The Future of Declan Finn The Publishing Industry, and DragonCon

I went to DragonCon with a bit of a mission: to enter something close to traditional publishing.

I was actually feeling kind of good about it, especially by the time I left. I had the business card of an agent with connections to Baen and Tor. I had Jodi Lin Nye's business card. After the Dragon AWard ceremony, Baen editor Toni Weiskopf came up to me, shook my hand, and said it was nice to meet me, she had read my blog.

For that last part, I grinned like an idiot until I had to sit down. Also, it may have been because I am generally terrified of public speaking, and it only kicked in after the ceremony was over.

Ever since I got back, I've been having backroom conversations with people who have varying opinions on the publishing industry.

The short version of the conversations seem to boil down to, "Baen is okay, screw everyone else, and just self publish. You don't need no stinking agent. You just need to publish four books a year."

Uh huh. Gee. Thanks for the help.

I try not to talk money, or sales numbers on this blog. I do everything I possibly can to avoid any such thing. I'm told that, proportionately, I'm not doing that bad.

"Not bad" is enough for me to live with several other people in New York City, but not enough for me to move out of this town, into somewhere else. I love New York, but the cost of living is murder.

But I've been inundated with stories of bad agents -- agents who have great ratings in predators and editors, and are not scam artists, but who have rewritten and destroyed books by inserting themselves into the writing process.

Or stories of publishers who will destroy books by lousy covers. I've gotten a few of those stories from multiple sources. Not to mention, hell, have you seen some of the covers put on good books lately? Count to A Trillion is a great book, but the cover art is very .... bland.

So, what the hell am I doing?

First of all, I'm going to do everything. Yes, everything.

I'm going to submit something to Baen that no one has ever seen before.

I'm going to talk with Jodi Lynn Nye about her agent experiences.

I'm going to submit to the agent.

I'm going to self publish the Complete Pius Trilogy as one Kindle volume. Just as soon as the artist is done with it.

I'm going to self publish the sequel to Codename: Winterborn. Just as soon as the artist is done with it.

Yes, I'm going to blame Dawn Witzke, the artist, for a lot of it. Even though I really should be spacing out releases on principle.

I've also got another project on the block. Which I will discuss tomorrow.

What will I be doing with Set To Kill and the vampire novels? No idea yet. I'm waiting on rejections.

So far, this year, I'm going to at least publish three more works of fiction.

So ... yeah, we're not done yet. The year isn't over, and neither am I.

The fun is about to start.

Strong Female Character Autopsy: Agent Carter and Supergirl

By now, we all know that Supergirl and Agent Carter have failed at being TV shows. The former has been moved from CBS and a $3 billion budget, and the latter has been outright cancelled.

Both have "Strong Female Characters," but is that actually the reason? Not really. Both failed from a failure to act.

If we're all being honest here, Agent Carter's season 1 should have killed it. At worst, women were ignored in the late 40s, not belittled and treated like crap. Almost everyone in her entire office outright hated her. Seriously, how did any of these guys ever have dates with attitudes like that? Carter, in turn, was so hostile to every single male in the office it was grating (hate the people who hate her? Fine. Hate the people who are NICE to her? WTF lady?). By the end of the first season, it had been toned down. And Season 2 almost turned that off completely, which was nice ... then it went soapy with the villains, and finally just went bizarre with a ten minute musical number in one of the last few episodes ... a musical number that came out of nowhere THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REST OF THE STORY.

Gah!

So, no, while it's better than Agents of Stupid, I will not really miss the show. Then again, who'll miss it? It's already got a petition to make it a NetFlix show with fifty thousand names on it. Yes. Really. Maybe then they'll cut back on the ultra-hard "Men are evil, womyn rules" bit entirely, cut out the soap opera, and just stick with halfway decent writing.

At the end of the day, Agent Carter didn't fail because the character wasn't strong enough, or even too strong.

The writing sucked.

