Author Swag

Saturday's "Lemonade Social" at RT2014 reintroduced me to a subject I haven't thought much about lately: author swag.

As I watched my fellow authors stake out their places behind the venue's high tables and begin spreading out their bait--I mean swag--I realized, Oh, dear; I only brought myself (and a few paltry old business cards). Back in the day, authors who printed up bookmarks were thought to be going the extra mile (full confession: I've never made bookmarks). But in this ebook age, who wants bookmarks? I'm told even postcards and rack cards are rather passe (so many end up in the trash that some conferences have outlawed "paper swag"). Today's cutting edge authors spring for personalized lip balm, magnets, buttons, sunscreen, pens, first aid kits, chocolates, key rings, sewing kits, mugs; you name it, some author has probably $$$$$$$plattered her name/book cover across it. I even heard of one erotica author giving away samples of personal lubricant emblazoned with her book cover (I am not making this up).

So my question to you is, Does this stuff really work? I mean, just because I pick up Judy Author's sunscreen does not mean that I will buy one of her books. Readers might eagerly scoop up chocolates, but the author's special wrapper is quickly thrown away and forgotten. I have a magnet on my fridge that I picked up at RWA2001 because I thought the cover was pretty; it's still there, yet I never bought the book and couldn't even tell you the author's name unless I went and looked at it. I do wear a Robicheaux Dock and Bait Shop baseball cap that Steve gave me, but he gave it to me because I'm a fan of James Lee Burke, not the other way around. And Steve has a BAD MEN T-shirt that John Connolly gave him, but then Connolly is a friend.

I do see a place for postcards and rack cards, which can basically serve as oversized business cards. I struck up a conversation with one author and took her rack card so I'd remember her name. The entire experience motivated me to spend hours today at Vistaprint designing new business cards and rack cards (that I'll probably never do anything with!). And I must admit it would be rather fun to make up some of their stuff as giveaways to readers I knew actually wanted it. In fact, I'm seriously thinking of ordering this mouse pad for myself...

But the merchandise that isn't junk is not cheap, and giving it away in the hopes someone will buy one of my books strikes me as desperate to insane. Your thoughts?

Candy's Semi-annual Cover Rant, May 2013 Edition

I've just seen the cover for Why Kings Confess, the next Sebastian book, and, well... Let's simply say that they're redoing it (which is really, really nice of them, by the way).

Why is it so hard to come up with a good cover? Part of the problem is that art departments are overworked; a handful people (who'd probably rather be doing something else) are tasked with dreaming up and executing hundreds of covers a year on a limited budget. Coming up with a good cover image must be difficult, because if you look at book covers, most of them are terrible. I know; I just spent all afternoon staring at so many I'm blearing-eyed, searching for inspiration. I've decided I had a lot of nerve to complain.

It isn't just about good design, although that's really important. Covers also need to be right for their genre in order to send the correct, subtle message to readers (I think some of the Sebastian covers fail here). But some covers rise above the rest to the level of pure genius. Take this one, for instance:

Not only is it striking graphically, but the image of a woman holding out an apple says something about temptation, sex, and danger that is instantly understood. Then there's this guy:

Terrible title and boring cover, but I guess once you're a phenomenon, neither really matters.

What drives me crazy is the cavalier attitude shown by many art departments toward historical accuracy. Consider this cover of Tracy Grant's latest book; gorgeous, eye catching, and totally wrong for her period, which is Paris 1815. But since it's so striking, I understand why they left it alone. (I once complained about a cover that was very historically inaccurate but other wise a good cover; what I got in its place made me want to weep.)

My friend Laura Joh Rowland consistently has some of the best covers I've seen. It's hard to pick a favorite, but here is one of them:

So, can you think of any book covers you've found especially striking and appealing? What works for you as a reader? What doesn't work?

UPDATE: Someone just sent me a link to a very interesting article where some very creative people have participated in a game of "flip that cover," where they took a well-known book and redesigned the cover to create a very different impression. See it at Huff Po here .

Galleys!

The page proofs for the next Sebastian book, What Darkness Brings, arrived on my doorstep this week. Galleys are, for the author, the last stage in a novel's long path from manuscript to printed book. At this point, I've addressed my editor's suggestions, reviewed the copy edited pages, given my (limited) input into the cover, and helped write the "cover copy" that tells prospective readers what the book is about. This is the last time I'll see a book before it is published (and yes, sometimes changes are made by someone after I see the galleys, sigh).

"Galley proofs" get their name from the days of hand-set type, when print was manually set up, page by page, in metal trays known as "galleys." "First pass pages" would be run off, which were sent to the editor and author to check for errors. Any necessary corrections would then be made by the printer before the final copies were produced. Of course, these days, most of this is done electronically, but thank heavens I still get actual paper pages to look at, because I have a hard enough time spotting errors as it is, without the added difficulty of trying to read a manuscript on a screen. Most authors will tell you that the brain has a terrible tendency to see what it expects to be there, not what actually is there.



