I've just spent an exhausting, heart-rending week delivering my youngest to college in Florida. It's an incredible place--a small liberal arts college right on the beach, complete with great vegetarian food and a wonderfully supportive faculty and staff. She's already already signed up for sailing lessons and the search and rescue team. I know she'll have a great experience there and that does help. A little.
Yet this morning I found myself needing to reach for The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, and rereading this passage:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Good News!
Writing is taking a backseat with me at the moment as I’m busy getting daughter #2 ready to head off to college. An exciting and heartbreaking time.
But, I’ve just learned that my next Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, WHY MERMAIDS SING, has been picked up by the Book of the Month Club and the Mystery Guild! I had book club sales for my romances, but this is my first mystery book club sale. They’re always great publicity, and they’re also great for a sagging morale.
But, I’ve just learned that my next Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, WHY MERMAIDS SING, has been picked up by the Book of the Month Club and the Mystery Guild! I had book club sales for my romances, but this is my first mystery book club sale. They’re always great publicity, and they’re also great for a sagging morale.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Reading Casablanca in Louisiana
My writers group has been doing something interesting the past few weeks. As part of exploring how screenwriters handle exposition through dialogue, we’ve been reading the script of Casablanca. I mean, literally reading it. Every Monday night for the last couple of weeks we’ve been sitting around and reading the script aloud. Just to make it fun we’ve mixed up the sexes. I’m Rick, and Charles is Ilsa.
Amusement aside, it’s been an interesting exercise. Going over the script aloud, taking turns at reading our parts, has given us a new appreciation for how great a screenplay Casablanca is, even after all these years. Not only is the exposition well done, but the characterization is superb. We hope to finish it tonight, then next week we’re going to have party and watch the movie!
Oh, and the new homepage for my website is up! The entire new site won’t be ready until late September or so, but the temporary entry page looks great. Check it out at csharris.net.
Amusement aside, it’s been an interesting exercise. Going over the script aloud, taking turns at reading our parts, has given us a new appreciation for how great a screenplay Casablanca is, even after all these years. Not only is the exposition well done, but the characterization is superb. We hope to finish it tonight, then next week we’re going to have party and watch the movie!
Oh, and the new homepage for my website is up! The entire new site won’t be ready until late September or so, but the temporary entry page looks great. Check it out at csharris.net.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Book Videos, Part Two
It wasn’t until I started looking into this new promotional phenomenon that I realized there are actually several different categories of book videos. They range in cost from less than $500 up to and beyond $50,000.
The most elaborate—and expensive—involve live actors dramatizing a scene or scenes from the book. Some of these videos run to four or five minutes or more. At the other end of the spectrum are thirty-second quickies that basically involve panned shots of the book’s cover, sometimes with a voiceover and music, sometimes not.
I spent several hours wandering around looking at these things, visiting both the sites of the companies that make them and offer examples of their productions on their sites, and the websites of various authors I thought might have them. My reactions? Mixed.
For one thing, I realized that when you’re not a book’s target audience, it’s pretty hard to judge how effective its book video is. Many of the videos struck me as laughably silly—but then, the books they were pushing struck me as laughably silly, too. So maybe if I were an eager reader of those genres, I’d have found the videos enticing.
Yet even when the video was pushing a book that might have appealed to me, I found I did not like those videos that used actors doing live dramatizations. Why? Maybe it was because most of the actors basically weren’t very good. Almost without exception, the “dramatizations” just looked lame. Once again I found myself thinking, “This is silly.” This was true even of examples such as the book video for Dean Koontz’s THE GOOD GUY—and you know that, at least, was a high-end video made with reasonably competent actors.
Some book videos are just basically author interviews. Now, I generally enjoy listening to authors talk about their books, but for some reason these didn’t seem to work very well either.
In general, the ones that I liked the best tended to feature either stills or short, generic footage of things like planes taking off or aerial shots of Paris or whatever. And the shorter the better. I bore very easily and anything over 30 seconds generally lost me. My vote for the best video company? vidlit.com. But then, their most successful book videos were funny. When it comes to book videos, I think funny is a lot easier to do than serious. My vote for the authors with the best book videos goes to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs—but then, theirs were made for TV, so of course they’re good!
Ironically, I found that most really “big name” writers don’t seem to have book videos on their sites (although of course, some do). Book videos seem to be most popular with romance writers. Some of the examples I found under “What you get for $20,000 to $50,000” were done for romance writers—and some of those writers couldn’t be making more than $5-10,000 a book. That’s crazy.
Do book videos help sell books? I suspect that depends on a book’s audience. As more and more people get more and more of their information from the Net, I suspect we’ll be seeing more book videos. Am I going to jump on the bandwagon? Not for $20,000, especially for a live-action video I'd probably find silly anyway. But for $500?
The jury’s still out.
The most elaborate—and expensive—involve live actors dramatizing a scene or scenes from the book. Some of these videos run to four or five minutes or more. At the other end of the spectrum are thirty-second quickies that basically involve panned shots of the book’s cover, sometimes with a voiceover and music, sometimes not.
I spent several hours wandering around looking at these things, visiting both the sites of the companies that make them and offer examples of their productions on their sites, and the websites of various authors I thought might have them. My reactions? Mixed.