Even the good season, number 2, was padded with irrelevant, unnecessary flashbacks that felt like an Arrow knockoff. I didn't care about the crazy super villain going from her politician husband to her gangster boyfriend. I didn't care about the pseudo-Illuminati (Seriously? Evil Businessmen rule the world? What is this? The 90s? Why not have evil white supremacist militias, too?).

Perhaps the writers felt that the character could carry the program. It might have happened if the show had actually spent more time with her. The show is called Agent Carter, not "Super-powered Criminal Minds."

And then there was Supergirl, brought to you by the same man who did The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow.

And it was an utter train wreck, a puff piece of a TV show filled with more cotton candy than a carnival. The characters were very ... chick flick. And no, not a good or witty chick flick (yes, those exist), but bad ones, with all the cliches. You know the ones I'm talking about: eating ice cream with her sister on a couch, talking out her feelings with her friends, and where her true "strength" isn't that she can lift a building, but that's she caring, compassionate and understanding. Are all of these automatically a problem? Not really. The Flash and Arrow also lean heavily on emotional stability, even angst. But the CW programs breaks up these thoughtful moments about our characters' emotional lives with at least four fight scenes an episode, a puzzle to solve, and threats to people we care about.

But for Supergirl, the writers relied on these moments. The better episodes had all of the latter elements. Their episode with a nuclear-powered psychopath hunting Cat Grant, and they had to figure out who the bad guy was, what his motivations were, and how to actually beat him? Those parts were fun, weren't they?

Then there's 15 minutes of Kara whining that Jimmy Olsen called in Superman to save her when it clearly looked like she was getting her ass kicked. Then she had to apologize for whining. Wasn't that fun? No? Yeah, you're not alone. That was so much of the series, it was painful.

What went wrong? Why did a team that puts out a product of quality put out this level of drek?

To start with, Supergirl was originally a project meant for the CW. But CBS wanted it, and obviously wanted it for their targeted audience -- really stupid ten year old girls who didn't know any better, and SJWs who felt like they could pat themselves on the back about such a strooooonnnnggg woman role model. Granted, on Supergirl, there are a lot of moments I can see a good script struggling to get through.

It's one of those moments where I can almost see studio interference doodling on the script pages in crayon. Every time that the show looks like it's going to be awesome, it starts whining.

And Supergirl is budgeted at $3 million an episode? Where'd that money go? Calista Flockhart's salary and hair care? They have THREE major sets -- a bat cave that looks less impressive than Arrow's, an office set, and a spaceship that is only a black room with a CGI table. Are they telling me that it costs $3 million for special effects that aren't much better than the ones Christopher Reeves had? Or was it all because it was shot in LA, and not the cheaper Vancouver of the other Berlanti-verse shows.

I'm figuring the move to the CW could be a vast improvement. Especially if they do something simple and merge the universes. No, I'm not suggestion a four-part crossover even that ends with Supergirl coming to the same universe as the other three shows ... that could be a bit of a Crisis in and of itself. Heh.

Besides, I'm trying to imagine Kara meeting .... anyone on Arrow, really. "Hi, meet Oliver .... no, perhaps Thea .... er, um, Felicity. That's safe. Except Felicity is just like Kara, only without superpowers."

That would be amusing.

At the end of the day, why did these shows fail? You could say that it was political -- you know, writers or studios pushing an agenda. Though I'm not even entirely certain that they know what their agenda was? Was it Grrrl power? In which case, I can recommend a webcomic for you. Was it men are evil? Well, then, it would be strange, since Kara lusted after photographer and part time underwear model Jimmy Olsen, while Agent Carter didn't know what she wanted in her convoluted love life.

So, while it may in part be that CBS wanted a role model for ten year old girls and TrigglyPuff, the simple version is that there wasn't any "there" there. There was no substance, and barely any style. You know you have to worry when one of the most interesting characters on the show was their low-rent Lex Luthor, played by objectivist Maxwell Lord. Hell, I spent the last two episodes screaming at the television for them to stop talking at each other and JUST DO SOMETHING DAMNIT. And while Agent Carter didn't suffer as much from the problem, there was a lot of uneven writing, where they didn't know if they wanted a spy thriller, or if they wanted a soap opera. They tried for both, and got neither. Seriously, when the most interesting character on the show, with the most character development, is Jarvis, not Agent Carter, in the words of Oliver Queen, you have failed this series.

