I did not expect the same from Stephen King. Not many people believe that the horror genre has any merit, unless one is studying Poe. Asimov and Lovecraft are not touted as great literature. Stephen King belonged in the category of “never-admit-that-I-read-his-stuff” when I’m near a writer. And that’s a shame. The gift of time was granted to me recently – time to do only non-stressful tasks, like reading. I chose to read everything I could get my hands on authored by Stephen King: short stories, essays, novels (if you find anything, like notes or sketches, be sure to send them to me). In the middle of rereading It I stumbled upon character names right out of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha county, names like Sartoris and Snopes, the irony being the characters in King’s story were African American, and the characters in Faulkner’s stories sole purpose in life seemed to be to uphold the “White” Southern institution. I really got a chuckle out of that. To read more about these influences see Faulkner Sightings, about half-way through the page. Faulkner Sightings only reports direct influence. You have to know Faulkner’s stories to see Faulkner’s incredible stream of consciousness through Stephen King’s eyes. It turns the horror genre on its head.

Then I turned on my limited literary analysis tools, limited because the only analysis class I ever took was in high school. Stephen King is only a few years older than me, ok, maybe 10 years older. I heard shades of Neil Young singing through the pros, “…out of the blue and into the black…”. Vietnam underlying everything,  the turtle under Vietnam, and the gunslinger/cow poke at the bottom. All that shaped me had already shaped King enough that he could write about it, and I could relive it.

I saw this question in my search for the Faulkner influence, “Will Stephen King ever be part of the American Literature Canon?” If he does not enter that hall of American lit it will be because people cannot get past the “horror” angle. That’s unfortunate. Stephen King is versatile, his characters live and breathe, his story lines are real enough to be truly horrible, and his mastery of human nature is spooky.

William Faulkner

With such great stories as The Unvanquished and Intruder in the Dust it is a wonder that most High School American Literature classes introduce Faulkner’s work with As I Lay Dying, a difficult stream of consciousness masterpiece. The only story on par with it (in difficulty) is Faulkner’s first novel, The Sound and the Fury. Both are incredible examples of living within the mind of the character, but perhaps the younger reader needs more context from which to read these two novels. Once the reader has Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County in mind, and has read stories of the Snopes, Sartoris, and Sutpen, the reader can then understand As I Lay Dying in context.

Around the same time I discovered Stephen King’s Carrie. King was a continuation of my horror education started by Edgar Allen Poe. Alfred Hitchcock did not grab me the way King did. I read every book King published, up through The Gunslinger. And then I moved on. I thought I was grown up, and grown ups didn’t read horror. I graduated to Science Fiction, but the Dark Tower series was not sci fi, even though it had its elements as such.

Stephen King

Last fall I began reading Hearts in Atlantis,  then read through the entire Dark Tower series, went back to Insomnia, and started reading everything King published that I could find. I even paid for Under the Dome to be shipped to me instead of waiting to find it in the used bookstore.What I discovered, that I didn’t pay attention to in those younger reading years, is that Stephen King also intertwines his stories. And most of his stories connect to the area around Bangor, Maine. But even more, I found King to be a great story teller.

When I read Faulkner I see, feel life in spirals, going ever so deeper on each iteration of the story, stories within stories that connect to other stories in other books. I read “history” by following each generation to the next, from the Native American land grab through the Civil War through the First World War. King does a similar thing by connecting his worlds across 30+ years of story telling.

I’ve changed my opinion about reading horror, at least about reading Stephen King’s works. He is a great storyteller. I don’t think I would want him to visit my campfire and tell scary stories – I would be too scared. I do, however, want to read more, and reread all that I read before. He doesn’t supplant Faulkner, but I don’t know that any author will. King has taken a spot right next to Martha Grimes, whose works I read as soon as I can, including buying them first hand.

This year Frances Pinter of Bloomsbury Academic is one of the keynote speakers at the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Just reading the first line of the blurb “Living through a time of transition is exciting, stimulating, stretching and expensive!” causes excitement. This publisher embraces future trends “experimenting with open content licensing for scholarly monographs” while maintaining a comfortable position in tradition. This promises to be a great talk.

Another keynote speaker is Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Huffington Post. Just recently I talked about the influence The Huffington Post has on the future of publishing (I wonder at O’Reilly’s skill in knowing exactly what I’m looking for). “Publishers just need to find new and innovative ways to reach these digitally-focused eyeballs.” As the publishing industry free-falls, Ms. Huffington steps up with possibilities in the brave new world.

