Peter Boody's Blog: Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"
Novelist wannabe: The ickiness of selling
As the editor of a good little community newspaper that I’m very proud of, I’ve had to think about all the ways the internet affects my job.
But as a wannabe novelist, who’s been taking some time off in Key West with my bride this month and trying not to think about deadlines, the school budget or the screening machine at the Recycling Center, I’m finding it fascinating to see how the internet is affecting a whole different side of the writing world: book publishing.
It’s scary, to use the phrase of Beth Greenfield, a former reporter of mine who’s gone on to make a name for herself in Manhattan with Time Out New York.
The web, to me, as a longtime aspiring book writer, has come to feel like a gigantic bobby trapped carnival arcade designed to take money from desperadoes who want to sell their books — or at least find a little adoration if not the promise of immortality.
So many reader forums and book fan sites begin to seem, now and then, like they just might be covers for marketing devices designed to take money from writers.
They wander in like browsing deer. They just want to plug their books. The sites tell them that is not allowed except in a separate thread. It’s kept hidden in a dark, dirty corner of the readership playground with a title like: “Author Announcements” or “Read My Book” or “Troll Here and Pick Up After Yourself.”
Except for laughs, what real readers want to pore through an endless list of titles by unknown authors (“Crossed Eyes in Hell” by Sheena Trollop; “Evil Babies” by Sandra Bigham; “Fierce Teeth, Bloody Fangs and the Thrill of Hair” by Douglas LaTrobe-Brandywine) and badly written pitches about end-of-the-world erotic fantasies with werewolves and pirates and bodice-wearing vampire women?
After you post your book, and feel a little dirty about it, you might order some help fine-tuning your manuscript for $799 for the basic once over by a very seasoned pro, perhaps a recent top-notch college grad who’s never heard of a dangling participle or a Latin root or even a transitive verb — or maybe by one of the Russian guys who has attempted to paraphrase a review on my book’s Amazon Kindle site for what I presume is his own site selling pirated ebooks:
“So Thomas Jefferson come back. It goes not well for him, being such a ghost. But he make fine friends, even the president of USA, if brief. A book of beautiful writing!”
Googling demoniacally for evidence that someone else had noticed my book, I discovered a site called Shelfari. This is obviously a promotional device disguised as a reader forum. It was set up by Amazon. When I first found it, I was thrilled to see my book had been “added” to the bookshelves of 18 members. I clicked on their member icons (most of them blank silhouettes; a few had actual photos but most of flowers or dogs, not the readers themselves) to see what kind of books they liked: most of them had literally thousands, THOUSANDS of books on their cybershelves. Many had joined Shelfari the very day I discovered them. Huh? Did they actually sit in front of a computer entering 4,568 titles in one day? I don’t think so.
The number is now up to 57 strangers with my book on their shelves and, except for one reader who gave it 5 stars by the grace of God (people who think my book is a paranormal fantasy romance just because it has a ghost and a Sally Hemings look-a-like in it, gee whiz, are always sorely disappointed), none have rated or reviewed the book. It just sits forever on their shelves.
I wonder if these readers are robots. I think Amazon created them.
I found another site called “LibraryThing.” Its graphics are suspiciously spartan and I can’t figure out who’s behind it or what their angle is. Somebody with a user name like “Chickeebird508” gave my book a two-star rating on this wretched site. Who is this Chickeebird508? What is wrong with her? How could she not love my book — which Kirkus featured as a "critic's pick" at the top of its Indie Reviews page and calls "haunting and engrossing."
I’m still wandering through the thick of all this with my machete, in the midst of a process that I think is nearing its grand finale with a whimper not a bang. I don’t have any grand observations to make about all this just yet — except that sometimes I get an overwhelming feeling of ickiness.
Meanwhile, I just wanted to give you a little sense of things. I’m slated to talk about my experiences in the netherworld of the self-published novelist in June at the Shelter Island library. Until then, I’ll be collecting my thoughts for you.
But as a wannabe novelist, who’s been taking some time off in Key West with my bride this month and trying not to think about deadlines, the school budget or the screening machine at the Recycling Center, I’m finding it fascinating to see how the internet is affecting a whole different side of the writing world: book publishing.
It’s scary, to use the phrase of Beth Greenfield, a former reporter of mine who’s gone on to make a name for herself in Manhattan with Time Out New York.
