Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

A friend of mine referred me to a blog post today on “Why Some E-books Cost More Than The Hardcover” by Nathan Bransford.

The article is worth reading because it explains why an e-book can now cost more than a p-book (a paper book). It shows how, until about a year ago, Amazon actually sold some e-books at a loss in order to gain market share. At that time, Amazon would buy an e-book at a wholesale price that was typically 50% of the retail price set by the publisher. Then Amazon would sell the e-book at $9.99, which in some cases cost them several dollars per book.

When Apple announced the iPad and the associated iBookStore, they promised to sell books on an “agency model” in which the publisher would set the retail price and Apple would sell an e-book for that exact amount and then pay the publisher 70% of that price, keeping 30% for itself.

Soon after Apple made this announcement, Amazon made the agency model an option for e-books. 5 of the 6 major US publishers took the agency model option then, and now all of them use this model.

Amazon still sells paper books using the wholesale model, while selling e-books using the agency model. This can lead to cases where the hardcover edition of a book on Amazon is about the same price as the e-book (or possibly even cheaper).

Bransford backs this up with some calculations, but the results are misleading because in most cases, the assumptions are incorrect. Quoting from the article:

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of wacky about the wholesale model vs. the agency model: the publisher made more money per copy with the wholesale model. 

Again, napkin math for a $24.99 hardcover. Let’s say the e-book would have sold for $9.99 at Amazon in the old days but now the publisher charges $12.99:

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $12.50 (roughly 50% of $24.99 hardcover retail price)
Amazon: - $2.50 (selling at $9.99)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher:  $9.09 (70% of $12.99)
E-bookseller: $3.90 (30% of $12.99)

Randy sez: The napkin math would be correct, if its napkin assumptions were correct. But one of those assumptions is usually wrong. E-books are NOT usually assigned the same retail price as a hardcover these days. E-books are usually assigned a retail price no higher than the retail price of the trade paper edition, which is typically close to half the retail price of the hardcover.

[Note added on 3/15/2011 as a result of a comment left by Nathan: Even when there is no trade paper edition of a book, the e-book version is generally sold at a price point no higher than a typical trade paper book. I looked at today’s Amazon Top 100 Kindle list and found only 3 e-books priced as high as $14.99. A few were at $12.99 or $11.99. Most were at $9.99 or less. I can’t recall seeing any recent e-book on Amazon in which the retail price for the e-book was anywhere close to the retail price for the hardcover. There are some cases where the retail price for the e-book is about the same as the heavily discounted price for the hardcover, but the retail price for that hardcover is close to twice the retail price of the e-book.]

Let’s wipe off that napkin and do the math again and let’s also figure in the author’s cut, assuming 25% of the publisher’s net, which is the absurd standard royalty these days:

The hardcover price is $24.99 and the trade paper price is $12.99. We’ll assume the e-book price also gets a retail price of $12.99.

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $6.50 (50% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $3.49 (selling at $9.99 and paying $6.50 to the publisher)
Author: $1.30 (25% of publisher’s take of $6.50)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher: $4.55 (35% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $8.44 (selling at $12.99 and paying $4.55 to the publisher)
Author: $1.14 (25% of publisher’s take of $4.55)
[Note added 3/15/2011: This is a revision of figures I showed in the original post, where I was using a 70% royalty rate. An alert reader reminded me that Amazon pays only 35% to the publisher for e-books priced above $9.99.]

Clearly the agency model benefits Amazon, costs the publisher and the author, and screws the consumer, who ends up paying $3.00 more for the book and therefore ends up buying 23.1% fewer books because if the consumer has a fixed number of dollars, those dollars will only buy 9.99/12.99 as many books at the higher price point.

That reduction in sales volume needs to be accounted for too. The simplest way to do that is by subtracting 23.1% from the Agency model computations:
Publisher: $3.50 (76.9% of $4.55)
Amazon: $6.49 (76.9% of $8.44)
Author: $0.87 (76.9% of $1.14)

Comparing these to the wholesale model for books priced at $9.99, we see that the publisher and the author come out behind and Amazon comes out ahead.

However, the story changes pretty dramatically when we look at the agency model for books priced at $9.99, where the publisher’s royalty rate goes up to 70%:
Publisher: $6.99 (70% of $9.99)
Amazon: $3.00 (selling at $9.99 and paying the publisher $6.99)
Author: $1.75 (25% of the publisher’s take)
This is why most of the e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 or lower. The publisher does considerably better at this price point than it does at higher prices. [Amazon’s royalty is 70% for price points between $2.99 and $9.99. The royalty is 35% for all other price points. The last time I checked, the 70% royalty was paid by Amazon US only for sales to US customers; it was 35% for sales outside the US. I have not checked on royalties paid by Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK. The situation, as you can see, is complicated, and of course it is subject to change.]

What is missing here is the same set of calculations where the author self-publishes the book and prices it at $2.99, where it will sell many more copies because it is now an impulse buy:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is out of this picture)
Amazon: $.90 (30% of the price of $2.99)
Author: $2.09 (70% of the price of $2.99)

Assuming the consumer will now buy 3.341 times as many books as the wholesale model priced at $9.99 (this is just 9.99/2.99 and it assumes that the consumer only has a fixed number of dollars to spend on books and will spend them on as many books as possible), the real advantage to the author becomes clear:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is still out of the picture)
Amazon: $3.00 (3.341 times $.90)
Author: $6.99 (3.341 times $2.09)

It should be clear that low-priced e-books with an agency model massively benefits the author and the consumer (as compared to the wholesale model priced at $9.99), slightly costs Amazon, and massively crushes the publisher.

This is why we call the thing happening right now a “revolution.”

What role will agents play in the not-so-brave new world of publishing which is evolving rapidly? Does a novelist still need an agent? If so, what will that agent do? If not, where will all the agents go?

