills with solid observation and sophisticated techniques.

A popular notion is that lying requires more effort than truth-telling, so it produces such physiological signals as a heightened pulse rate, dilated pupils, twitches, and certain facial expressions – especially when the stakes are high. However, truthful but anxious people may also display such symptoms, while lying psychopaths may not.

Accuracy lies in questioning persons of interest long enough to observe their default behaviors. People who feel anxious usually either freeze or defend themselves, thus displaying behaviors of discomfort. While there are no hard-and-fast rules, the types of behaviors that can signal discomfort, and thus potential deception, include:

overgeneralizations, deflections, and increased vocal pitch

speech hesitations and pauses, a lack of spontaneity

an increase in number of shrugs, blinking, and nervous habits

changes in the eye pupil

venting the body, like pulling a shirt or collar away

feet pointed toward an exit

blanching, flushing, sighing

reduced use of hand gestures

These behaviors occur more often in those with motivation to deceive–possibly because they are trying to plan and control what they say.

Statement analysis is a common tool for interrogations. An investigator asks an open-ended question, “What happened?” and leaves the person to fill in all the blanks. The subject picks the starting and ending point. Statement analysis focuses on several things: what’s said about events leading up to a crime, the crime itself, and what’s said about the aftermath. Investigators watch for the distribution of detail in each area, and note whether subjects provided more information than requested or skipped something crucial. Also, a change in tone or speed of delivery can reveal their comfort (or not) with what they’re saying.

A similar method called Criteria-based Content Analysis closely examines how an incident is retold, comparing it against the typical method of recall in a truthful session vs. fabricating a supposed recollection.

Computer software known as Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analyzes written content, derived from the statement analysis approach, and looks for three markers: fewer first-person pronouns, more words that convey negative emotion, and fewer exclusionary words (except, but). The software has been more effective than human judges, but the accuracy rate is still only about 67 percent.

The polygraph in use today is a compact portable device that measures three or four key involuntary physiological responses to questioning: skin conductivity, abdominal and chest respiration, blood pressure, and heart rate. Some questions are designed to establish baseline responses, some are neutral, and others attempt to register “guilty knowledge,” or at least a sense that the person knows something that confirms him or her as a suspect. However, despite claims by examiners, the accuracy rate by disinterested evaluators is not high enough for admissibility.

Even less accurate is the Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE), sometimes referred to as a Voice Stress Evaluator. Supposedly, during a lie, the voice reaches a higher pitch than when someone is telling the truth. While the PSE does measure variations in emotional stress, that’s not necessarily indicative of deception.

Psychiatrist Lawrence Farwell developed the Brain Fingerprinting process, based on the notion that all experiences, including a crime, are stored in the brain. The electrical activity of a suspect’s brain is monitored with sensors on a headband attached to a computer, while the subject is exposed to words or images that are both relevant (“probes”) and irrelevant to the crime. Certain information would be meaningful only to the actual perpetrator and would include such items as what was done to a victim, where the victim was taken, items that were removed from the victim, and items that might have been left at a scene. The subject would not see this list until the test itself was performed. Irrelevant stimuli might include a different type of weapon, the wrong landscape, a different MO, or acts not performed during the commission of the crime.

Probes are known only to the investigators, the test-maker, and the perpetrator. If the brain activity shows recognition of relevant stimuli-a distinct spike called a MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response) – then the subject has a record of the crime stored in his or her brain. Innocent people will display no such response to crime-relevant stimuli. To strengthen the results, Farwell might test the suspect’s alibi for the time of the crime, by devising a scenario to test to see if the brain has a record.

At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, fMRI scans are used to detect differences in neural activity between lying and truth-telling. In the experiments, subjects were paid to perform a “theft” of one of two items (either a ring or a watch) and conceal information from the researchers. First, each was asked neutral questions while being scanned, as well as questions about minor wrongful deeds commonly committed. This way, the researchers could identify typical neurological patterns during truthful responses. Then each subject responded to questions in a way that was truthful about an object he or she did not steal, but deceptive about the stolen object. The rate of accuracy for the fMRI was around ninety percent. Apparently, the trick lies in scanning brain regions that activate to suppress information and resolve internal conflicts; these regions are quiet when the person is telling the truth.

There is as yet no “one size fits all” signal in the neurocircuitry that a person is lying, but it does appear that brain scans are better at revealing “tells” than is watching someone fidget and sweat under questioning. Identifying the right combination of brain signals for a high rate of accuracy when a person lies or hides the truth is still in the future, but possibly not far away.