The web, to me, as a longtime aspiring book writer, has come to feel like a gigantic bobby trapped carnival arcade designed to take money from desperadoes who want to sell their books — or at least find a little adoration if not the promise of immortality.
So many reader forums and book fan sites begin to seem, now and then, like they just might be covers for marketing devices designed to take money from writers.
They wander in like browsing deer. They just want to plug their books. The sites tell them that is not allowed except in a separate thread. It’s kept hidden in a dark, dirty corner of the readership playground with a title like: “Author Announcements” or “Read My Book” or “Troll Here and Pick Up After Yourself.”
Except for laughs, what real readers want to pore through an endless list of titles by unknown authors (“Crossed Eyes in Hell” by Sheena Trollop; “Evil Babies” by Sandra Bigham; “Fierce Teeth, Bloody Fangs and the Thrill of Hair” by Douglas LaTrobe-Brandywine) and badly written pitches about end-of-the-world erotic fantasies with werewolves and pirates and bodice-wearing vampire women?
After you post your book, and feel a little dirty about it, you might order some help fine-tuning your manuscript for $799 for the basic once over by a very seasoned pro, perhaps a recent top-notch college grad who’s never heard of a dangling participle or a Latin root or even a transitive verb — or maybe by one of the Russian guys who has attempted to paraphrase a review on my book’s Amazon Kindle site for what I presume is his own site selling pirated ebooks:
“So Thomas Jefferson come back. It goes not well for him, being such a ghost. But he make fine friends, even the president of USA, if brief. A book of beautiful writing!”
Googling demoniacally for evidence that someone else had noticed my book, I discovered a site called Shelfari. This is obviously a promotional device disguised as a reader forum. It was set up by Amazon. When I first found it, I was thrilled to see my book had been “added” to the bookshelves of 18 members. I clicked on their member icons (most of them blank silhouettes; a few had actual photos but most of flowers or dogs, not the readers themselves) to see what kind of books they liked: most of them had literally thousands, THOUSANDS of books on their cybershelves. Many had joined Shelfari the very day I discovered them. Huh? Did they actually sit in front of a computer entering 4,568 titles in one day? I don’t think so.
The number is now up to 57 strangers with my book on their shelves and, except for one reader who gave it 5 stars by the grace of God (people who think my book is a paranormal fantasy romance just because it has a ghost and a Sally Hemings look-a-like in it, gee whiz, are always sorely disappointed), none have rated or reviewed the book. It just sits forever on their shelves.
I wonder if these readers are robots. I think Amazon created them.
I found another site called “LibraryThing.” Its graphics are suspiciously spartan and I can’t figure out who’s behind it or what their angle is. Somebody with a user name like “Chickeebird508” gave my book a two-star rating on this wretched site. Who is this Chickeebird508? What is wrong with her? How could she not love my book — which Kirkus featured as a "critic's pick" at the top of its Indie Reviews page and calls "haunting and engrossing."
I’m still wandering through the thick of all this with my machete, in the midst of a process that I think is nearing its grand finale with a whimper not a bang. I don’t have any grand observations to make about all this just yet — except that sometimes I get an overwhelming feeling of ickiness.
Meanwhile, I just wanted to give you a little sense of things. I’m slated to talk about my experiences in the netherworld of the self-published novelist in June at the Shelter Island library. Until then, I’ll be collecting my thoughts for you.
On self-publishing a novel and, I hope, moving on
I’m about at the end of the one-year period I promised myself for pushing a novel I was forced to self-publish because editors and agents all said its sales potential was too small. An e-book since 2010, but much revised since then, it came out in paperback a year ago in March. That's when I started the one-year clock.
The agents and editors were right. It has garnered a fair amount of attention for an “Indie” book, the new term for what used to be called a vanity book, but its sales have been very small indeed — about 800 in 2012. (A lot better than the 20 or so for my previous self-published book so I'll take it.)
As I write, I’m scheduled to give a talk on the book at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton and I am prepared for three people to be in the audience for this valedictory performance, including my long-suffering wife.
It was a fun ride.
For a while, I was regularly getting email alerts from Google that posts about the book (the title of which I will not mention here to feebly deflect the charge of self-promotion) had appeared here and there on the web, including an amorous blog devoted to all things Jefferson (Thomas, we’re talking here, though I think many of its users really had crushes on Stephan Dillane’s Jefferson in the HBO series “John Adams”) on which a love-struck reader asked if anyone else had read the book and that she was sorry she had finished it because she wanted it to go on and on.