Charles posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

First I would like to thank you for the work that you are doing to help newbie writers like myself to delve into the world of fiction writing. I must say if it weren’t for your website and your snowflake method of writing, which in my structured and incredibly anal opinion is pure genius, I would still likely be flailing with the first few chapters, or more likely burning them in the nearest fireplace in frustration.

All that out of the way, the question I have is probably painfully obvious to anyone in the business but has become more and more confusing to me. I have been reading your and several other blogs about publishing and the way the business is turning away from printed books and more toward digital versions. My question however, has less to do with which direction I should go than how to get there. I understand the importance of agents and publishers if I am able to go the route of the typical printed author but what about going in the direction of e-books. Should I still look for an agent and if so what is that he/she would do. Does an agent handle the editing and promotion of a digitally published book? If an agent handles such things then do certain agents specialize in this area or would any agent be open to doing it? I guess what Iím saying is what exactly does an agent do that I couldn’t do for myself if I self published in the digital realm. I for one am excited about the way publishing is going, probably because I have no idea of what I’m talking about, but none the less, if my book turns out to be a decent story, I hope to be able to take advantage of this new turn in the publishing world.

Well that was my incredibly long winded and probably overly vague question. I hope you will excuse the lavish butt kissing in the beginning but truly your methods have helped me to do something I have always wanted to do but never had the courage to start. Thanks to you I have one scene left to write in my rough draft and then God willing I will edit and start looking for that way to get my preverbal foot in the door. Thanks again for all you’re doing and I look forward to your response.

Randy sez: I believe agents will play a crucial role in the evolving book market. The reason is simple: Agents are industry pros who understand the complex blend of craft, marketing, and career planning that writers so desperately need. Your agent is on your side. The more money you earn from traditional, royalty-paying publishers, the more your agent earns.

Having said that, what about the e-book thing? Does an agent get a cut of your self-published e-books?

The answer depends partly on your agency contract and partly on exactly what sort of self-publishing you’re doing.

If you have an out-of-print book that you and your agent agree isn’t marketable as a paper book, then you are probably free to self-publish that as an e-book with no money due to your agent. You should of course check with your agent and look at your agency contract to verify that.

Likewise, if you have an unpublished book that you and your agent were just never able to sell, then probably the same situation applies, but again you should check with your agent to make sure.

If you have an unpublished book that your agent hasn’t yet had a chance to sell, then your agent probably has the right to try to sell it for you and take a cut of the profits. Your agency agreement should specify that sort of thing.

If you don’t have an agent, then before you sign on with one, you should discuss your plans for self-publishing e-books, (if you have any such plans) and be clear in advance what books are your agent’s job to sell and which ones are off the table.

If you don’t have an agent, should you get one? That depends:

Do you plan to exclusively self-publish your work and are you willing to do all the grunt work to make that happen (or hire somebody to do so)? If so, then you don’t need an agent. You might need a marketing guru or a freelance editor or a graphic artist or a career planner or some mix of all of those. But you don’t need an agent, because an agent sells your work to publishers and receives payment for that hard work.

Do you plan to first publish your work through a publisher and let the publisher do all the e-book stuff? If so, then you definitely need an agent. The publishing contracts are becoming increasingly slanted to benefit publishers. An agent will get you a much fairer deal than you can get yourself, in much less time.

I have believed for several months that agents are going to shift towards the e-book business. There are two main reasons for this:

• Publishers are not currently giving a fair deal on e-book royalties. The almost universal royalty rate paid by publishers is 25% of monies received. This is ridiculously unfair to authors. I think everybody in the industry agrees with me on this point. I believe that a fair royalty for e-books is AT LEAST 50%, and probably a bit higher. If publishers won’t budge on this, then agents can and will provide an e-publishing service that pays the author a much higher royalty rate.
• Many authors have books that are out of print and earning nothing. They would love to put these back into print as e-books, but they’re daunted by the technology. It takes time and effort to put out a good e-book. It may require hiring a graphic artist to create a new cover. Many authors would be happy to give their agent a cut of the profits to just “take care of the problem” and get those out-of-print books back on the market.

The obvious question is, “What about a conflict of interest?” If an agent has a choice between e-publishing an author and selling the author’s work to a publisher, won’t the agent take the option that earns him the most money–even if it doesn’t earn the most money for the author?

Randy sez: Yes, I suppose there is that possibility. An agent gets a 15% cut of an author’s earnings when sold to a royalty-paying publisher. If the agent were to also earn a 15% cut on the author’s e-books, it seems to me that the whole question would become a moot point. In that case, the agent’s self-interest exactly coincides with the author’s self-interest. I might be wrong here, but that seems plausible.

It’s worth noting that agents have ALWAYS had an implicit conflict of interest whenever they represent more than one author. After all, if two authors have similar work and are both represented by the same agent, then the agent has a vested interest in promoting the more salable author harder. And furthermore, an agent may hesitate to be a jerk with a publisher on behalf of one author if that would damage other authors. In both these cases, the conflict of interest is actually pretty minor, and agents have many years of experience in dealing with them. I haven’t heard that either of these issues has caused authors major grief. Again, I might be wrong, but I just don’t see that it’s ever been a big problem.

Frankly, I’m not that concerned about the potential conflict of interest of an agent who also does e-publishing. The agent is on the author’s side, more so than anybody else.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: The world of publishing is changing incredibly fast. E-books are giving authors power they’ve never had before–the power to cheaply publish a book and market it effectively on a global scale without interference from “gatekeepers” who decide what the market wants.

Will agents still be around in 5 years? I am very sure they will, and I believe the best agents will be earning more than ever. I do think some agents are going to transition to other ventures, such as free-lance editing, book development, and e-publishing. But I see most of them continuing on as agents.

