Month: September 2008

How many “copycat” submissions do you see? Have you ever seen a compelling “copycat” submission?

Do you mean plagiarized? Or simply an idea that’s hot?

I’ve never gotten a plagiarized manuscript.

I’ve gotten Harry Potter-esque submissions and Twilight-ish submissions. Sometimes they’ve been good, but not right for my company.

Generally, if a book has hit it big, the trend is over by the time the copycats start showing up.

What do you think of prologues? Epilogues?

Done well, love them. Done poorly, not so much.

Here’s my opinion in more detail.

What is the shelf life of a novel compared to a non-fiction title?

For fiction, you’re going to get most of your sales in the first year after release. It will stay on the shelf as long as it continues to sell. Average, however, is 1 to 2 years.

Non-fiction average is about 3 to 5 years.

I have noticed lately that Deseret Book, or a certain publisher if you prefer, has being raising the list price on their books dramatically, almost to the point of being overpriced. Overall, have prices of LDS books in all genres increased more this year than in the past?

Book prices are increasing because the costs of printing and delivery have increased. But it’s not just Deseret Book, or LDS books. It’s all over. Have you checked out Barnes and Noble or Borders lately? Their prices are going up too. As is the price of gas, and groceries, and . . .

DB picked up my book about a month ago. The first time I found it on the DB bestseller list 2 weeks ago, it was #137. Last weekend it was at #89 and today it was at #39. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. I’m not sure how else to track sales. Which brings me to a question: On the DB Bestseller list, do you know how many books have to sell for a book to move up 1 place, 10 places, 100 places?

Deseret Book recently made some changes to their website, making it a little more difficult to determine what place your book is in on the list. You have to hand count it. But the ranking of your book on the list still works in the same way.

The DB list tracks sales in relationship to the other books. If Book A sells two copies, and Book B only sells one copy, then Book A is first on the list and Book B is second on the list.

Go to the site and select the category your book is listed in. (Some books are listed in multiple categories.) There’s a light blue bar across the top of the list of books and on the right hand side you can tell it how to sort the books. Default is by Popularity. That’s what you want. Then count down to your book to determine what spot on the list it’s in.

There’s no way to find out exactly how many copies of your book have sold, only how it sold in relation to other books in the same category. There’s also no way to find out how many more copies those books above you on the list are selling. The difference between first place and second place could be one copy or 100 copies.

I was going to start into an explanation of the LDS book market, what’s wrong with it, how to fix it, etc. But that’s a big deal—and it’s taking some time to pull my thoughts together and get them organized. But I promise, it’s coming. Maybe even next week.

So today, I’m going to teach you how to Google yourself. Why is this important? Because it lets you know who’s talking about you. You need to know this if you’re trying to create buzz about your new book.

Every author needs to set up some Google Alerts. Once your Google Alert is set up, you will get an e-mail every time someone talks about you on the Internet. It’s easy to set up and it’s FREE. (Love that word.)

Go to the Google Alert page.

You want to set up an alert on your name and the title of your book. Let’s say you write under the name Jane Smith Doe. You’d want an alert for Jane Smith Doe, one for Jane S. Doe, and one for Jane Doe. The more common your name, the more alerts you’ll get for people that are not you, but deal with it. (And complain to your parents.)

I’d suggest you select Comprehensive as the type of alert. That way it will track websites, blogs, news, etc. I’d also suggest you select Once a Day as your frequency.

Once your alerts are created, you’ll start getting emails that list the places on the Internet where people are talking about you. Go read them. This will give you a feel for how you and your book are being perceived in the general public.

Also, if it’s a blogger who’s talking about you, leave a comment. Thank them for talking about you. Always be pleasant and polite, even if they’ve said bad things about you. This lets their readers know that you are interested and approachable and a nice person.

We had a very mild storm the other night. Just some rain and a little wind. Nothing to even blink an eye at. But something happened during the night and our Internet radio receiver went out. Our Internet fix-it guy still doesn’t know exactly what happened but we’ve been without Internet access for days now. Yesterday, he got it to the point where I could go to one webpage and download maybe two e-mails, and then it would freeze up again. When I left the office yesterday, he was still scratching his head and muttering under his breath.

But he worked some magic last night and today, we’re up and running. Yea!

I’m going to sit here and write all of next weeks posts right now and get them up and scheduled with Blogger so that come rain or shine or earthquake or whatever, you’ll still get your daily fix of LDSP—unless, of course, Blogger gets swallowed into the depths of the earth or washed out to sea.

I don’t want to stir up the hornet’s nest again (start here), but I did promise to give my opinion on Angel Falling Softly by Eugene Woodbury.

First for the issues regarding this book as LDS fiction. As I said before, Mr. Woodbury has the right to write as he wishes. Zarahemla can publish whatever they wish to publish. I’m not going to censor them. If what they write and/or publish is outside LDS interests, then the books won’t sell.

We, as readers, play a huge part in molding the future of LDS fiction. Publishing is a business, and as such, it must be profitable. When a book sells well, readers can expect similar books to be published. When a certain type of book does not sell well, you can be sure fewer and fewer of those types of books will be showing up. We cast our vote as to what is good and/or praiseworthy with our checkbooks, every time we purchase or don’t purchase a book.

I don’t think that Woodbury or Zarahemla intentionally misled readers, trying to sneak a “racy” book over on the LDS audience. They make it clear on the back cover what to expect when they say, “As the two women push against every moral boundary in order to protect their families, the price of redemption will prove higher than either of them could have possibly imagined.” The phrase “every moral boundary” seems pretty inclusive.

I do think, however, that some readers will see the Zarahemla name and assume that it won’t be “that” bad. The lesson from this is, don’t assume anything. Before buying a book, read a few reviews or talk to people who have read it. With the number of LDS bloggers who talk about books, it would be rare to find a newly published LDS fiction title that doesn’t have someone blurbing about it.

And here’s a good place to plug my other blog. I post the new books there. After you read them, go post a comment. Help your brothers and sisters out, so they’ll know what to expect.

Now, about the book itself. I wasn’t as upset about it as some readers were. Maybe that’s because I was forewarned. The idea of vampires in an LDS neighborhood didn’t upset me too much, but I didn’t think there was enough backstory and explanation to get comfortable with it, nor was there enough development of the mother’s character for us to understand how a previously faithful LDS woman could so quickly jump to vampirism as the cure for her daughter’s situation.

I thought the sex scenes, although extremely tame by national standards, were too descriptive. I didn’t like the portrayal of Job—I didn’t feel it was accurate. However, that is one character’s opinion of Job. It would have been nice to see opposing thoughts and views.

I didn’t feel that the daughter was doomed. The way Woodbury sets up how vampires are made was very interesting—it’s based on a genetic adaptation to a particular virus. For me, that takes it out of the realm of damnation and into the medical. But for this to have been really effective, I think Woodbury should have given us more.

In fact, my biggest complaint about the book is that it needed more: more backstory; more of the relationship between the sisters (there was great potential for exploring the question of how we make choices with the limitations that life gives us; this was mostly ignored); more details on the virus; more explanation of the business takeover; more depth to the mother, more struggle for her; more explanation of why it was necessary to bite the mother before biting the girl; more details on Milada’s background. If some of this had been filled in, and some of the intimate descriptions left out, I think fewer people would have had a problem with this book.