Galleys can be frustrating, since when they arrive I have to stop work on the book I am currently writing and turn away for a few days to do something else (particularly frustrating this time since I just lost over a week to Isaac). But since I know my readers are looking ahead to this book, and not even thinking about Why Kings Confess, which is my own focus at the moment, I thought you might enjoy seeing that things are progressing!

On a side note, one of my readers sent me a link to some more of my covers. These are some Russian editions of one of my romances--another red Midnight Confessions. Thank you, Irin!

WHEN MAIDENS MOURN on Sale Now!

When Maidens Mourn officially went on sale yesterday. Did you know that people call their author friends and wish them "Happy Pub Day"? It's true.

I spent yesterday clearing leaves out of my garden beds, spreading mulch, and mowing the lawn. It was a lovely, lovely spring day, and I was determined not to waste it. Plus, working to repair the last six months' neglect seemed far more productive and sanity-preserving than the way some writers of my acquaintence spend their pub day, namely obsessively checking their books' sales rank at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Oh, look! It's up to 142 on Kindle! Oh, no; now it's fallen to 351! But wait... Much better to spend the day bagging leaves and smelling roses.



The photo above is of a bloom on my orchid tree. The flower is as big as my hand and has a lovely light fragrance. The tree is about fifteen feet high, and this year our winter was so mild that it is breathtakingly covered with blooms. Much more pleasant to contemplate than Amazon's sales rankings!

A Necessary Evil

Here it is: Candy's predictable, semi-annual rant about the copyediting process. If you're curious, you can click on the screenshots I've included and get a better look at the process in action. (You'll also get a sneak preview of a few snippets from later scenes in Where Shadows Dance, but I promise there are no spoilers.)

I've had some copyeditors from hell in the course of my career, but this seems to be my year to luck out with copyeditors. This one was both thorough and sane, which meant that the process wasn’t anywhere near as painful as it can be. But that doesn’t mean it was painless. First of all, this stage is now all done electronically, which means that instead of curling up on my porch swing with the manuscript and a pencil, I now spend days and days sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen, something I really, really hate. Plus, gone are the days of Post-it notes, so that once I stick my changes/comments in the margin, too, things can get quite colorful--and crowded. (If you want to get a better view of the page, just click on the screenshot and you'll get a much bigger, clearer image.)



I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that when it comes to things like capitalization and punctuation, I may as well simply go with the flow (me and the dead fish). Yes, there are rules in grammar. But different houses have different rules and, I’ve learned, different copyeditors within the same house can have different rules, too. They want an accent in Napoleon? Fine, they can put it in there. They don’t want an accent in Napoléon? Fine; take it out. Ditto with the comma in “Now, he wasn’t so sure.” Make that, Now he wasn’t so sure. Is it, The Colonel stood at the top of the stairs? Or, The colonel stood at the top of the stairs? It depends, evidently, on the phases of the moon.

And then we have the issue of historical accuracy. Scrambled eggs were called buttered eggs in the early nineteenth century. Okay, I’ll happily change that, even though no one will know what kind of eggs Sebastian is spooning onto his plate. But when I write “direction” for address, as was done in the Regency, I’m told readers may misunderstand and think it’s a typo that should be “directions.” A Regency Englishman walked out the house; he did not walk out of the house. But I’ve never found a copyeditor yet who didn’t insist on putting that of in there.

One of a copyeditor's tasks is to tell me when she doesn't quite follow the action in the story, as in:



That's fine; I seriously appreciate it. She can also save me from some really, really silly mistakes, as in:



Or:



If I were lazy, I could just skim through the manuscript, stopping only where I see the little blue bubbles. But this is my last chance to change anything in the manuscript before it goes to the typesetters, so I actually read over it three times. On the final pass, I reversed one significant change that I'd made at the editing stage at the request of my editor. It has bothered me ever since I did it, and so with my editor's blessing I put it back the way it was. And no, you can't see that page, because it would be a spoiler!

Steampunk

**

My children and my agent both frequently accuse me of living under a rock. So it’s probably no surprise that when my long-suffering agent, Helen, recently commented that the cover for Where Shadows Dance has a “steampunk look to it,” I went, “Huh?”

In my defense, I had heard of books that are in this genre, I just hadn’t heard of the genre itself. (Does that make it better, or worse?) At any rate, those of you familiar with the genre can now go away snickering. Those of you who live under a rock, too, might be interested in hearing what I discovered from Le Google.