I look forward to hearing Angela Bole, Associate Director, Book Industry Study Group, Inc. speak about the eBook consumer. Allison Belan Assistant Production Manager for Journals, Duke University Press and Maureen McMahon President & Publisher, Kaplan Publishing are joining together to explore “Change”, how to drive it and achieve real lasting change.

Lisa Shannon, Associate Publisher at Wiley speaks about the transition from ebooks into training. Christine Perey of PEREY Research & Consulting brings her “18 years experience working in emerging multimedia communications markets” to speak about “augmented Reality … mixing digital information and the real world in a highly interactive manner “. They are joined by Angelina Ward, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Syngress. Ms Ward is presenting a case study about a year growing her publishing business.

I’m always excited by Adobe, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed by Julie Baher, Experience Design Manager at Adobe as she discusses the future of digital reading. Diana Childress, Senior Director, Content Partnerships at Blackboard Inc. and Carrie O’Donnell,President at O’Donnell & Associates, LLC talk about the digital reality and whether or not digital content eases research or not.

This sample of influential women is only from one day of the three day conference. And, just as last year, I am unable to attend in person. Thanks to O’Reilly I can view all the sessions online; I “attend” a little later than everyone else.

This promises to be a great conference. Hope you can make it.

Arianna Huffington from www.ihavenet.com

Three years ago The Huffington Post, barely out of its incubator, was brushed off as a casual, digital hobby of Arianna Huffington.

By February 2010 The Huffington Post had 3.7 million unique visitors (Nielson Online). Technorati, the premiere blog search tool, has the Huffington Post as the second most linked to blog, second to TechCrunch.

The Huffington Post (The HuffPost in the colloquial) combines American “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps” and “Horatio Alger entrepreneurship” with the ability to brand itself as “The Online Commentator”. So why is The Huffington Post, long on government administration critique, important to the publishing industry?

In part, the answer is The Huffington Post is redefining its role in the world as the “Internet Newspaper”, including various new fields, along with books.

As she is quoted by the New York Times, “when the posts are linked on the front page, the site provides a megaphone and gives authors some prominence. ‘We’ve been very successful in selling people’s books.’”

Take a look at the Huffington Post Book Review Roundup. Even using the conservative estimate of 10,000 viewers, a book reviewed on The Huffington Post is going to do very well.

As more and more people go to online blogs for information, Twitter for breaking news, and Facebook for recreation, The Huffington Post, avante guard of the publishing world, sets the new direction for any kind of information. Publishers, in the throws of electronic rights, in freefall as the traditional publishing world disintegrates, must pay careful attention to any innovation – especially one that is so successful.

I started playing games with my sisters so I could have contact with them on an almost daily basis. When they sends me gifts and notes I know they are ok for that day. A funny thing happened. Through gaming I discovered cousins that I hadn’t seen or spoken with for over 20 years. I discovered cousins that I didn’t know I had. And I really like that. Social Media at its best. Then I found old friends on the same games. It recreates the gaming atmosphere of my teens when we would sit for hours playing whist and bridge.  “It’s ok not to have a lot to say. Let’s play.”

Many management courses that I’ve participated in use the game model to get the point across. Whether it is trust, conflict management, accountability, there is a game to play. Granted, these were usually done offsite, all employees of a particular group or division, similar ranking within the company. I don’t know if offsite training happens as regularly as it used to. I suspect not. It is too costly. Training now takes place online.

eLearning and its counterpart, mLearning (mobile), open up training avenues that are cost effective, easy to manage, and easy to coordinate. The individual takes a course online, tests online, and has his/her scores stored online. Management gets instant, unbiased feedback, and instant progression scores. Great. Except the community aspect of training is gone. Synergy is gone.

My question to research this year is how can we take the goodness of gaming (look at Second Life as a prime candidate) and the goodness of offsite training, mash it all together and come out with effective eLearning and mLearning systems? Is there a way to create a learning environment that lives and learns as the employee “goes up in levels”? And is there a way to instill boundaries in those games so that gaming does not become the primary focus of the employee?

“4. Most authors will be indie authors”
“5. Successful publishing companies will be those that put the most total profit in the author’s pocket. No, not the highest per-unit royalty percentage.”