But, again, in the case of Supergirl, I still hold out hope. With the move to Vancouver, expect to see the end of Calista Flockhart, and probably a few of the other actors, who would rather not move to the frozen north. They would rather stay in Hell-A, along with the CBS studio execs who scribbled notes all over the scripts.

And the advantage of being on the CW? Look over the writers of The Flash and Arrow. You might recognize some names. They're comic book writers, like Geoff Johns, or Paul Dini (of the cartoon Batman from the early 90s). And you won't see them on Agent Carter or on Supergirl.

First rule of writing for a comic book show? You might want to know something about comic books.

The Catholic Geek: Superbowl Edition

The Catholic Geek: Superbowl Edition



Host Declan Finn once against tackles a broadcast all by himself by completely ignoring the Superbowl, but does stop to make fun of Liz Bourke of Tor, Marvel's tv shows, and deliver some news about Deadpool, the Hugos, and maybe even do a reading from his work. Again.

Agents of SHIELD, a roundup

This is every blog done on Agents of SHIELD thus far. Yes, I know I did a roundup in the article the other day, but this is backup, someplace one person can go and say "Okay, let me run the checklist."

In the beginning, I really thought that there was room for improvement. Plenty of room, lots of improvement.

By mid-season, I was starting to wonder what the bloody blue Hell is going on on this frigging show!

When Forbes chimed on on the situation, they dismissed "those nitpicking nerds crying over wanting a tie-in show." That's when I took Forbes out to the woodshed and I beat them over the head with their idiocy.

Then I discussed how the show got better after Winter Soldier came out. Because they were allowed to actually have a plot.

Then it ended with Samuel L. Jackson as the deus ex muthaf*&ka himself, Nick Fury.  In short, the last sex episodes were kinda fun.

And I declared that Agents of SHIELD no longer sucked.  Yay! We're doing spy crap on a spy show!. And having comic book characters on a comic book show!  Wow, who would have thought?

Meanwhile, over at The American Journal, I had a conversation about the ten reasons why Arrow beat the ever-loving crap out of AoS.

Later, I tried to tie Agents of SHIELD in with the rest of the MCU, or at least see where it was going.

And I gave it an offhand positive review middle of last season.

And then there was my overall look at season 2 with some thoughts on what I know of season 3.  In short.... it may not suck.  Eventually.

Agents of SHIELD, Agents of Suck or Agents of Meh?

The TV season is almost back on, so I figured it was time to start my review of, well, last season.  And I decided to start with my usual punching bag, Marvel's TV show Agents of SHIELD

Until I went looking, I didn't know how much space Agents of SHIELD had sucked up on the blog.  I really didn't.  It pissed me off so badly, I've blown about eight blog posts, and God only knows how many words on this.

In the beginning, I really thought that there was room for improvement. Plenty of room, lots of improvement.

By mid-season, I was starting to wonder what the bloody blue Hell is going on on this frigging show! Sexual relationships with actors who are 22 years apart?  Ick. Just ... no.

Meanwhile, over at The American Journal, I had a conversation about the ten reasons why Arrow beat the ever-loving crap out of AoS. And I had to cheat to expand the reasons why AoS had anything at all to offer.

When Forbes chimed on on the situation, they dismissed "those nitpicking nerds crying over wanting a tie-in show." That's when I took Forbes out to the woodshed and I beat them over the head with their idiocy.

Then I discussed how the show got better after Winter Soldier came out. Because they were allowed to actually have a plot.

Then it ended with Samuel L. Jackson as the deus ex muthaf*&ka himself, Nick Fury.  In short, the last six episodes were kinda fun.