Picture a world where steam drives not only trains but also all sorts of other anachronistic inventions like computers and airships; where women wear corsets and red satin, and life has a distinctive Victorian flavor and aesthetic. Throw in lots of brass and clock gears, perhaps a dragon or maybe even a vampire, and you have steampunk.



Steampunk existed even before someone slapped a label on it (the labeler was K.W. Jeter, back in the early 80s, although the genre has really taken off in recent years). Basically it’s a subgenre of sci-fi and speculative fiction, with the occasional fantasy elements. Some steampunk novels are alternative histories; some self-consciously adopt the style of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Mary Shelley (all of whom are obvious sources for the movement).

There are even subgenres of this subgenre. “Flintlock fantasies” are set in the Regency or Napoleonic eras, when steam power was still in its infancy. “Western steampunk” channels the old Wild Wild West TV show (and movie remake) and melds with other subgenres, such as “weird west” and “science fiction westerns.” There is “steamgoth,” which is supposed to be even darker, although I get the impression steampunk is already pretty dark. And I’ve no doubt that someone out there is writing a steampunk romance or steampunk erotica.

**

The enthusiasm for this re-imagined Victorian world has become so great that the genre is no longer confined simply to books. There are steampunk computer role-playing games (“Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura”), steampunk music, steampunk-influenced interior decorating and design; there are even annual steampunk convention in both the States and the UK.

My own personal reading tastes have never run to science fiction or fantasy, so I didn't see any fiction that caught my fancy. But I do admire the spirit of invention and the renewed interest in craftsmanship and traditional materials the movement is inspiring, and it all looks like a lot of fun.

**

This old stove has been retrofitted with a hi-end electric Miele halogen cooktop and two electric ovens; the copper bowl at the base of the fancy water filter is for the owner's dogs. If you're interested in seeing more of a steampunked house, take a look at this.

The Copy

Well, here's what we have so far. It still needs some tweaking (that first sentence just isn't right), but it's a huge improvement on what was there before. Did I mention these things are always done on a rush, with a deadline of anywhere from one to twelve hours?

**

That’s the challenge confronting C.S. Harris’s aristocratic soldier-turned-sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr when his friend, surgeon and “anatomist” Paul Gibson, buys the cadaver of a young man from London’s infamous body snatchers. A rising star at the Foreign Office, Mr. Alexander Ross was reported to have died of a weak heart. But when Gibson discovers a stiletto wound at the base of Ross’s skull, he can only turn to Sebastian for help in catching the killer.

Described by all who knew him as an amiable young man, Ross at first seems an unlikely candidate for murder. But as Sebastian’s search for the killer takes him from the Queen’s drawing rooms in St. James’s Palace to the embassies of Russia, the fledgling United States, and the Turkish Empire, he plunges into a dangerous shadow land of diplomatic maneuvering and international intrigue, where truth is an elusive commodity and nothing is as it seems.

At the same time, Sebastian must confront the turmoil of his personal life. Hero Jarvis, daughter of Sebastian’s powerful nemesis Lord Jarvis, finally agrees to become his wife. But as their wedding approaches, Sebastian can’t escape the growing realization that both Jarvis and Hero know far more about the events surrounding Ross’s death than they would have him believe.

Then a second body is found, badly decomposed but bearing the same fatal stiletto wound. And Sebastian must race to unmask a ruthless killer who has now become a threat to the life of his reluctant bride and their still unborn child.

Cover Copy Time

You know what cover copy is, right? It’s that little blurb on the back of a paperback or on the inside flap of a hardcover dust jacket that tells you what the book is about. A great cover might lure readers to pick up a book in the store, but it’s the cover copy that usually seals their impulse to buy. Some people are amazingly adept at reaching into the heart of a story and distilling its essence in a way that is both intriguing and profound; most people, quite frankly, suck at it.

I suck at it.

Writing cover copy and writing books are two very different arts. Good cover copy is more like song writing or poetry; it's a skillful seduction that uses key words and the emotions they evoke to tempt and woo the reader. To quote one Internet guru, “The words you place on the back cover of your book are the words that will either walk your book right up to the cash register or march it back to the shelves. Your back cover is the final billboard, a point-of-sale advertisement, and the last piece of promotional material that hits potential purchasers on their way to pay. It can either lure readers inside your pages with well-chosen words or knock the wind out of your sales with faint and feebly-phrased copy.”

In other words, cover copy is scarily important. Did I mention the fact that most people suck at it? Unfortunately, a lot of those people are employed by publishing houses in what they call the “copy department.”

In the last week, I’ve had cover copy for both Where Shadows Dance and The Babylonian Codex land in my email box with notes from my books’ respective editors that said something like, “This just in from the copy department. It’s awful! Can you fix it?” The problem is, an author is usually not the best person to have writing cover copy. I mean, I just spent 100,000 words telling this story and now you want me to reduce it down to 250 words or less, in a way that will seduce readers into buying it? Seriously?