It’s no new thought that the United States influences other cultures. Americans have been doing that since they settled in the foreign wilderness to take their chances with Native Americans and Nature rather than submit to an “un-G-dly” power. Rebellion is always fueled by the knowledge that an entire country was founded out of rebellion against its colonizing parent country. Horatio Alger wannabees, astronauts, freedom riders, strikers, protesters of all kinds take strength from knowing that the Independent spirit lives on, a whole nation of independents.

So when Mark predicts “most authors will be indie authors”, he’s got good solid footing for that statement. Traditional publishing depends on large teams of people from previewing, reading the manuscript through the production, distribution, and sales. Today that team is not needed. It is possible for an author to hire every single person on that chain, topnotch professional editors, readers, book designers, book cover designers, printers, distributors, and salespeople. The author can get these services for a fraction of the cost of a traditional publisher, there is no infrastructure overhead to account for. At this time authors already have to hire publicists to sell their books. What’s keeping them from hiring the whole team?

Imagine, I, Ms Author, write a book. I can’t get an advance from a publisher because no publisher has any money. So I support myself for the months it takes to write. Then I hire a great editor. Maybe even an editor from a well-known publisher. Why can I do that? Because the editor just found him/herself out of a job because the publishing company went under. Then I hire a designer for the interior and cover of the book. Granted, I’m footing the bill here myself. It means I need a nest egg of about $500. At this point I run out of money, so I use Print on Demand technology to print and distribute the book. I only pay the setup fees and shipping cost of that first book. Once the book is available I get out into the Social Media scene and I start to market my book.

A writer must be in the Business of writing today, just to survive. Tomorrow it will be so “rule of thumb” that I’ll do it because I get the greatest return on my investment by doing it myself, braving nature myself, pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.

And that’s what makes number 5 a reality. I learn that I can produce my own works, get them out there, and pocket the majority of the proceeds.

Technology has changed this the way it has changed all communication. Everything is instant – instant messaging, instant answers, instant stand on one foot contemplation (an oxymoron if ever I heard one).  To collaborate on a writing piece today is a fast affair. For good or better, stories can be composed quickly, reviewed quickly, and published quickly.

One of my employees recently told me about a writing circle that she belongs to. The people rarely see each other, and that’s only because they were friends before marriage and kids sucked up all their times. Now they chat and work together online. The writing circle they formed was for a short duration. Its purpose was to create a story, each participant writing a chapter. They finished the book. But now what? It needs a deep edit. The foremost question, though, is the edit to consolidate and give the piece one voice? Or is the edit to refine each individual voice to harmonize with its companions? And then what do they do with the story?

Unlimited hosting is a great boon. I said, why not host the groups on the French Creek Press site? A writer’s club can make matches between authors and provide a forum for this kind of collaboration. Each group forms around a story, book, theme, whatever the group decides. The groups sets the schedule and out comes a product at the other end. French Creek Press then steps in and creates a free eBook, free for download. Writers maintain their “byline” so to speak and are acknowledged in the front of the book. Instant publishing.

Look for more on this as I develop this idea with up and coming writers. Once the mechanism is in place French Creek Press will open it to all who aspire to write and need a forum.

Watch this space for the Writer’s Circle. And sharpen your pencils to write.

Each team approaches joint projects in a unique way, depending on the chemistry between the authors and the strengths each brings to the project. One person might be in charge of one theme which runs through the book while the others act a accessories, each contributing minor excerpts to support the main thread. Or the group might become decentralized where every author writes a chapter or section of the book independent of the other parts. Sometimes there are researchers and writers. The researcher finds all the supporting evidence and the writer mashes it, stirs it, and produces a cohesive final book.

Today there are books being written by many people, 144 characters at a time, on Twitter. Brandon Mendelson wrote The Falcon Can Hear the Falconer in Twitter. Instantaneous writing and reading. Ever sit on pins an needles waiting for the next installment of a sequel? Imagine the story is unfolding, tweeting out to your desktop, as your working. And these Twitter novels don’t have a plan, an outline, to speak of. How could thousands of people write to an outline, instantly, in 144 characters? The content reflects real time, it’s certainly not static. Current events make their way into the story as the event occurs. The downside to this is managing the contributors, writing time, and the danger of loosing the main theme.