And I declared that Agents of SHIELD no longer sucked by season two.  Yay! We're doing spy crap on a spy show!. And having comic book characters on a comic book show!  Wow, who would have thought?

Later, I tried to tie Agents of SHIELD in with the rest of the MCU, or at least see where it was going.

And I gave it an offhand positive review middle of last season.

In short, it's been a fairly long while since I mentioned Agents of SHIELD.  I had more to say about it when it was a just plain crappy show that I wanted to become interesting.

So, what happened in Season 2?  Spoilers, if you care.

Agent Coulson starts rebuilding SHIELD after the events of The Winter Soldier, using tech and facilities of the old SHIELD, but rebuilding the personnel.  How we can have anything left over from the old SHIELD if Winter Soldier spilled those secrets all over the internet?  No idea.  Presume that Nick Fury had secrets he never put in computer files, and that only he knew about -- secrets that include Coulson's continued, postmortem existence.

Granted, for this to work, it must include every old, Peggy Carter-era facility, as well as several helicarriers that Coulson has in store for Avengers: Age of Ultron. But that came later.

So, those are the plot holes for EPISODE 1.

Agents of SHIELD No Longer Sucks (Yay?)

So, that took forever.

Everyone knows just how much I have personally hated Agents of SHIELD, and the crap they've pulled over their year and a half of existence. From the start, they had problems. "Original" characters who were as original as cardboard cutouts. Plots that had nothing to do with the Marvelverse until The Winter Soldier film bigfooted them like Godzilla.  They could barely be bothered to bring out minor, insignificant parts of the Marvelverse for street-level villainy.    We won't even go into the creepy sex relationship.  And the less said about how much Arrow beats them like a drum isn't even funny.

Then there was this year, and even the Novel Ninja likes it now.  To start with, they had an overarching plot by bringing in Hydra as a villain. About time.  They had some of the crap from last year come up again, making it relevant. Also, about time. Hell, I'm happy to see these people realize that they're a comic book show around a spy comic book. Which means let's do some f**king espionage, people!  Seriously, we had to take most of last season to get to some real, honest-to-God spy stuff, and they went into it all the way this year. It's a nice change. You know, a plot and all, that always helps.

A new trailer from Avengers: Age of Ultron

Okay, this isn't all new, just the first minute or so, and a few additional frames here and there.

One of those frames includes the glowstick of destiny, which we know Hydra and Baron von Strucker still has.

Mount up. This is going to be freaking awesome.

Avengers, Age Of Ultron ... WTF Was That?

So, that was fun.

Time for my five cents.

Needless to say-- SPOILERS FOR ALL MARVEL FILMS UP TO THIS POINT.

Avengers 2.

WHAT WE KNOW

Ultron is the primary villain of Avengers2. It's really called Avengers: Age of Ultron. So, duh.

We know that Paul Bettany, the voice of JARVIS in Iron Man, is getting his own part as the Vision.  More later.

We know that Pietro and Wanda Maximoff will be in the film.

Dr. Zola, in The Winter Soldier, has an artificial intelligence algorithm that is set to find threats to Hydra, like superheroes, and kill them.

Hydra has the glows tick of destiny from The Avengers.  It has a glowing gem that makes you control people's minds. A mind gem if you will (more on that later).

ADD IT TOGETHER, YOU GET...

Take the AI, stick it into some of Tony Stark's armor, whack it with the mind gem to give it life, and you have a crapstorm ahead called Ultron.

The Maximoff's were seen at the end of Winter Soldier in the clutches of Hydra. Which means that Baron von Strucker and his minions will be part of it. We have another army of darkness ahead.

That was before I saw the trailer.

Now that we've seen The Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer ... now what?

Well, a few things.  To start with, the narration was obviously done by the marvelously malicious James Spader, who is voicing the killer robot Ultron. Blaming Hydra aside, we know a good chunk of stuff.
[More below the break]

Music, Lists, Arrow, and Agents of SHIELD

I've been doing a lot of writing lately, though not here.  I've got Codename: Unsub to work on (the sequel to Codename: Winterborn), A Pius Stand to finish when the beta readers get back, and I'm working on Murphy's Law of Vampires, while I'm waiting for Damnation to get back to me on Honor At Stakes.