Some researchers believe that certain people with high levels of emotional intelligence have a knack for spotting a liar; in fact, they can see certain signals that others cannot. Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan float the notion that a few rare people are “naturals,” i.e., are highly accurate at knowing when someone is trying to deceive them. (In fact, these researchers consult for Lie to Me.) Often, these lie-detectors have jobs where it’s an important skill, such as law enforcement or psychotherapy. When the stakes are high, such as with a violent crime or a threat assessment, they’re even better at it, because they’re more vigilant. Ekman believes the best cues are found in the voice and face for deception about feelings, and find the best “hot spots” in gestures and words when a person lies about beliefs and actions. Extremely slight gestures can “leak” emotional states that a person is trying to hide, providing a “tell” to a skilled and observant detector.

However, other research contradicts the notion that certain select people are human diving rods. Psychologists Charles Bond, Jr. and Bella DePaulo ran a large-scale study and found that lie detection is not about the observer but the observee. A person’s perceived credibility plays a strong role in whether someone judges him or her to be deceptive. That’s not necessarily because a person is honest; it’s because they comport themselves in a credible manner. Participants in the study more often believed liars with high credibility ratings than truth-tellers who were perceived as low in credibility. When Bond and DePaul evaluated numerous other studies about deception, they realized that individual differences among judges of deception hovered near the same rate as chance (50%). No one appeared to have an innate advantage. No “naturals” stood out.

In the real world rather than a lab, lies are often identified in context, when compared over a period of time to other behaviors or narratives. The judgment generally involves a number of factors taken together, not just a person’s response to some questions at the time a lie is told, or their pupil contractions or fidgeting.

See also: Serial Killers and the Writers Who Love Them: Facts about Popular Myths by Dr. Katherine Ramsland

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Final Proof of A Spark of Heavenly Fire?

February 12, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Will you keep your fingers crossed for me? I just received what might be the final proof copy of A Spark of Heavenly Fire. If it’s okay, by this time next week, I will be a published author. If it’s not okay, I’m going to shoot myself.

(Just a glancing blow on a toe, perhaps. What? You thought I meant in the head? I need my head . . . where else would I put my hats?)

Seriously, though, this book has been through several proofing sessions in my effort to make it as perfect as possible. I realize perfect does not have degrees — perfect is perfect — but you know what I mean. No matter how good a job one does, there is always, always something that slips by.

Remember that Persian carpet legend and how the carpet makers purposely put a flaw in their carpets because only God is perfect? It sounds arrogant to me, as if they thought they were so perfect that they had to fake imperfection to prove . . . whatever. Still, if you happen to find a flaw in my book, just remember that it’s there on purpose. (Wink, wink.)

Publication has been a long time in coming. Years, in fact. It took a year to write A Spark of Heavenly Fire, another few months to edit, years of querying and rejections — I queried almost two hundred agents and editors. I did find an agent about three years ago, but she was worthless; she sent the book to publishers who did not carry my genre (whatever that might be). When the contract expired, I started querying other agents and editors. Still no takers.

Odd, but through it all, I believed in this book. I have doubts about my other books for some reason, but never about A Spark of Heavenly Fire. It’s spooky thinking that soon I will know if all the rejecters are right, or if I am.

At least my publisher likes the book. He said, “I was told by some other small publishers with whom I had done research that I was going to get mountains of unacceptable crap for every worthy thing I received. So when I got Pat’s manuscript for A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which was like the first submission to Second Wind, I thought, ‘OMG, is this possible?!’ I knew in the first 20 pages that she was the real thing. Then, as we corresponded, I realized where I knew that name: she and I were neck and neck throughout the FCC contest on Gather.com. I remember reading her first chapter of More Deaths Than One and thinking, ‘Oh, man. I hope her second chapter is messed up! I can’t beat this.’ Well, it just goes to show, if you can’t beat ’em, publish ’em!”

So, I’m off to proof the book again. Here’s hoping . . .

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Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, Persian flaw, proofing, querying, Second Wind Publishing, writing. 6 Comments »

Did I Really Write a Feel-Good Book?

February 8, 2009 — Pat Bertram

It will be interesting to see what people say about my books; I’m beginning to think I have no idea what I wrote. For example, A Spark of Heavenly Fire is the story of four ordinary people who become extraordinary while struggling to survive quarantine and martial law in Colorado. It was supposed to be a hard-hitting novel with an edge, but my proofreader told me, “You might do well. I think people are ready for a feel-good book.”