There were random Tweets about it, too, including one from a college professor in Kentucky who said the book had taken over her soul and asking when would the movie come out. Yikes!
Various libraries acquired it. At the Urbana Library in Illinois, the staff included it on their list of top books for 2012.
How many self-published writers see that kind of response? I'm very grateful that a fair number of people out there liked this book and, I hope, will remember it.
But most gratifying was its acquisition by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation for its beautiful library just down the hill from Monticello. Even if the book merely sits on a shelf there, it amazes me to think that my incarnation of the man has found a place on his mountain.
The book, unlike many, had its chances to take off. There were sparks out there, all right, but they never started a fire, which I admit disappointed me. I really thought this one was going to make it — not in a blockbuster way but in a nice 5,000-annual-sale way for a year or two — and that I really had to force myself into the promotion mode to help make that happen and give the book its chance.
A final few words about all this: After all my years of writing professionally as a newspaperman, it was an experience to have my work reviewed rather than merely attacked in letters to the editor, which is really about politics, of course, not writing.
I fully accept the review process, which has evolved dramatically with the Internet. Everyone can now alert thousands or even millions of potential readers that they hated a book. Scary.
I understand that not every book will work for every reader no matter how “good” it is and that a writer must face judgment if he or she chooses to publish. But I’m still not quite used to it and I’m still stupidly smoldering about one review in particular, which was posted all over the internet and, I suspect, was motivated by something other than an honest and fair reading of the book.
It wasn’t all that bad a review, actually, and I'm a jerk to even think about it.
Overall, the reviews were very positive, 23 of them with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (very few, 5 I think, were from people I know) and 44 with an average of 3.93 among fussier Goodreads members, for whom a “3” is supposed to mean they liked it.
There have been lots of 5’s and 4’s but the average was dragged down by a lot of 3’s and, horrors, a couple of 2’s among readers who just did not get it. They wanted hot sex, car chases and vampires, I self-righteously think.
See how nuts I am, still parsing all this? I need another book to work on, I know. I’m trying to make that happen.
I’d like to thank friends and family for putting up with me during this time, especially the many who allowed me to harangue them into attending my talks and buying the book, especially those who packed the house at Canio’s last summer. That was fun, though I am slightly abashed I really did such a thing.
I had a good talk on Shelter Island, too, where a small but enthusiastic crowd turned out at the library, including Patricia Shillingburg, an Islander who has been in the news often over the years for her work on the Deer and Tick Committee, the Appeals Board and the 350th Anniversary Committee.
She gave me a rare chance to deliver a line that allowed me to make people laugh and, for a moment, consider myself a very clever fellow.
Speaking from the audience, she declared she loved the book and that it even had made her cry at the end.
“Well Patricia!” I said. “I think by the time you get to the end of everything I’ve ever written in the Reporter, you’re in tears.”
Guess you had to be there.
The agents and editors were right. It has garnered a fair amount of attention for an “Indie” book, the new term for what used to be called a vanity book, but its sales have been very small indeed — about 800 in 2012. (A lot better than the 20 or so for my previous self-published book so I'll take it.)
As I write, I’m scheduled to give a talk on the book at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton and I am prepared for three people to be in the audience for this valedictory performance, including my long-suffering wife.
It was a fun ride.
For a while, I was regularly getting email alerts from Google that posts about the book (the title of which I will not mention here to feebly deflect the charge of self-promotion) had appeared here and there on the web, including an amorous blog devoted to all things Jefferson (Thomas, we’re talking here, though I think many of its users really had crushes on Stephan Dillane’s Jefferson in the HBO series “John Adams”) on which a love-struck reader asked if anyone else had read the book and that she was sorry she had finished it because she wanted it to go on and on.
There were random Tweets about it, too, including one from a college professor in Kentucky who said the book had taken over her soul and asking when would the movie come out. Yikes!
Various libraries acquired it. At the Urbana Library in Illinois, the staff included it on their list of top books for 2012.
How many self-published writers see that kind of response? I'm very grateful that a fair number of people out there liked this book and, I hope, will remember it.
But most gratifying was its acquisition by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation for its beautiful library just down the hill from Monticello. Even if the book merely sits on a shelf there, it amazes me to think that my incarnation of the man has found a place on his mountain.