To start with, there is the list of Arrow vs. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  And, damn, there were a lot of reasons.

There is also what we're not going to miss from the Star Wars expanded universe, courtesy of The Mouse.

You can check out any of my articles on The American Journal, if you feel like looking at me being cranky with the news, politics, politicians, life, that sort of thing, as I do my impersonation of a right-wing fringe lunatic.... or maybe just a lunatic.

If that's not enough, I've got a fun bit of music for you today.

Now, pardon me, I have to keep working. I hear that DC did something else stupid over the weekend that I have to rant and rage against.

Dissecting the Winter Soldier trailers

Well, yesterday was a little long-winded, wasn't it?

Today should be a little shorter.... yeah, no, probably not

Here’s my rundown of stuff you can draw from the assorted promotional materials.

Some of these are SPOILERS, you HAVE BEEN WARNED.

And some of these are ... well, they are MAYBE spoilers, bit and pieces collected from what we know of the Winter Soldier plot (covered yesterday) and the Marvelverse at large, and just plain old-fashioned speculation.

So, SPOILERS and SPOILERS...maybe.

In the words of Heath Ledger, here ... we .... go! [below the break]

Who the BLEEP is the Winter Soldier?

So, this week comes writing a series on Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

First things first, here, from beginning to end, are the videos we’ve seen so far.

First is the initial trailer, from back in October:

Then the Superbowl trailer, with a cameo by the creator of The Winter Soldier, Ed Brubaker.

And TV Spot #1.

And another spot with the phrase "Fury's last words." Sam Jackson still has several contracted Marvel films... and Nick Fury has more life model decoys up his sleeve than an army of Phil Coulsons, so....

Then a clip that apparently spoils the end of the film.

Followed by a ton of Black Widow. I approve.  I heart Redheads.

Marvel UK's "Three Days of Captain America"

Then... even MORE Black Widow.  I want a movie, and I want it called "Black Widow: Budapest."

So, if you want to know what exactly all this is about, and why a lot of people kicking around the internet are interested in this film, well, let's take a look.

Dear Forbes, you need some nerds.

The following blog post is rated R, mostly for language.

Last week, Forbes decided to weigh in on the whole Agents of SHIELD writing with this article, that claimed that "Had it been this show [that fans wanted] out of the gate, it would have failed catastrophically."

Really? Well, what does Forbes think that fans wanted in the first place?

Had the series come out of the gate with nothing but major universe tie-ins, the series would have tanked before episode two because it would have said to the viewing public “we’re only going for hardcore fans of the MCU right now.”

Major universe tie-ins? What?

Um, how do I break this to Forbes?  Oh, yeah. WE DIDN'T WANT MOVIE TIE-INS! We wanted the Marvel Universe writ small. There was not been one, single, teeny-tiny hint that there's an actual Marvel universe out there independent of the films until seven episodes in. Instead, now, at this late date, we're getting movie tie-ins? If I wanted a movie tie-in, I'd petition for Peter David to write novelizations of the films again.

I try not to swear, but I call BULLSHIT.

BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT.

This entire article is a collection lame excuses, and even if I believed a single one of them, there is no reason on God's green Earth for Agents of SHIELD to have taken so damn long.  As of last week, March 4th, we were 14 episodes in; by this time in a single season of Buffy, or Arrow, or practically any other series with "a plan," we have some idea of who the bad guy is, what their motivations are, and a hint of their sinister plot.

Instead, we have had a creepy sex subplot with Ming-Na and someone young enough to be her son, we still have no idea about Coulson's death (not really), they spent a lot of time with awkward scenes of bad guys talking to each other, yet still lacking any character, and this garbage could have been compressed into half the time.

Don't believe me? Do you really think that "This couldn't have happened immediately"?