A feel-good book? Where is the edge? The horror? The feeling of doom? According to said proofreader, “Those elements are in the background, but the characters are the story. And they are heartbreakingly real.” Oh.

I thought I couldn’t write good characters. Most books on writing (and many authors) say that a writer has to feel what her characters feel or else the reader won’t feel the characters’ emotions. If you don’t cry, neither will your reader. But I don’t feel what my characters feel. Writing erases emotion, takes me to a place of serenity. And serenity is not generally where you want to take a reader. But I am deliberate in my choice of words and in the details I include. Perhaps those elements combine to help overcome my lack of emotion.

Of course, I generally don’t feel the emotion in the books I read, either. Often, despite the blurbs and reviews that extol the great characters, the characters seem to be only props on which the author hung the story, and a banal story at that.

Perhaps, after all, I won’t mind if I haven’t written a book with an edge. There are plenty of those out there. But I do like my proofreader’s description of my book. He wasn’t the first to use the phrase “heartbreakingly real” about my characters, and with any luck, he won’t be the last.

I can live with that.

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Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, character development, character's emotions, characters, creating characters, feel-good book, writing. 4 Comments »

Blog Exchange

February 6, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Aaron Paul Lazar, the author of LeGarde Mysteries and Moore Mysteries, is blogging at one of my other blogs — Book Marketing Floozy. (I split the promotion aspect of writing off of Bertram’s Blog and set it up on a separate blog with an index so the articles will always be easily accessible.) Aaron’s blog post is Writing Columns and Branding. Stop by and say hi. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.

I will be blogging at Murder by 4 today, talking about becoming my own genre. The article was written half-tongue-in-cheek, half seriously, but in the end, one cannot be their own genre. Where on a bookstore shelf would the book be placed? Of course, mine will only be available online for a while, so the bookstore placement is not an issue. I do wonder, though, if people who expect A Spark of Heavenly Fire to be a mystery will be disappointed. The mystery is only a small part of the story, though it is a thread that runs through it.

Either way, publication date is drawing closer. I should get another proof copy in about a week, and if there are no mistakes (keeping my fingers crossed even though it does make typing a bit rough), it will be available on Amazon a couple of days after that. (It is available for pre-order from Second Wind Publishing.) And then I will be a published author. I wonder if I will feel any different? Well, you will be the first to know.

(And don’t forget to enter my contest so you can win the first autographed copy of More Deaths Than One.)

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Posted in blogging, books, internet, life, writing. Tags: Aaron Lazar, book marketing floozy, genre, Murder By 4, Second Wind Publishing. 3 Comments »

“More Deaths Than One” Contest. Win Free Books!

February 2, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Win an autographed copy of More Deaths Than One (my very first autograph!) and your choice of two other titles from Second Wind Publshing LLC.

The premise:

A friend of mine found an obituary in the paper that could have been for his mother — the woman had the same name, lived in the same general area, was the same age, had the same number of children, and one of the children had approximately the same name and age as the friend. There was no relationship, merely coincidence but, joking, I said, “What if her son really is you?” That “what if” eventually became More Deaths Than One.

Write at least a paragraph and no more than a page, telling how would you develop a story using this scenario. The three most imaginative entries will be posted on the Second Wind site for readers to vote on. The top entry will win an autographed copy of More Deaths Than One and your choice of two other books from Second Wind Publishing.

Rules:

One paragraph to one page of your own version of the “What if?” from above.
Submitted by Midnight (12:00) EST Monday February the 16th 2009.
Only one submission per person.

Judging:

Pat Bertram and Second Wind management will read over all the entries and decide which three are the best — completely subject to our personal opinions as publishers and writers. The three best will be published on the Second Wind website on or around February 23rd 2009. From then you will have a week to vote on the best of the three entries. The top voted entry will receive the books.

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Posted in books, fiction, internet, life, writing. Tags: Bertram contest, Contest, More Deaths Than One, Second Wind Publishing, story premise. Leave a Comment »

A New Era in Publishing

January 31, 2009 — Pat Bertram

When I was studying the publishing industry, trying to figure out how to get published, one thing bothered me. There you are, a debut author, and because the publisher does not promote you — spending their promotion dollars instead on the big names — your books sit on bookstore shelves or in warehouses until finally the publisher gives up on you and remainders your book. That is the best scenario, because if it is remaindered, at least it will still be available for a time. Generally what happens is that it is pulped. 25% of a publisher’s total output (including your beloved book) is destroyed. This after shipping costs incurred to and from the publisher’s warehouse.