In the end, the final product is usually a mishmash of what the copy department wrote and what I wrote, with some tweaking by the editor. In other words, copy by committee. And you know how well that usually works out.

Over the Moon

**

I received some really good news this morning. NAL had planned to switch the release of the next Sebastian book, Where Shadows Dance, from hardcover to trade paperback original. But the sales figures for What Remains of Heaven are so strong that they've reversed their decision and will now bring Shadows out in hardcover after all.

This is important because library sales are always a big part of any mystery sales, so dropping the hardcover printing could have had a serious impact on the series's future. Plus, it's frustrating for anyone collecting a series to suddenly have the format changed. And, well... I like coming out in hardcover! It makes me feel like a "real" author.

In my experience, publishers rarely reverse a decision once it's made, so this is pretty incredible. I am very grateful to my editor, Ellen Edwards, who worked so hard to make this happen. But the real thanks go to my readers, who've been so amazingly supportive of this series. According to the latest figures, Heaven has a 91% sell-through rate, which means that 91% of the books they shipped, sold. And in an industry where anything over 50% is considered good, that really is something to be over the moon about.

Illustration by Ken Greenhalph

On Book Sales

This was the weekend of the semi-annual booksale held by the Friends of Jefferson Parish Library. After buying something like five boxes of books at the sale last fall, we told ourselves we were going to be good this year. Unfortunately, the sale is held in the Pontchartrain Center, which is just a few blocks from our house, so it’s so easy to go back, again, and again. Also unfortunately, they had a LOT of books this year—people cleaning out their houses to move or disposing of the libraries of deceased relatives, bookstores donating their remainders to the local libraries because of Katrina, etc. I actually think I was more restrained this time, but Steve more than made up for it.

Since we went the first day (Thursday), and each day thereafter, including today (when everything was half price) it was interesting to watch which books sold and which didn’t. There were two tables (with many more boxes underneath) of what they called “Choice Fiction,” which basically translated into hardcovers by mega-selling NYT authors such as Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, Sandra Brown, Mary Higgins Clark, Dan Brown, etc. By today, those tables were almost bare and all the boxes underneath were gone. Hardcover fiction by other writers, even those who hit the Times but don’t stay there long, such as Stephanie Laurens or Alice Hofman, were relegated to another section. Their books were cheaper ($1-3 as opposed to $5 for the “Choice” fiction). Yet as of 3:00 this afternoon, there were still three tables full what I suppose we could call “non-choice” fiction, with dozens and dozens of full boxes underneath (yes, I did crawl under the tables and rummage through the boxes). Obviously, those authors who sell well in bookstores also sell well at the booksale. Not a big surprise, but still vaguely troubling, since with a few exceptions, you couldn’t GIVE me a book by most of the authors on the Choice Fiction tables (ahem, notice I didn't say which ones).

They also had several tables of Biographies, which were not the biographies of people such as Charles II (those were on the “History” table), but the likes of Vanna White, or Nancy Reagan, or George Burnes’s wife Gracie. Those tables, also originally with overflowing boxes underneath, were likewise almost clear by this afternoon. I bought the biography of Charles II from the history table, but why anyone would want to read a biography of Vanna White eludes me. I suppose whoever bought Vanna would be equally mystified that someone would want to read about a king who died over 300 years ago.

This year I went to the sale with a clearly defined strategy. I am looking to buy hardcover books to replace my paperbacks of authors I love, mainly Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and a few others. I was excited to find a hardcover of M. M. Kaye’s THE FAR PAVILLIONS, and a lovely embossed edition of Petronius’s SATYRICON. I also look for history books that catch my interest (deadly, since my interests range from ancient Greece to WWII). And I look for books I can use for research in my own writing. Thus, I found a great book on the history of sailing ships, complete with illustrations and diagrams, another on English vernacular architecture, another on India (I have this idea…)

Books I would or could walk into a bookstore and buy, I don’t buy at the booksale. You see, I found myself looking at those tables of remaindered hardcovers and thinking, How many people buying those nice, like-new hardcovers would otherwise go into a bookstore and buy that book in paperback? Writers like Nora Roberts will never notice the loss of the sale, but I’m sure that couldn’t be said for many of the authors with books on those tables.

And yes, I did see copies of my paperback romances for sale on the Romance table, but I didn’t see a copy of WHAT ANGELS FEAR. Is this good, or bad? It could be good, if it means everyone who bought it loved it too much to get rid of it when they were finished reading it. But it’s also bad because it means that, unlike the authors on the “Choice” tables, my sales aren’t in the stratosphere.

Yet.