So we needed a "second pilot"? We needed the Island of Dr. Quinn ("The Asset")? We needed two-dimensional characters, writing as witless as 24, season 6, and a boatload of writing and episodes that went NOWHERE?
[more below the break]

I'm getting published

So, on Friday, I fired my agent.

Why?  Don't get me wrong, I like Sam Fleishman.  I could talk to him, he could understand what I meant, what I wanted, and what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, he himself told me he had problems selling anything by nonfiction lately. As much as I would have liked to stay with him until the bitter end, it's been three years of my life. There has been no movement. And I'm only going mildly insane. I need to do something, and, even though I have my own business now, it's not exactly going as fast as I would like (granted, if it went as fast as I would like, I'd be going door-to-door, but I'm told that's frowned on. And illegal in some cases).

So, I fired Sam.  He was understanding about it.

So, while this did not lead to a sudden discovery by a publisher, this did lead to a decision.  I'm going to start self-publishing my books.

You read it correctly, books, plural.

You see, A Pius Man was never a one shot; not only was it a trilogy, it was also the last in a series of novels I had written.  Characters like Scott Murphy and Giovanni Figlia had been bit players in two previous novels (though they never met). You can imagine the rewrites I had to put in to make A Pius Man intelligible. It had gone from being the last in a series with people the reader should be moderately familiar with, to a first book published.

For example, Maureen McGrail and Sean AP Ryan had met in a comedy-thriller called It Was Only On Stun.  In A Pius Man, we only know that McGrail dislikes working with Ryan, and we can only imagine why.

Now, you're going to find out.  Yes, I am going to publish my first novel, It Was Only On Stun, through a company called Lulu.com.  Here's hoping all goes well.  I have to do a few things first, like layout design.  And I've got two different versions of the book, which means two different openings.

And, in case you're wondering, yes, I will be writing under an alias. my real last name isn't easy to spread by word of mouth, now is it?

While I am tempted to list this book with a subtitle of A Novel of A Pius Man, I don't think I have quite that many fans.

In short, this is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end.  But we hope, pray God, that this is the end of the beginning.

And now, a flap copy (what you see on the back of the book) of It was only on stun!

When security specialist Sean A.P. Ryan agrees to protect actress Mira Nikolic at a Science Fiction convention, he thinks it can't be all bad. It's only a three-day weekend with some colorful characters in costumes.

But Sean is hardly prepared for what awaits him; the costumes, the fanboys, the freaks and geeks are only the beginning. There are actors with attitude problems, writers with rabies, and how do you spot an assassin when everyone is wearing a mask?

This doesn't even account for the real threats. When his client left Europe, she had been a figure of peace in a region that didn't want it. Now that she's an international celebrity, factions from the old country see her as the start of a reunion tour, with guns. Not only that, but she is being stalked by Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin; he thinks that the actress is actually an Elven princess, and will do anything to prove it to her, including murder.

And what is that body doing in the middle of the vendor's floor with a sword-cane through his chest?

Blog in review, March / April 2012

First, February knocked me out.  The whole month sucked, and you can probably guess why.

Then in March, I started getting pulled down -- first with bouts of depression, then I was busy with video games, girlfriends, and a new job.  And since then, let's face it, I haven't been that great at keeping to schedule. So, sorry about that.

I started March with a character generation chart, for those people who want an easy way to create characters.  WARNING: characters make develop minds of their own in short order.  To follow up on that, there is a more advanced version with the psychology of characters, with real psychology, if you don't consider that an oxymoron.

In April, I had an interview with Karina Fabian about her new book Live and Let Fly, which I also reviewed.

And, I made a quick study of Writer's Block.  And, to go along with it, I explained my current situation in getting published: it's situation normal.

In music, I posted a blog for Simple Gifts ... just go with it. It works.  And, if you don't know Loreena McKinnett ... have a sample, I can recommend her work.  We also had a return to the awesome Lindsay Stirling, and her tribute to Skyrim.