Will publishers still be around in 5 years? I believe they will, but they’ll be smaller and leaner, earning less revenue but higher profit margins. I believe they’ll be forced out of the e-book business, though. I foresee publishers being willing to die on the hill of 25% royalty rates for e-books. I foresee that authors will simply walk away from that deal. By the time publishers cave in and offer higher rates, authors will have found better, faster, and much more lucrative deals elsewhere. And authors won’t come back to publishers, except to say, “I’ll sell you the rights to the paper edition only. Take it or leave it.”

Will chain bookstores still be around in 5 years? That’s an open question, but I suspect they will. Again, they’ll be smaller and leaner, assuming they survive. They’re an endangered species, but if they can learn to sell e-books effectively, they’ll survive.

Will authors still be around in 5 years? Now THAT’S a no-brainer. You can’t have books without authors. As long as people want story in text form, we’ll have authors to write them.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Today, I’m interviewing James Scott Bell on why (and how) he decided to self-publish his latest book as an e-book. This interview ran in my e-zine earlier this week, so if you’ve already read it, there’s nothing new here. But not everybody reads my e-zine right away.

The e-book revolution is roaring in even faster than predicted by e-enthusiasts. A few facts will make clear what I mean:

A-list novelist David Morrell recently self-published his novel THE NAKED EDGE on Amazon, in Kindle and audio formats only.

A-list marketing guru Seth Godin is due today, March 1, 2011, to self-publish his next book, POKE THE BOX, simultaneously in hardcover and e-format.

In January of this year, self-published e-novelist Amanda Hocking sold a reputed 450,000 copies of her books on Amazon. She is 26 years old. Less than a year ago, she posted her first novel on Amazon. Now, she’s a superstar.

In view of these, I wasn’t surprised when one of my writing buddies, Jim Bell, recently self-published a new e-book, COVER YOUR BACK. The book contains a novella and three short stories. If the words “film noir” and “femme fatale” ring your bells, then COVER YOUR BACK might well be a book you’d enjoy.

Jim has not abandoned the world of traditional publishing. His venture into e-books simply allows him to do things that he couldn’t have done with a paper-and-ink publisher that thinks a year is a short period of time.

I asked Jim to tell me about his venture in an interview for this e-zine. Here’s a blurb about him and his writing:

JAMES SCOTT BELL is a bestselling thriller author and served as the fiction columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine. He has written three popular craft books for Writers Digest Books: Plot & Structure, Revision & Self-Editing and The Art of War for Writers. Jim has taught writing at Pepperdine University and numerous writers conferences. On June 4th and 5th he is teaching a seminar in Los Angeles for novelists and screenwriters. Information can be found at www.jamesscottbell.com

On to the interview. Let’s see what motivated Jim to take the e-plunge.

Randy: You recently self-published your first e-book, after more than a decade of publishing paper books with a number of traditional royalty-paying publishers. What prompted you to take the plunge into the e-book market?

Jim: Because there is absolutely no downside to it, and plenty of upside. The e-market is exploding and I had several stories and a novella that didn’t have a home. E-book publishing allows me to bring new material to my readers, and introduce me to others. I’ve always admired the old pulp writers of the mid 20th century, who had to write a lot for a penny a word, but created some of the best suspense ever. That’s what I always wanted to be able to do, and now can via e-publishing.

The nice thing is that the royalty for these works is great and I get paid every month.

Randy: Let’s talk a bit about the process.  You decided to write a novella and three short stories.  You wrote them in Microsoft Word just as you normally do.  Then what happened?  How did you take the book from a Word document to its final published form on Amazon and the other online retailers?

Jim: I hired a person to do the conversion for me. There are many people out there who will do this, and the cost is relatively low. You should be able to find someone for between $50 - $100. It may be a bit more if the document needs more work. I toyed with the idea of doing it myself, but was advised by others to let a professional handle it. So I provided the Word document and the person I hired converted into a format for Kindle, for Nook, and for Smashwords, should I expand to that.

Randy:  Many fiction contracts have “non-compete” clauses in them.  Tell us about those and what they mean for the already-published author who wants to venture into the electronic self-publishing world but doesn’t want to alienate his publisher.

Jim: Well, publishers are investing money in writers and trying to build them. So a standard publishing contract has a clause that says the writer cannot sell a book that might compete with the one they’re publishing. Usually there’s language about potential “harm” to the sales of the contracted book. That could mean that a self-published e-book, at a low price point, could be viewed as competition with the published e-book, which might have a higher price point.

On the other hand, a low priced, self-published e-book can be seen as a marketing tool for the other books. This should all be discussed with the publisher, and a written understanding hammered out.

Randy: Any predictions on the near-term future of publishing?  As we speak, Borders is circling the drain and Barnes & Noble is battling to reinvent itself, while dozens of previously unknown writers are earning thousands of dollars per month.  Where do you see the world of publishing going in 2011? What are your plans to deal with the massive change?

Jim: I do think the traditional publishing model is undergoing great stress now. There are fewer distributions points, less revenue coming in as consumers turn to lower priced e-books. The old guard will have to be experimenting with new ways of doing things, but that’s hard for a big, established business to do.

Meantime, there will be a veritable tsunami of original material self-published. Most of it will be bad. A writer still needs to sweat and strain and get better. The old model provided a filtering system. But for those who learn to write well, the self-publishing avenue has great potential.

I don’t think anyone can predict what the landscape will look like in five years. I have been surprised at the rapid rise in e-readers (as was predicted by one Randall Ingermanson). As a writer I’m taking advantage of the opportunity. Others will do the same. And word of mouth will continue to help the best works get the attention they deserve.

Randy: You probably couldn’t have traditionally published your novella WATCH YOUR BACK and you almost certainly couldn’t have published your short stories in paper format.  Tell us a bit about those stories and why you wrote them.  Isn’t it enough to be a successful novelist?