The book, unlike many, had its chances to take off. There were sparks out there, all right, but they never started a fire, which I admit disappointed me. I really thought this one was going to make it — not in a blockbuster way but in a nice 5,000-annual-sale way for a year or two — and that I really had to force myself into the promotion mode to help make that happen and give the book its chance.
A final few words about all this: After all my years of writing professionally as a newspaperman, it was an experience to have my work reviewed rather than merely attacked in letters to the editor, which is really about politics, of course, not writing.
I fully accept the review process, which has evolved dramatically with the Internet. Everyone can now alert thousands or even millions of potential readers that they hated a book. Scary.
I understand that not every book will work for every reader no matter how “good” it is and that a writer must face judgment if he or she chooses to publish. But I’m still not quite used to it and I’m still stupidly smoldering about one review in particular, which was posted all over the internet and, I suspect, was motivated by something other than an honest and fair reading of the book.
It wasn’t all that bad a review, actually, and I'm a jerk to even think about it.
Overall, the reviews were very positive, 23 of them with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (very few, 5 I think, were from people I know) and 44 with an average of 3.93 among fussier Goodreads members, for whom a “3” is supposed to mean they liked it.
There have been lots of 5’s and 4’s but the average was dragged down by a lot of 3’s and, horrors, a couple of 2’s among readers who just did not get it. They wanted hot sex, car chases and vampires, I self-righteously think.
See how nuts I am, still parsing all this? I need another book to work on, I know. I’m trying to make that happen.
I’d like to thank friends and family for putting up with me during this time, especially the many who allowed me to harangue them into attending my talks and buying the book, especially those who packed the house at Canio’s last summer. That was fun, though I am slightly abashed I really did such a thing.
I had a good talk on Shelter Island, too, where a small but enthusiastic crowd turned out at the library, including Patricia Shillingburg, an Islander who has been in the news often over the years for her work on the Deer and Tick Committee, the Appeals Board and the 350th Anniversary Committee.
She gave me a rare chance to deliver a line that allowed me to make people laugh and, for a moment, consider myself a very clever fellow.
Speaking from the audience, she declared she loved the book and that it even had made her cry at the end.
“Well Patricia!” I said. “I think by the time you get to the end of everything I’ve ever written in the Reporter, you’re in tears.”
Guess you had to be there.
Movie rights in play?
A little news on the Indie author front.
Out of the blue, I got an inquiry from a major agency based in Beverly Hills and NY yesterday by email asking if the TV/movie rights to THOMAS JEFFERSON, RACHEL & ME were available.
I said yes.
Now waiting next move — if any.
How about them apples! An Indie book, with almost no marketing compared to a commercially published title, seems to have attracted the eye of the Big Leaguers. With no agent involved. Just me making myself look like a pipe dreamer pushing my oddball novel.
I must add that TJRM's impending breakout may still be nothing more than a pipe dream.
I have learned from a friend whose daughter knows this business that I may never hear another word from the agency; the book may have been on some list that some assistant had to work through.
OK, it is absolutely thrilling that my practically unknown, self-published book made such a list in the first place — but if it all comes to naught, so what? Another flash in the pan, of which there have been several for TJRM (although this would be the biggest, brightest flash of them all).
Who knows? I'll keep you posted. Fingers crossed.
P.S. -- After a week, I did write and got an email back from the agent trainee who sent the initial inquiry on behalf of an agent.
I asked him how UTA even had known about my book, much less had enough interest to wonder about the film rights. And I postulated that it seemed to me his inquiry had to be more than routine list making for the agency because my book is not a bestseller or well known; it's not "out there" as potential movie fodder. So someone must have taken a special interest in it after having read it ...
"All true!" he replied, ambiguously, promising to check with the agent if he could tell me "where the interest is coming from."
Have not heard anything since.
My guts tell me I will ... someday. So patience, Gertrude! How many indie authors can rightfully indulge in this kind of angst?
Out of the blue, I got an inquiry from a major agency based in Beverly Hills and NY yesterday by email asking if the TV/movie rights to THOMAS JEFFERSON, RACHEL & ME were available.
I said yes.
Now waiting next move — if any.
How about them apples! An Indie book, with almost no marketing compared to a commercially published title, seems to have attracted the eye of the Big Leaguers. With no agent involved. Just me making myself look like a pipe dreamer pushing my oddball novel.
I must add that TJRM's impending breakout may still be nothing more than a pipe dream.
I have learned from a friend whose daughter knows this business that I may never hear another word from the agency; the book may have been on some list that some assistant had to work through.