My books, More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire are being published by Second Wind Publishing, a so-called POD publisher, and because of it, I do not have to fear my novels succumbing to such a fate. Nor do I have to fear an inadvertent error showing up in thousands of volumes. As soon as an error is found, it can be corrected. Because of POD technology, there is no reason to destroy unsold merchandise. There is no reason to stop publishing a novel because it does not live up to the bottom-line demands of the traditional publishing houses.

Small presses today are where independent movie producers were in the late eighties and early nineties. They have the ability to publish books that need time to reach an audience, books that might not appeal to the masses but could still be loved by many (and turn a tidy profit in the process.)

Though POD still has the taint of vanity press, my books did go through a submission process, and I like knowing I was chosen. I like having a say in the editing, the cover choice, the arduous copy-editing. I even like promotion — what I’ve done of it, anyway.

So, new era in publishing? Good for us all. And I am pleased to be a part of it.

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Posted in books, internet, life. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, More Deaths Than One, POD publishers, publishing, small presses. 13 Comments »

Where We Stand on Selling Non-Fiction vs. Fiction

January 29, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Today I am honored to have as a guest blogger Seymour Garte, PhD. Dr. Garte is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences of the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute in Pittsburgh PA. Dr. Garte writes:

Last year I became a published author for the first time. How did I get so lucky, you ask? Do I have sister in law who is a literary agent? Did I write a masterpiece that was saved from slush pile oblivion by a saintly and brilliant junior staff person at a prestigious publishing house? Did I send out 15,000 query letters until an agent finally decided to actually look at my synopsis, and loved it? Did I succumb to the temptations of self-publishing, and sell my book out of the trunk of my car, until word of mouth led to huge sales, and a great book deal with a real agent and a real publisher? Am I lying?

No, none of the above. What I didn’t mention is that my book is not fiction. Which means all the rules of how to get published listed above do not necessarily apply. Yes, there is a world of difference in publishing non-fiction compared to fiction, especially if the non-fiction book is a technical expert author book, like mine.

My book Where We Stand: A Surprising Look at the Real State of the Planet (Amacom Press, 2007) is about environmental trends that takes a very different approach from most books on the environment. The tone is optimistic, and rejects the atmosphere of doom and gloom that pervades this category of books. I instead point to the enormous improvements that have been made in the environment and public health over the past decades, and discuss how these changes came about.

Non-fiction books fall into a number of categories of course, but I like to think of them as one or the other of two main types. My own book is typical of the expert-written book, where the author is, (and is touted as such on the cover) an actual expert in the subject of the book. This would include medical and diet books written by doctors or dieticians, books by lawyers (the Nine by Jeffrey Toobin, a lawyer, was very successful), cook books by cooks, and much more rarely, science books by scientists. There are some great science books by scientists, such as Lewis Thomas, SJ Gould, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Oliver Sachs, etc. but most non-fiction books on science are written by non-scientists.

Most non-fiction books, in general are not written by experts, but by people who are writers first (often journalists) and experts either second, or not at all. The reason for this is simple. People don’t buy textbooks unless they have to. If they buy a book on the Supreme Court or the life of Einstein, or the state of the environment, they want pretty much what they want when they buy a fiction book — good writing. Even if they buy the book because they want to learn something more than to be entertained, good writing is the first requirement. Accuracy, research, and good coverage of the field are all critical, but if the book is not written very well, people wont read it.

And most experts are not good writers. At least for the public. Scientific writing for example is completely different from “real” writing. In scientific writing, the passive tense predominates. Not so in books for the public, as my copy editor told me pointedly and repeatedly. Jargon is critical for a scientific paper, but terrible in a mass market book. In fact the best compliment I got for my book was when I saw an email from an editor to the acquisitions editor saying, “I read part of Garte’s book. It’s good. The writing is not at all scientific.”

So how did I get this book published? Actually, as happens quite often with technical books by experts, I was invited to submit a proposal. I was picked from a list of environmental experts and got an email. I responded with a proposal (standard publisher book proposal form), and two sample chapters, table of contents, a statement of audience, etc. It went back and forth, was eventually approved and a contract signed. That gave me one year to write and submit the actual book.

This is similar to the process for publishing monographs, and other technical books for specialized audiences, like textbooks, and for some mass market technical books. But it is not how most non-fiction books are sold. If you write a biography of Charley Chaplin, or a book about your own experiences as a young American traveling through Europe, or a book describing the best way to meet singles, or any other non-fiction book that does not fit into the expert category, you will need to do pretty much what fiction writers need to do, get an agent, pitch the idea, and the market, and hope for the best in a tough competitive climate.