For one thing, I realized that when you’re not a book’s target audience, it’s pretty hard to judge how effective its book video is. Many of the videos struck me as laughably silly—but then, the books they were pushing struck me as laughably silly, too. So maybe if I were an eager reader of those genres, I’d have found the videos enticing.
Yet even when the video was pushing a book that might have appealed to me, I found I did not like those videos that used actors doing live dramatizations. Why? Maybe it was because most of the actors basically weren’t very good. Almost without exception, the “dramatizations” just looked lame. Once again I found myself thinking, “This is silly.” This was true even of examples such as the book video for Dean Koontz’s THE GOOD GUY—and you know that, at least, was a high-end video made with reasonably competent actors.
Some book videos are just basically author interviews. Now, I generally enjoy listening to authors talk about their books, but for some reason these didn’t seem to work very well either.
In general, the ones that I liked the best tended to feature either stills or short, generic footage of things like planes taking off or aerial shots of Paris or whatever. And the shorter the better. I bore very easily and anything over 30 seconds generally lost me. My vote for the best video company? vidlit.com. But then, their most successful book videos were funny. When it comes to book videos, I think funny is a lot easier to do than serious. My vote for the authors with the best book videos goes to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs—but then, theirs were made for TV, so of course they’re good!
Ironically, I found that most really “big name” writers don’t seem to have book videos on their sites (although of course, some do). Book videos seem to be most popular with romance writers. Some of the examples I found under “What you get for $20,000 to $50,000” were done for romance writers—and some of those writers couldn’t be making more than $5-10,000 a book. That’s crazy.
Do book videos help sell books? I suspect that depends on a book’s audience. As more and more people get more and more of their information from the Net, I suspect we’ll be seeing more book videos. Am I going to jump on the bandwagon? Not for $20,000, especially for a live-action video I'd probably find silly anyway. But for $500?
The jury’s still out.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Are Book Trailers the new Blog?
First we had websites. Any author who wanted her publisher to take her seriously (and renew her contract) needed a website—the more extensive and frequently updated, the better. Then came blogs. More personal than websites and constantly updated, blogs became the new, “must-have” tool for bookselling. Now, we have book trailers. And so the pressure begins.
I do think websites are useful. When I hear about a new writer, one of the first things I’ll do is look up his or her website. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a book because of a website, although there have been quite a few times I decided NOT to buy a book because of what I’ve seen on a website (more information isn’t necessarily a good thing). But I suspect I’m unusual in that. Romance readers in particular seem to love interactive authors’ websites.
The self-promotion frenzy that typifies the romance industry also helped drive the proliferation of blogs. How effective are they at attracting new readers? I suspect that, at first, they did work. Now there are so many blogs that I have to wonder who’s reading them all. Certainly, given the time involved, they are a sinkhole. Yes, they’re a way of saying to your publisher, “Look, I’m self-promoting!” (Are you sensing a theme here?) But beyond that? I suspect that with few exceptions, only people who already read an author’s book read her blog. I blog because I’ve found I enjoy it. I enjoy practicing what is essentially a different kind of writing from what I do all day, and I enjoy exploring ideas with other bright, interesting people from around the world who so often open me up to new ways of looking at various things. But how many people actually read my blog besides my sister-in-law, my friends, and my ex-husbands? I don’t know.
Now I find myself coming under pressure to do a book trailer. No, my publisher hasn’t actually said anything to me yet. But when the newsletter for Novelists, Inc, arrived yesterday with a long article about book videos, I felt pressured enough to spend most of the evening cruising the net and looking at examples. Since this is already getting long, I’ll save my thoughts on what I saw for another posting. But did I see any book advertised that I wanted to buy? No.
I do think websites are useful. When I hear about a new writer, one of the first things I’ll do is look up his or her website. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a book because of a website, although there have been quite a few times I decided NOT to buy a book because of what I’ve seen on a website (more information isn’t necessarily a good thing). But I suspect I’m unusual in that. Romance readers in particular seem to love interactive authors’ websites.
The self-promotion frenzy that typifies the romance industry also helped drive the proliferation of blogs. How effective are they at attracting new readers? I suspect that, at first, they did work. Now there are so many blogs that I have to wonder who’s reading them all. Certainly, given the time involved, they are a sinkhole. Yes, they’re a way of saying to your publisher, “Look, I’m self-promoting!” (Are you sensing a theme here?) But beyond that? I suspect that with few exceptions, only people who already read an author’s book read her blog. I blog because I’ve found I enjoy it. I enjoy practicing what is essentially a different kind of writing from what I do all day, and I enjoy exploring ideas with other bright, interesting people from around the world who so often open me up to new ways of looking at various things. But how many people actually read my blog besides my sister-in-law, my friends, and my ex-husbands? I don’t know.
Now I find myself coming under pressure to do a book trailer. No, my publisher hasn’t actually said anything to me yet. But when the newsletter for Novelists, Inc, arrived yesterday with a long article about book videos, I felt pressured enough to spend most of the evening cruising the net and looking at examples. Since this is already getting long, I’ll save my thoughts on what I saw for another posting. But did I see any book advertised that I wanted to buy? No.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