But what about the Catholic Writer's Guild conference? That was covered in March!  Well, that was so self contained, I did that as a separate entry.

Be well, all.

Getting published; Situation Normal

So, I got a call from my agent last Wednesday.  He called at 9pm, and we started talking.

At the moment, it looks a  lot like it's Situation Normal.   And, for those who do not know military acronyms, Situation Normal are the first two words of SNAFU.

On the one hand, my agent is having a grand old time selling projects. As long as they're nonfiction.

And, as you might recall, while A Pius Man has historical elements all over the darned place, it's contained within a framework of a thriller. Which puts me in a new acronym: SOL.

However, my agent suggested I try writing something in nonfiction. Maybe even Young Adult nonfiction.  Maybe something in Ethics, or Religion, or something like that. Something that parents would want their kids to read.  And, after all, I have been spending large parts of my time writing religion articles for Examiner.com.

So ... any thoughts?

Seriously, you folks are the most non-partisan observers I know. Do you think I should write more articles on Catholicism, only make it into a non-fiction book? I can call it Snarky Theology, 101.

There's also the wonderful world of IRA songs. I had an entire thesis in graduate school around Irish rebel songs. Between the text and the appendix, that was almost 150 pages. I would only need about 90 more pages to have a full book ready.

And, there's philosophy. Yes, philosophy. I can literally rewrite philosophy for the basic consumption of the general population. I am snarky by nature, after all.

For those of you who think I should be writing a nonfiction book on Pius XII .... no. Because I'd rather write a novel that people would read than be lost in the shuffle of the two dozen books on the subject.

So, what do you think I should try? Irish rebel songs? Snarky theology? Philosophy? Ethics? Something else all together?  Give me a comment with your thoughts on the matter.

Good news, bad news, and publishing.

So, this is going to be one of those days where there's a lot of good news, bad news.

Good news: I'm keeping up a good pace on my Examiner articles: both as the Catholic reviewer, and the self defense Examiner.

Bad news: so, I don't exactly have a buffer of blogs for this week. My bad.

Good news: I HAVE AN EDITOR WHO WANTS TO SEND MY BOOK TO THEIR PUBLISHER!!!!

Bad news: this book of mine they want is not A Pius Man, and I do not have an agent for it.

Good news: this publisher doesn't need agents!

Bad news: they're not open again to submissions until March 1..... Bugger.

Good news: time to edit. Quickly.

Now, it's been a very, very, very long while since we've done the post explaining how things work in the publishing business.

This is the way things usually work:

Agents represent the author.
Their mission: sell your book to a publisher for the highest possible value.  Agents act as a filtering mechanism for editors. If an author comes with his own agent, he has passed the first line of defense. There has to be something marketable about the book, otherwise, a good agent wouldn't be bothered with it. An agent would certainly not touch a first time author's book with a ten foot pole unless it was pretty darn good. Consider it this way—the agent only gets approximately 10% of what the author does, and an unknown author (barring a celebrity) has no selling value by themselves. The book had better be good.

And the editors need the filter. Editors have agents pitching manuscripts at them constantly. There are some stories about editors having a seven course meal for lunch, and with each new course came a new agent, and each agent has multiple books to pitch.

Editors work for the publisher, and goes over the manuscript with a fine tooth comb. They are generally the people who are the feelers for the book. The agents have to cultivate contacts, pitch the book to editors, convincing them to at least look at it.

And then, editors have to sort through all of the suggested manuscripts pitched in order to select those that would actually be read. Then an editor has to read all of them. Usually, these are samples of fifty pages and a synopsis, but that's still a lot when you consider their already busy life.

And these editors, after sorting through what projects they think will sell, then have to pitch it up the chain of command. 

The publisher is the one that buys the book from you. That's where the money comes from, that's how the book is distributed. Before writers even sell a single copy, payments are first made with advances.

Advances are made by the publisher, and tend to be broken up into three parts: signing with the publisher, the arrival of the first draft; prompt delivery of the final draft. 