Jim: I love the short story and novella form. It used to be we had a thriving short story market in this country, lots of pulp and slick magazines. But that all dried up except for a couple of little magazines, through which it is impossible to make a living. And yes, short story collections are rarely published in print form.

So, here is a way for me to write short form suspense fiction and publish it. As I said, there’s just no downside to that. I can provide entertainment for readers at a low cost, and everyone’s happy.

Randy: I bought COVER YOUR BACK last week and read through it in a day. Great read! Lots of fun for those who like darkish fiction. What advice do you have for someone contemplating writing exclusively for the self-publishing market?

Jim: First, always be about getting better as a writer. That should never stop. I started in this business 20 years ago and have kept on studying the craft all that time.

Second, be sure to have your story vetted by several “beta” readers, and even consider paying a freelance editor to go over the manuscript. Readers do notice if the text is sloppy.

Third, hire a good cover designer. You have to make a good first impression with your book cover.

Finally, make some long term plans. What kind of writing will be your specialty, your “brand”? As you build readers, they are going to expect some continuity in your work. That’s not to say you can’t be flexible and try new things, but an audience is grown largely by coming to rely on the type of story you produce. Think of Stephen King and John Grisham. Even they did not deviate from their genres until they were well established in them.

Randy: Great advice, as always. Thanks for telling us about your adventures on Planet E, Jim!

If you’re interested in checking out what devilish games Jim plays on his lead characters, have a look at the Amazon page for WATCH YOUR BACK. Priced at $2.99, it’s a darned good deal.

(Standard full disclosure: The above link contains my Amazon affiliate code.)

Last summer I attended the Willamette Writers Conference. Not to teach. Just to learn. It was the first conference I’ve gone to in years where I didn’t have any duties. I could actually go to workshops and listen.

I wandered into a class by Larry Brooks and sat down. Larry taught a mesmerizing hour on the subject of story architecture and I was hooked. Larry is a master of story architecture. I introduced myself after his class and we’ve been in touch via e-mail since then.

In the last few days, Larry has released his latest book, STORY ENGINEERING, published by Writer’s Digest Books. He sent me an electronic copy a few months ago and I inhaled it in a few sittings.

Here’s the endorsement I wrote for his book: “Nobody on the planet teaches story structure better than Larry Brooks. Nobody.”

Since Larry’s book is new on the shelves, I asked him to do an interview on Story Engineering for this month’s e-zine and also for this blog. Here’s a short blurb about Larry:

Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, a resource for novelists and screenwriters, and a frequent instructor and lecturer on the writing conference circuit. He is the author of “Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” just released from Writers Digest Books. He has published five critically-praised novels, including a USA Today bestseller and a Publishers Weekly “Best Books of 2004″ entry. To learn more about Larry, visit: http://www.StoryFix.com.

In my opinion, STORY ENGINEERING is going to be the standard reference on story architecture from now on. Click here if you’d like to check out the Amazon page for STORY ENGINEEERING.

On to the interview:

Randy:  There are any number of books on fiction writing on the market. What’s unique about yours and what drove you to write it?

Larry: Great question, one that I actually address in the Introduction of the book because it’s also an important question. I think anybody that sets out to offer up some fresh thinking on a topic that’s this broad and popular harbors an inherent insecurity, wondering if the world really needs another writing book. In this case, while I know there are many terrific books out there on “how-to” write a good story, I also think that the craft remains highly elusive for some folks. That, combined with the belief that we can never get enough fresh thinking on this topic, encouraged me to develop my storytelling model — the six core competencies — to a level of depth that would make it immediately useful to folks while offering something completely new. And, I have to be honest, people in my workshops have been asking me to write this book for the last 15 years, so that helps overcome those insecurities.

In short, it’s unique because it’s a fresh and completely original take on the “physics” of storytelling, which are anything but fresh and unique, they are universal. It’s an eye-opener and game-changer for writers who are still seeking that “ah-hah!” moment in understanding what to write, where to put it, and why.

Randy:  Your book is about the “Six Core Competencies” of the fiction writer.  Tell us more!  What are these six core competencies and what makes them “core?”

Larry: I like to say, and challenge, that there isn’t anything in the writing game that doesn’t reside within one of six realms of craft, which I call the six core competencies. Four of them are elements of story — concept, character, theme and structure (plot sequence), and the other two are issues of execution: scene writing and writing voice.

That’s all we have to work with. All are necessary, a weakness in any one, even if the others would humble Hemingway into quitting drinking, is a deal killer. And yet, it is the magic, artful combination of them, when executed at a professional level, that results in a story that will stand out. That’s why this can never become — or be viewed as — formulaic writing, because no matter the genre or intentions, these six core competencies are as eternal as they are necessary. They empower the ‘art’ of storytelling without ever compromising it. This knowledge bridges the gap between what is, for many, an elusive “art” and the accessible, learnable realm of “craft.”

Randy:  Let’s talk about Concept for a bit.  In my experience in teaching at conferences, this is one of the areas where beginning novelists almost always get it wrong.  Do you have a set of steps for getting this right?  How does a writer move from a bad concept to a good one?

Larry: Many folks confuse concept with theme. Confuse it with premise. Confuse it with an “idea.” One needs to rise above the rhetoric of these words to understand the differences. An idea is to write a story about Jesus, for example. A theme is to show how, in the author’s view, the traditional church has it wrong. A concept — the starting point of real story development — would be a proposition: ”what if Jesus didn’t die on the cross, and evidence to that effect has been hidden and covered up, sometimes at the cost of lives, by the Church for the last 2000 years?” Which is way more compelling than the original “idea.” From there, a premise evolves that describes a hero, a love interest, an antagonist and an unfolding journey for them all, including the reader. The result here would be, say, a book called “The Davinci Code,” which ended up being the best selling modern novel, ever. Confusion ensues when we — including writing teachers – casually confuse these terms.