Collaboration takes another twist in an Agile environment. For those of you who don’t know Agile development, on one foot, it is development to small goals within a limited time frame, usually a week to three weeks long. Certain small goals are set and worked towards. Then the project is reanalyzed and new goals set for the next round or sprint. Writers have to adapt to a new writing cycle between themselves and among the Agile team. Publishing collaborative works follows the general model, if you don’t look too closely. The introduction of writing sprints changes everything. Publication dates become part of a sprint. The piece might be “published” many times before it reached its intended audience.

The next model is slightly more complicated. I’ll be looking a single sourcing information and its relevance to commercial publishing.

Spending time with an agent to sell the idea before the book is written may clarify whether or not the book should be written in the first place. After all, the market may already be saturated with books about how to cook frogs and other potential road kill. The time spent marketing the idea is well spent if the author discovers that and avoids one more of such books. Then again, the author might find a publisher that is interested enough and encouraging enough to start the author writing.

The alternative is also risky. If the author starts writing the book because he has a passion about foraging and using everything that he finds in the wild, he takes the risk that the book won’t sell even after it’s written. How many Euell Gibbons’ can the book industry support? (My personal opinion is that the world could use more like Mr. Euell. I can’t count how many times I’ve read his books. If you aspire to be like Mr. Gibbons and are having a difficult time finding a publisher, drop me a line.)

The variant on the basic book model is that the author takes the risk and writes the book before searching for an agent or a publisher. This is the path most new authors must take unless they are well published in venues such as newspapers or magazines. However, there are many instances when a person is recognized as a leader in their field. The publisher might approach such person to write a book, giving assistance at all stages of the book from planning to print.

After the author finishes the manuscript he starts looking for an agent. The agent takes the manuscript in hand and starts shmoozing it up. A good agent has many contacts throughout the publishing industry, each specializing in particular fields; a good agent knows to whom the book should be directed. Phone calls, meetings, lunch, calling in favors all go into the pot. The more the agent believes in the book, the harder the agent works to find a publisher.

For the sake of this model, the book gets accepted by a publisher and the cycle becomes identical to the basic book model. Revisions are made, the manuscript is proofed, typeset, proofed, and published. We’re still dealing with printed matter and one author. Next I’m going to look at ebook creation and collaboration.

Notice that I haven’t said anything about publicity in either model. That’s deliberate. Publicity and marketing of books opens up many possibilities today. This is going to be addressed in later posts.

Books on a Shelf

So many book models exist today. From the traditional write-and-publish to the eBook, with everything in between, the variations are staggering. This post is about the basic book model. Once the book life cycle is described I can then talk about the variations on the model. By enumerating the book models I can have a better understanding of how to create a flexible, living model that works for French Creek Press.

The basic model starts with the author. Ms. Author has an idea for a book. She has never published a book, nor has she published articles on the book subject. After carefully outlining the book, doing the research, writing the synopsis, and writing the first three chapters, she finds an agent. The agent then submits the book to a likely publisher. For the sake of our example the publisher accepts the book and pays a small advance to the author.

At this time the author retires to her little cubbyhole, chains herself to her desk, and writes the book. Since she is chained to the desk 8 hours a day, she actually finishes it according to schedule. The day finally comes when she writes, either literally or figuratively, “And they lived happily to the end of their days. The End”. She lovingly wraps the manuscript, after all, this is her six month in creation heart and soul, and ships the manuscript to the publisher.

When it gets to the publisher it is sent off to readers. The manuscript is ripped apart and put back together according to the publishers needs. Requests for change are drawn up, and everything is sent back to the author. Please fix. Maximum revision time? Four months.

While the author is revising the book, the publisher sets the publishing process in motion. The publishing schedule is set; the book cover is commissioned; the book layout is designed. When the book returns to the publisher, all revisions accepted, the book goes out to proof, offset printing is scheduled, then to the printer for pre-publication copies (ARC-advanced reading copies), and then to the pre-publication reviewers. Then the first print for publication is run.

In this basic model the publisher is established. The books are sent to the distributor, possibly accompanied by the pre-release reviews. Bookstores order the book, and the book is shipped and placed on the shelf in a brick&mortar bookstore.The book remains on the shelf for some period of time. The books not sold become “remaindered”.

That’s the simple life cycle. Next in the life of a book, I look into publishing variations for printed books.

The pictures displayed here are from two different public domain libraries:
Keyboard by Petr Kratochvil
http://www.public-domain-image.com/site_map.html