For any non-fiction book, (as opposed to fiction) there is always an element of personal biography of the writer in the pitch. This could relate to experience, expertise or knowledge. Publishers want to know this upfront. If you have written an amazing new diet book (heaven forbid) it is helpful if you yourself lost 250 lbs using your amazing new diet method. Perhaps you are writing a new history of the American West. The publisher will be happy to learn that you possess some diaries of an ancestor who went west for the gold rush in 1849.

In my case, my credentials as a Professor of Environmental Health and Ph.D. in Biochemistry were critical in getting the book accepted. If you have strong credentials in the field of the book you want to write, it is possible to contact a publisher directly, without going through an agent. This is especially true if you use one of the many University Presses, which generally publish monographs, and a few mass market books by experts. These publishers tend not to do extensive marketing, so don’t expect huge sales from a University Press, although there have been exceptions.

If your credentials are on the light side, and you do not have an in (like many journalists, free lance writers and others already in the business have) you will need to find an agent to sell the book, and that means the queries, the synopsis, and all the angst you need to go through to sell your first romance, sci fi or other fiction book. There are agents who specialize in non-fiction, and in certain types of non-fiction, such as memoirs, humorous, travel, biography, etc. As for any non-fiction book, your query should include who you think the audience is, why they will want to buy THIS book, and any experience or background that sets you apart. (“I wrote this book on blind dates, after having 35 blind dates in two months.”)

This pretty much sums up the big difference between selling a non-fiction book as opposed to a fictional work. For non-fiction, you need to sell yourself as well as the work, much more so than for a novel. I don’t know if it’s easier to sell non-fiction, but I do know that good writing is essential. This is true not only for selling the work to a publisher, but for selling it to readers. Which is a whole nother story. Maybe for next time, if Pat wants me back.

Also by Dr. Simon Garte:
Selling Your Book to Readers — Part I
Selling Your Book to Readers — Part II

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Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: non-fiction, non-fiction vs. fiction, selling non-fiction, Seymour Garte PhD, Where We Stand, writing, writing technical books. 16 Comments »

McBooks

January 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

The book business is a very thin slice of the entertainment pie graph, but it is still big business. Moreover, it is a business steeped in tradition and antiquated business practices. There is a chance that the recent upheavals “just happened” because of the economy, the high price of hardback books, the younger generation (and even older ones) not as interested in reading. It could also be due to more people buying used books or patronizing libraries.

But I don’t believe it.

I tend to see purpose behind seemingly unpurposeful events. I don’t necessarily think that those at the top of the publishing food chain created this so-called crisis, but I do think they are taking advantage of it; they would be foolish not to.

Innovative technologies, such as the much-maligned print-on-demand (POD) publishing, put the big guys at a disadvantage. True, for now, POD-produced books are more expensive than those printed by major publishers, but that is because the machines are new, very expensive, and in the hands of only a few.

What will happen when these machines become cheap enough that every bookstore owner can buy one? A customer will be able to walk into a bookstore, browse through a catalog or display copies of books, make their choice, and in fifteen minutes the bookseller will hand them their purchase, hot off the press.

For the bookseller, this will mean a cleaner, more profitable shop. As it stands now, 85% of books in a typical bookstore sell less than two copies. It also means less time packing up books for return, less inventory costs, and the ability to offer an unlimited selection.

For the big publishers, it will mean no more costly print runs, no more warehousing overstock, no more returned books, no more shipping costs, no more having to destroy 25% of their product as they now do.

It’s entirely possible that as the technology becomes even more advanced, there will be book vending machines — customers make their choice, the machine prints and binds your books, and there it is. Who knows, there could even come a day when you order a cheeseburger, fries, and shake for lunch, and at the same drive-up window, order a book by Pat Bertram to read while you are eating.

Many people see print books as obsolete, taken over by e-publishing, and that is definitely a possibility, but I don’t think it will happen any time soon. Many readers like the feel and smell of books; other readers, especially older ones or those with failing eyesight, need the print format.

What I do know is that heads of major corporations are not stupid. Why would they put up with the ridiculous expenses of traditional publishing ways if they don’t have to? And with new technologies (some of which, I’m sure, we have yet to hear about) they won’t have to.

The end of the book business? No.

The end of the book business as we know it? Without a doubt.

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