My favorite tool for concepting is the old “what if?” exercise, using the highest level of “what if?” to develop a descending ladder of ensuing “what ifs?” that take the story in an optimal direction with originality and compelling drive. When a killer “what if?” begets a cascading natural flow of other what ifs, you end up not only with a way to expose the best possible creative choices for the story, but the assurance that you have examined all possible narrative options and have chosen the optimal one. Too many writers, especially “pantsers,” just write along and make the first and natural narrative choice without considering the options. The result is usually a rewrite, or a rejection.

Randy:  You’re probably best known for your work on Story Structure. Outliners and Snowflakers tend to love Story Structure and Seat-of-the-Pantsers tend to fear it.  Why is Story Structure so critical to every novelist, and what do you do if you’re a Pantser?

Larry: Because it is non-negotiable. Every good story ends up with it, so it makes no sense to fear that which you must discover one way or another. Pantsers are hoping to discover it as they write a draft. Planners begin with it. While I favor the latter, both can work. But neither can work unless the final draft demonstrates the “physics” of story structure. You can’t reinvent that, you must invent your story, no matter how original in nature, in light of those storytelling physics. Structure is to story what wings, a tail and an engine, all in context to aerodynamic theory, are to the designing of an airplane. Miss any of these and what you have is a crash and burn scenario.

Once you know what these physics are — the specific sequence, mission and elements of story structure – you begin to see it in every story you encounter.  Even in successful stories written by authors who swear against planning or even the existence of structural principles.  It’s like somebody turning on the lights for the first time. This recognition is the turning point of a writing career, because everything that happens from that point forward is from an enlightened perspective, rather than a random, hoping-to-stumble-on it, imitation-driven perspective. It empowers pantsers as well as planners… though once experienced, pantsers quickly being using story planning in their process.

Randy:  One of your concepts on Story Structure that was new to me was your idea of “pinch points.” What is a pinch point and why does a story need one?

Larry: It’s from the movies, and it works great in novels. The driving source of tension in a story is the presence, the pressure, of an antagonistic force. We meet or sense that force early, we experience it at Plot Point One, and then it’s up to the author as to how we experience or see this antagonist. But we must see it and feel it again, and more than once. Pinch points are, very simply, when the antagonist comes to center stage, in context to what it/they want to achieve and how it opposes and threatens the hero and her/his quest. In a story about cancer, the cancer would rear its ugly head at the pinch points in a way that reminds us what’s at stake, what’s at risk and what the hero must conquer. The optimal locations are the 3/8th and 5/8ths points in the story, at a minimum, but more can be better, too. Because those moments often occur frequently, we can easily miss them as pinch points. But that doesn’t change the power of them when they are inserted in the right place, even if they are in nearly every scene otherwise.

Randy:  Talk to us about “voice.”  Editors and agents often say they’re looking for writers with a great voice.  What is voice and how do you develop one if you don’t think you have one?

Larry: Voice is literally how you write. What you write in a narrative, stylistic sense. Your sentences. Your paragraphs. Your word and phrasing choices. Your wit, your irony, your poetry. Or your purple prose.  A professional writer announces that skill within the first sentence. Thing is, you don’t have to be a poet to deliver a great voice. This is the least daunting of the six core competencies, and yet, non-negotiable: you must write professionally, rather than stylistically (the latter being the bane of many rejected manuscripts).  You simply need to write compellingly. To be entertaining. Have a light touch, wield subtlety, have great timing. And most of all, never be over the top or too heavy-handed. John Grisham is a great example — he’s not going down in history as the best writer of sentences ever, but he is clear and clean, his narrative is an efficient and pleasant — and occasionally powerful — vehicle for his stories. Writers need to be clear: a solid voice is the ante-in, it’ll never be what gets you published. It’s all about your story. It’s like athleticism in pro sports — you’ll get cut on the day if you don’t have it. But from there, because everybody in camp has it, your success depends on higher, more elusive skills, moves, sensibilities and instincts. In writing, “talent” isn’t about sentences, it’s about storytelling.

Voice is like scent in the air — sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes not. But that’s always a judgment call. Clear fresh air is always best, and safest. Sometimes brisk, sometimes lightly scented. But never something from a paper mill. You think that you’re clever and witty, but the editor might find you glib and pretentious. It’s always a risk to take your voice too far.

Less is more, unless more is called for. That’s the art of it. It’s hard to teach, hard to evolve, and invaluable once you do.

Randy: Thanks for joining us today, Larry!

Randy sez: Now, once again, if you want to check out Larry’s book, here’s a handy link to STORY ENGINEERING on Amazon. (Please note that this link carries my pesky Amazon affiliate code.)

Check out Larry’s web site and blog here: www.StoryFix.com. I subscribe to Larry’s blog and highly recommend it.

As e-books continue to take the world of publishing by storm, it’s natural to wonder how any good books are going to be found by readers in the rising river of e-books. Won’t they be lost in the flood?

Heather posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have lately been doing lots of reading on the e-pub buzz and thinking about marketing implications as they relate to fiction. I think to aid the ‘average’ ebook reader in making good fiction selections there will be a rise of some type of ‘recommendation medium’ (like blogs or an offshoot of social networking) that judges/reviews fiction ebooks. Do you see something like this currently developing and if so how as an author do you intend to take advantage of this marketing tool?

Randy sez: Yes, this sort of thing has already developed and will continue to grow. The basic idea is known as “crowdsourcing” and you can Google this word or search for it on Amazon to learn all that you want to know about it.