Simple, right? The author pitches to an agent. The agent pitches the book to an editor in a publishing company. The editor pitches the book to the company s/he works for. The publisher sells the book to you, the audience. The agent doesn't make money until the author does. The publisher doesn't make money until the books fly off the shelves. 

Or, mathematically....

Agent -->Editor

Editor --> Publisher

Publisher --> the reading populace.

$--> The Reading Populace --> Publisher --> You.

In this case, I skipped step one.

We'll see how this other book goes.  Here's hoping

What's going on with the book? A Pius Man, Doubleday, and the Market

We interrupt this series of DragonCon reports for a news update.......

Ahem....

So, what's going on with A Pius Man and Doubleday, you ask?

Some time ago, I mentioned that A Pius Man was under review with one of the larger distributors of books in America; these are the people who put Dan Brown on the map with a little book about art history and word puzzles. After I mentioned that it was under review, most of you probably noticed that it was never mentioned Ever Again.

I figured that some of you may be wondering what the heck is going on.

The very short version. I had a strong advocate in one editor, who fully supported the book. He liked it, despite some admittedly stupid copy-editing errors on my part (which have since been tended to). Basically, he would support the book no matter what superficial things were wrong with it. This was THE book for him. He would back it all the way....

Then he was fired....

No, there isn't a cause and effect relationship.

Here's the problem...

To start with, the publishing industry is, in essence, owned by about five people. One company is owned by another, and another.

In this case, Doubleday is owned by Random House.

For those of you who don't keep track of economic news as obsessively as I do, a little review.

Around November of 2008, Random House had a minor bloodbath. Employees were slashed in the ten-thousand range. Some blamed the economy, some blamed the rise of electronic media (e-books, Kindles, Nooks, Crannies, etc) and traditional media's “failure” to compensate. Some blamed Random House itself for “wild expansion” during a five year period where the price of hardcovers (their bread and butter) went up as cheap e-books came out by the bushel. (Footnote: NY Times, November, 2008... look it up if you don't believe me)

And it's NOT just Random House that has been hit upside the head by this economy. Books are wounded in general: look at how Barnes & Noble is fairing if you want a good example. Last year, it looked like the clock had started to run out on Star Trek novels; “to be continued” and multi-book series were frozen, because the publisher wasn't going to lay money on how things were going to look three years down the road. Not only that, but in the 2008-2009 year, they had gone through five editors on the Star Trek novels alone. When you consider that Star Trek novels used to come out once a month, and sometimes more, it says something that they questioned the profitability of a long standing franchise. (Footnote, DragonCon, 2009.)

And there are solutions, of course. The Random House Slaughter was followed by massive hiring. Publishers have to cut costs while, AT THE SAME TIME, keep up their output. In the larger houses, this means they still have to put out a hundred books a month. So they have to hire people to replace everyone they had just let go. Personnel who can be hired at lower cost who can do the same job.


However, in a bad economy, personnel hired because they were less expensive can always be replaced by personnel who are even cheaper. (I dislike referring to people as "cheap," but my mental thesaurus isn't firing on full thrusters right now, and “even less expensive” didn't seem right).

My supporter was one of the “cheaper” employees. However, in the current atmosphere (10% or 17% unemployment, depending on how you jostle the numbers), there is no shortage of warm bodies to hire, and it's possible to find employees who are even cheaper still.  And since the rule right now is “Last in, first out,” my supporter wanted a trump card. A property that he could bring into the company, and would guarantee his position... Guess what book he wanted to use.
 
However, if you have ever played a card game that use trump cards, there is only one major rule. You have to have a sense of timing about when you use the trump cards, otherwise, you don't get anything by using them.

And, of course, speaking of timing, my own timing was also perfect. I finally landed an agent five months into this particular situation (word to the wise: if you have a choice between trying for a Post-Graduation degree in liberal arts, or shooting at your true goal IN the arts, ditch the degree).

Right now, the status of A Pius Man is simple: we're back at square one. I'm going to copy-edit the entire manuscript, again, and then, we start anew.