OK, it is absolutely thrilling that my practically unknown, self-published book made such a list in the first place — but if it all comes to naught, so what? Another flash in the pan, of which there have been several for TJRM (although this would be the biggest, brightest flash of them all).
Who knows? I'll keep you posted. Fingers crossed.
P.S. -- After a week, I did write and got an email back from the agent trainee who sent the initial inquiry on behalf of an agent.
I asked him how UTA even had known about my book, much less had enough interest to wonder about the film rights. And I postulated that it seemed to me his inquiry had to be more than routine list making for the agency because my book is not a bestseller or well known; it's not "out there" as potential movie fodder. So someone must have taken a special interest in it after having read it ...
"All true!" he replied, ambiguously, promising to check with the agent if he could tell me "where the interest is coming from."
Have not heard anything since.
My guts tell me I will ... someday. So patience, Gertrude! How many indie authors can rightfully indulge in this kind of angst?
Indie drivel: the madness of review results so far ....
Here's a status report for anyone interested in the trials of self-publishing in this new age of empowerment for us crazies:
This has been like making one more cast or two into striper waters before calling it a day (I always stayed, in my striper days, until my arm hurt):
Hoping to resuscitate sales as this novel fades into the sunset, I sent out a query in October to about 20 Amazon reviewers (thru a service that found them) asking if they'd consider reading TJRM. Eight said they would.
I also scheduled a paperback giveaway thru Goodreads, which drew more than 625 contestants, most of whom also marked the book as a "To Read" on their shelves.
Fifteen won a copy; I mailed them out last week.
What did I get so far for these efforts?
Sales have never been so bad. One Kindle copy this month, no Nooks, paperbacks or Smashwords. In fact, I just "unpublished" the Nook and Smashwords editions so I can stop checking those sites. Not worth the effort.
As for reviewers, there have been:
• Two five-star ratings, one from a top 500 Amazon "vine" reviewer who wrote a sharp review that emphasized the racial aspects of the novel; (** -- see update at bottom)
• A 4-star rating from a guy who liked it a lot but dismissively detected "a tear jerker" ending;
• A 3-star from a Floridian who said he had expected more comedy so felt the book "missed" but thought the history elements were well handled;
• And a 2-star from a Indie writer Texan who really seems to have been loaded for bear when he took up this book and — while saying the dialogue was "right on for the period" — blasted it for errors, bad writing and ridiculousness. (One of the 5-star people specifically praised the writing and even what he called the editing ... Hey. Why does this paradox still surprise me? It has been going on since I published the first Kindle edition.)
That's an average so far of 3.8 -- which is just below its Goodreads average of 3.90 after 69 ratings.
And thanks to the Texan and the guy who wanted comedy, its Amazon rating is down from 4.5 to 4.4 after 34 reviews.
I note that a lot of literary works, including great ones, have ratings like this and a similar rating array ... mostly 4's and 5's, but a lot of 3's and a certain percentage of 2's and even 1's. Huckleberry Finn, one of the greatest of great American novels despite its flawed, rushed ending, is a 3.77 on Goodreads, with more than 1,000 ratings of 1. Good grief. They are probably not people I'd like to have dinner with.
Well, I dread the potential reviews still likely to come in over the next couple of months from the reviewers and readers who have not yet chimed in. *
But I hope against hope their ratings will beat the odds and the clear pattern that now seems set in stone: My little masterpiece, such as it is, will never been recognized by a wide audience. For all its apparent simplicity, it's too complicated. So it's no wonder that no reviewer has hit the nail on the head in a way that ties together the personal and the national issues raised by the story's elements.
The many readers who want pot-boilers and genre fiction won't like it.
That film rights query last summer from the big Beverly Hills agency sure made it hard to get over my hopes, even though I've heard nothing since.
And hey -- one very nice thing: The Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis and its suburbs says on its website that it has 3 copies of TJRM on order. Nice! How did they even know it existed? And why 3 copies? (And why don't I see any order for 3 copies on the book's Createspace dashboard?)
Arghhh. I'd much prefer to be working on a new book than thinking about these pointless things.
* One came in yesterday from Jim M on Goodreads, another reviewer whom I solicited. Five stars, I am delighted to report. Says he couldn't put it down. "Great book," can't wait to visit Monticello again. So how come the book works so well for readers like him and evokes such contempt from a few others? if it WERE badly written, I'd get it. There are a lot of badly written books that get by on story line alone. But as an old editor, I know it's not badly written. I really wonder if it has to do with politics in at least some of these cases even though these reviewers blast the writing. They think it's a liberal screed which it is not.