What is crowdsourcing? For the case of selling e-books, there are three fundamental elements: an open market, word-of-mouth, and a “similarity measure.” Let’s look at each of these in turn:

An open market is necessary for crowdsourcing to work. You make a sea of products available to anyone at reasonable prices, without unnecessary constraints. E-books fit this description exactly. There are hundreds of thousands of e-books available on Amazon now, and many more public domain e-books available at places like Project Gutenberg. This is in sharp contrast to the field of traditionally published books, where publishers and their marketing people make decisions about “what will sell.” The market of paper books is only somewhat open, because the economics of book production require that gatekeepers refuse most books for publication. They have to do this. They couldn’t afford to publish them all.

Word-of-mouth is also important to crowdsourcing. People like to talk about the books they read. They don’t talk about the books they don’t like. What happens is that good books get talked about and they tend to get read by more people who also talk about them. Good books get a chain reaction of word-of-mouth. Bad books don’t get talked about and they tend to get read by only a few people. Reader reviews are essentially word-of-mouth on steroids. This is one thing Amazon does very well — it encourages reader reviews. I read the 5-star reviews and the 1-star reviews of any book before I buy it. I also look at how many reviews there are and what fraction of them are 4 and 5 stars. If a book has many 1-star reviews and many 5-star reviews, it tells me that it’s a controversial book, which may well mean that it’s a very good book. If it has many 1-star reviews and few 5-star reviews, then it’s probably not very good. All those reviewers out there generally do a good job of sifting the good from the bad.

“Similarity measure” is one thing Amazon gets stupendously right. For any book on Amazon, you can see a list of several other books with the caption: “Customers who bought this item also bought:” For example, people who bought my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES also buy Jim Bell’s book PLOT & STRUCTURE. No surprise there. The two books cater to the same reader. Amazon wisely gives readers a choice to buy them both as a bundle. When an online store tells customers what other people are buying, it’s a terrific way to let people know which books the masses of customers believe are similar.

When you create a completely open market with word-of-mouth in the form of reader reviews and then show customers what the market believes are similar products, the cream rises to the top. Quickly. The junk falls to the bottom. Quickly.

How do you take advantage of this? By writing your best possible book and by getting it out there on the open market in the online stores that do reader reviews and show similar products best. In our current world, Amazon mastered those skills sooner and better than anyone else. Barnes & Noble is making strides to catch up. Competition is good, and we should all hope that several excellent online retailers gain market share by putting these key elements together. Right now, Amazon and B&N are the big players because they deserve to be.

Quality matters, now more than ever. Write a good book. Write a great book. Then get it out there to the online retailers that have mastered crowdsourcing.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

So you’ve got a GREAT Storyworld for your novel and you can’t wait to tell your reader all about it. How and when do you do that for maximum effect?

Dre posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have a problem transferring vast amounts of information to my reader in an interesting manner, like the history and the natural laws of a Storyworld.

-Footnotes seem a cheap way to do this.

-I’ve considered excerpts from made-up chronicles or study books, but typical for such texts is that they’re not compelling.

-Simply interrupting the narratives with informative lectures gets disturbing and is a violation against the MRUs.

-And weaving the information through a dialog doesn’t always make sense.

So I’m lost. How do other writers cope with this?

Randy sez: Writers always believe that the reader is dying to know the entire life history of every character and the full history of the Storyworld and exactly how the Storyworld works in all its infinite complexity.

The reader is and she isn’t. Let’s take those in reverse order.

When you pick up a book, you’re looking for a story. Something happening here and now. Characters doing things that matter right now. If you don’t get that right away, you’re going to put the book down. You just will. And your reader is just like you.

As you get into the story, you begin to realize that these characters weren’t born yesterday and the Storyworld in which they live has a long history. Some things in the story just don’t make sense unless you have some context–some backstory or some description of the present world.

So when do you put in that context and how much do you put in?

The answer is simple: Just when you need it and no earlier. Just as much as you need to make sense of the action and no more.

You have many tools to do this:

• Exposition or Narrative summary. A block of it to fill in the past.
• Dialogue. One character explaining the past to another.
• Interior monologue. One character thinking about the past.
• Flashbacks. A scene set in the past, connected to the present.
• Diaries, chronicles, or other written texts found by a character.
• The Pensieve. Works if your name is J.K. Rowling. Works very well. Essentially a flashback.
• Description. Works best if it’s filtered through the senses of the viewpoint character.

Those are your tools. You can even use footnotes, as Stieg Larsson did in his Millennium Trilogy, although this is pretty rare for a novel.

The important thing is to not give backstory or description to your reader until she’s begging for it. She’ll be begging for it when the main story gets confusing and can be easily clarified by a few snippets of backstory or description. Give it to her then. Just enough to answer the questions, and NO MORE.

You may believe that you are the amazing exception to this rule, and that your readers will find you uniquely gifted at telling backstory or description and therefore you can heap it on and let the pace of your story go to zero.

No you can’t. No more than your brother-in-law the tax accountant is amazingly gifted at explaining arcane 19th century tax laws to his enthralled friends. He isn’t. You aren’t. Don’t do it.

Tell your story. Save the backstory until it’s screaming to be told. J.K. Rowling held off on giving her readers the full backstory of Severus Snape for thousands of pages — until that information was desperately needed late in Book 7 in order to advance the plot. Take a lesson from the master. Tell no backstory before its time. Less is more.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you’re writing a novel, how many storylines should it have? How many is too many? How do you handle them all?

Josey posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve been using your Snowflake method to organize my idea for a fiction novel. (I really like it by the way). My question is this: In the process of character sketching and writing the synopsis, it has occured to me that each of the main characters could possibly have their own story. Is that normal? And should I consider doing that or keep going with the story I’ve planned?

Also another question. (I hope it’s ok to ask two) If your category is mystery, does the snowflake method still work? I have a few ideas for a mystery type of story, but in thinking through the snowflake method I’m finding it hard to work the story into that model. I haven’t actually sat down and written anything out yet so I don’t really know if it will work or not. I’m just curious right now. The idea is in it’s beginning stages and I haven’t thought it completely through yet.

I have Writing Fiction for Dummies and I think it is great!

Randy sez: It’s normal for each of the main characters in a novel to have their own storyline. In fact, if you don’t, the novel is going to feel very thin. It’ll feel like the characters are tacked on to play some role in your story.

In real life, everybody thinks they’re the lead character in the story. Think about it. You’re the lead character in your own life, aren’t you? You don’t exist merely to play the role of “humble minion” in your boss’s story. You don’t exist so as to be the “spouse” in your spouse’s story. You don’t exist to play the role of “wicked step-mother” for your step-daughter Cindy.

It’s possible that you do actually play one or more of those roles in other people’s stories. But those aren’t your main role. Your main role is to be the hero or heroine of your own story.

Likewise for every one of your characters. Each of them is the lead character in the novel of their life.

So Josey, what you’ve found is that your characters are real people, and that’s good. I’m not sure I understand part of your question, however. There’s an ambiguity in your question, “And should I consider doing that or keep going with the story I’ve planned?”

If you’re asking whether you ought to write a separate novel for each of those characters, the answer is no. If you do that, you’ll have a cast of main characters for each novel. Each of those main characters will have his or her own story. Then you’ll want to split out separate novels for each of them. And that process will never end.

If you’re asking whether it’s okay to have multiple storylines in your novel, then the answer is yes. That’s good. That’s the right way to do things. Your primary storyline will belong to your lead character. But each of the other main characters will have a storyline, and you’ll assign some amount of space in your novel to develop that story.

But your novel is NOT six different novels in one book. Your novel should be one novel, with separate threads for each of the main characters. You can have as many of these as you have main characters. The amount that you write for each one will depend on how important each thread is to your main thread — the storyline of your lead character. If a thread is closely tied in to the main story, then it should get a lot of airtime. If it’s a peripheral thread, then it should get a little. If it’s not related at all, then yank it out of your story, because it doesn’t belong.

As for the question of whether the Snowflake method works for mysteries, the answer is yes. The Snowflake method is designed to be useful for any kind of story. I’ve never written a mystery myself, but I have some ideas in mind for stories that might be mysteries. I would use the Snowflake method to design those stories, just like any other novel I’d write.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you self-publish your work, do you risk anything? Will publishers consider you damaged goods?

Andrew posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Thank you for all the great information provided on your site! I’ve recently signed up to receive your emails.

I have one quick question that has come to mind while reading your “The Future of Publishing” article.

My question is this: As a amateur writer with a book self-published on Lulu.com, do you think it is valuable to use this self-publishing site to begin to get my name out there, or would paper publishers potentially look down on the fact that I’ve self-published and already reaped sales?

Thanks for your answer!

Randy sez: The publishing industry is changing rapidly. The correct answer to this question three years ago would have been, “No, self-publishing almost always won’t help you in your venture to get published — unless you’re one of those very rare few who manage to sell a few thousand copies of your self-published book.”

Even a year ago, most authors, agents, and editors would have felt this way.

But a funny thing happened in the last year or so. A lot of self-published authors started doing extremely well on Amazon with their e-books.

If you want to see the honor roll of authors who’ve managed to do Xtremely well, I’ll refer you to Joe Konrath’s blog, where he’s been interviewing them practically daily.

Joe himself earned $42,000 in January from his self-publishing efforts. You read that right. Those aren’t yen Joe earned. Not lira. Not pesos. Those were dollars.

It’s easy to blow off Joe’s success as the result of his “platform.” After all, he’s got a very widely read blog and he published a number of books in the past with New York publishers. Joe’s got a name. He’s an established writer. So way too many people say, “Sure, yeah, Joe’s easy to market, because he’s Joe. I’m not Joe. I’ve never been published. I have no blog. So I can’t sell near as many copies as Joe.”

The problem with that is that it’s nonsense. Several of the folks Joe has interviewed lately are writers who haven’t been published by traditional publishers — or writers who just didn’t fare well with traditional publishers, even though they did get a book or few out. Some of these good people are selling better than Joe.

And there’s the case of Amanda Hocking, 26 years old, never published by a traditional publisher, who sold about 100,000 copies of her books in December. Way more than Joe did.

You might believe that Amanda benefitted from the Christmas shoppers in December, that there’s no way she could repeat those kind of numbers in the dead month of January.

Heh, heh. Amanda sold about 450,000 copies in January.

The moral of the story here is that all the rules changed sometime in the last year or so. If you want to self-publish, you can make an amazing success of it — if your stuff is good. If it’s not good, then that’s a problem and you aren’t going to sell thousands of copies, but that’s always been true.

What has changed is that authors can now make an end-run around the “gatekeepers” — the marketing people who decide what will sell and what won’t. Increasingly, readers are becoming the new gatekeepers. That’s the way it should be. The market should decide what sells and what doesn’t.

This is not to put down those marketing folks. In the past, they were necessary because publishing was an expensive venture to get into. A mistake could be enormously expensive.

With e-books, that is no longer the case. No need for a big production run, a big laydown on launch day, and big returns if the book doesn’t sell. Returns for e-books are almost non-existent. Shelf space is unlimited, so there’s no reason for a bookseller to return unsold copies, so the only returns are those from disgruntled customers who bought a book they didn’t want.

But the need for gatekeepers is fizzling. Soon there will be no need at all.

So no worries, Andrew. Market that book. If it catches fire, it’s all good. If it doesn’t, it’ll be lost in the flood. You can always withdraw the book, or rewrite it, or write something else.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Quick, take a guess: Where is the most unlikely spot on earth? And what might this have to do with writing fiction? My own answer to the first question is, “I have no idea.” My answer to the second question will take a bit of unpacking.