** A 4-star came in Nov . 30 with a fascinating review and it looks like a 5-star came in Dec. 1 but it has not yet propagated to a place where I can read it. Goodreads is like that. (And since then another 5 and a 4 from people I did not solicit for a review or who did not win a free copy.)
This has been like making one more cast or two into striper waters before calling it a day (I always stayed, in my striper days, until my arm hurt):
Hoping to resuscitate sales as this novel fades into the sunset, I sent out a query in October to about 20 Amazon reviewers (thru a service that found them) asking if they'd consider reading TJRM. Eight said they would.
I also scheduled a paperback giveaway thru Goodreads, which drew more than 625 contestants, most of whom also marked the book as a "To Read" on their shelves.
Fifteen won a copy; I mailed them out last week.
What did I get so far for these efforts?
Sales have never been so bad. One Kindle copy this month, no Nooks, paperbacks or Smashwords. In fact, I just "unpublished" the Nook and Smashwords editions so I can stop checking those sites. Not worth the effort.
As for reviewers, there have been:
• Two five-star ratings, one from a top 500 Amazon "vine" reviewer who wrote a sharp review that emphasized the racial aspects of the novel; (** -- see update at bottom)
• A 4-star rating from a guy who liked it a lot but dismissively detected "a tear jerker" ending;
• A 3-star from a Floridian who said he had expected more comedy so felt the book "missed" but thought the history elements were well handled;
• And a 2-star from a Indie writer Texan who really seems to have been loaded for bear when he took up this book and — while saying the dialogue was "right on for the period" — blasted it for errors, bad writing and ridiculousness. (One of the 5-star people specifically praised the writing and even what he called the editing ... Hey. Why does this paradox still surprise me? It has been going on since I published the first Kindle edition.)
That's an average so far of 3.8 -- which is just below its Goodreads average of 3.90 after 69 ratings.
And thanks to the Texan and the guy who wanted comedy, its Amazon rating is down from 4.5 to 4.4 after 34 reviews.
I note that a lot of literary works, including great ones, have ratings like this and a similar rating array ... mostly 4's and 5's, but a lot of 3's and a certain percentage of 2's and even 1's. Huckleberry Finn, one of the greatest of great American novels despite its flawed, rushed ending, is a 3.77 on Goodreads, with more than 1,000 ratings of 1. Good grief. They are probably not people I'd like to have dinner with.
Well, I dread the potential reviews still likely to come in over the next couple of months from the reviewers and readers who have not yet chimed in. *
But I hope against hope their ratings will beat the odds and the clear pattern that now seems set in stone: My little masterpiece, such as it is, will never been recognized by a wide audience. For all its apparent simplicity, it's too complicated. So it's no wonder that no reviewer has hit the nail on the head in a way that ties together the personal and the national issues raised by the story's elements.
The many readers who want pot-boilers and genre fiction won't like it.
That film rights query last summer from the big Beverly Hills agency sure made it hard to get over my hopes, even though I've heard nothing since.
And hey -- one very nice thing: The Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis and its suburbs says on its website that it has 3 copies of TJRM on order. Nice! How did they even know it existed? And why 3 copies? (And why don't I see any order for 3 copies on the book's Createspace dashboard?)
Arghhh. I'd much prefer to be working on a new book than thinking about these pointless things.
* One came in yesterday from Jim M on Goodreads, another reviewer whom I solicited. Five stars, I am delighted to report. Says he couldn't put it down. "Great book," can't wait to visit Monticello again. So how come the book works so well for readers like him and evokes such contempt from a few others? if it WERE badly written, I'd get it. There are a lot of badly written books that get by on story line alone. But as an old editor, I know it's not badly written. I really wonder if it has to do with politics in at least some of these cases even though these reviewers blast the writing. They think it's a liberal screed which it is not.
** A 4-star came in Nov . 30 with a fascinating review and it looks like a 5-star came in Dec. 1 but it has not yet propagated to a place where I can read it. Goodreads is like that. (And since then another 5 and a 4 from people I did not solicit for a review or who did not win a free copy.)
Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life
Bits and pieces from my newspaper column as well as some riffs on the horrors of novel writing and trying to get one's work the attention it deserves.
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