Chris posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I started by story using your snowflake method, and love your critiques of one-sentence storylines. Don’t know if you get fed up with them, but here’s mine just to push you almost (but not quite) to the edge:

A confrontation-shy ex-cop battles plots and doublecrosses to save crash survivors marooned in the most unlikley spot on earth.

I’ve gone thru maybe 30-40 different variants as I try to hone in on the crux of my story. This is my best so far. How can it be improved? What do your readers think?

I’m trying to emphasize the unique hero at the start and mysteriousness (of the crash site) at the end.

My protagonist is a korean-american raised in Texas (so he has a drawl, of all things). My villain is an English ex-soldier and newbie member of parliament who’s an accomplished bully like the hero’s (hated but rich) father. You can probably guess where the extra fuel comes from in their conflict.

Randy sez: This is a promising storyline, like the one we analyzed in my last blog post. And like that one, this can be improved by making things a bit more specific.

First, let’s start with that “most unlikely spot on earth.” I can think of plenty of places that are unlikely for a plane crash. The South Pole. The peak of Mount Everest. The Bikini Atoll. My back yard. (I’m hoping a plane crash in my back yard is unlikely, because flying airplane parts can play havoc with a greenhouse.)

This sentence would grow dramatically in power, Chris, if you were to specify exactly where it is. Don’t TELL us that it’s the most unlikely spot on earth. Show us and we’ll figure it out.

This seems to be a general rule to apply to those pesky one-sentence storylines. Whenever you find yourself writing “most” or “best” or “biggest” or any other superlative, ask yourself whether you might be telling something that you could be showing. If so, then show it and see if that makes it stronger.

The second point where I see room for improvement is in the “plots and double-crosses” that our ex-cop hero is facing. In a thriller, you expect to see plenty of plots and double-crosses of all sorts. Those are generic words that don’t really get the blood pumping because they’re generic.

Instead of using the words “plots and double-crosses,” Chris, I’d recommend that you show us ONE of those. Maybe our hero’s girlfriend is secretly on the villain’s side. Maybe whoever pays his expenses cuts him off while he’s in Ulan Bator with no cash. There are any number of ways to be double-crossed. Pick one and sketch it for us in a few words.

Which one? That’s easy. Pick the big one that happens at roughly the one-quarter mark in the book. It should be the one that will pretty much define the conflict for a big chunk of the book.

That’s another general feature of many one-sentence summaries. If you show how your main character gets into serious trouble that will last for a major part of the book, then you really define the conflict. And conflict is essential to your story.

One thing that’s working nicely here is the description of your lead character as a “confrontation-shy ex-cop.” It’s always possible that you could improve this slightly, but it’s strong enough to work with.

The other thing that’s working well here is that our hero is working to save those crash survivors. You don’t have to tell us to root for him. We know that automatically. (Another lesson that has been known for a very long time: Fiction is moral. Readers instinctively root for the good guy. It’s a very rare story where we find ourselves, against our will, rooting for the bad guy.)

Well, Chris, take that and run with it. I’m betting you can sharpen your storyline substantially by adding in a couple of specifics.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog Post of the Day: I regularly read a boatload of blogs. One that made me laugh today was this one by Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. The title of the post was “Put The Big Rocks In First.” That’s good advice, and you’ll see an unforgettable demonstration of what that means in a video clip where Stephen Covey asks an assistant to try to put the little rocks in first. Have fun!

Today, we’ll analyze the one-sentence summary of a novel submitted to me by one of my Loyal Blog Readers. Along the way, we’ll cover two important principles that make the difference between a storyline that sells and a storyline that doesn’t.

Jennifer posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

This is the one story line of my pending novel. Can you analyze it for me.

The investigation into the brutal murders of city officials threatens to bring the city to its knees.

Here is a longer version:
Amidst a heat wave of political corruption, scandal and local crime, homicide Detective Spalding must investigate the brutal murders of city officials that once solved threatens to bring the city to its knees.

Randy sez: The short version needs a bit more detail and the long version is too long. But together, there’s enough here for us to work with.

There is certainly an interesting story here. The first question is: Whose story is it? In the short version, the noun of the sentence is “the investigation.” This is fairly impersonal, but Jennifer instinctively knows this, because in the long version, she personalizes it around the lead investigator, homicide Detective Spalding.

A great storyline almost always focuses on a person. So our first improvement will be to put Detective Spalding into the short version in some way. Note that his name really doesn’t tell us much about him, so we won’t need his name. His job is far more useful to us. He’s a detective. This tells us right away that the novel is either a police procedural or very close to it. That’s a standard category in fiction.

But we need to do more. How is Detective Spalding different from all other detectives? Or more importantly, how is he different from all other people on the planet? If you can find a way to answer that question in no more than four words, then you’ve got a really powerful lead. Jennifer, even if you can’t define him that specifically, any details you can give us about Spalding that make us like him or make us curious about him will put you ahead of the game.

Now we’ve got a series of brutal murders, always a good thing in this category, so let’s look at the consequences of those murders. They aren’t just a series of random murders. They threaten, in some way, to bring the city to its knees. That’s good, but that’s also pretty vague.

Here is the second main improvement I would suggest: Give me enough details about the circumstances of these murders so that I’ll see for myself that the city might be brought to its knees. Don’t TELL me the city is at hazard. SHOW me the hazard and I’ll figure it out.

There are lots of ways to bring a city to its knees. We need some specifics here. Was the mayor murdered in bed with his girlfriend? Was the city attorney murdered with his personal safe open — revealing that he’s been embezzling the city funds? Was the chief of police whacked in the company of the local mafioso? Each of these might conceivably bring the city to its knees, but each would do so in a very different way. Get specific here — in ten words or less.

Jennifer, you’ve made a good start. Get more specific with your lead character and with the consequences of the murders and you’ll have a strong storyline.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.