Thief Books!

I just realized today that I have read three thief-type books over the last few months, all of them excellent in their own way.

  • THE THIEF, by Megan Whalen Turner. Absolutely awesome. Starts off a little slow–not slow as in pacing, but slow as in leisurely. Builds. And builds. And builds. To the point where your breath catches and you’re turning pages faster than you can believe, and then BAM. This is an awesome book, and you can read it online for free for a limited time from Harper Collins here. I can’t tell you much about this book, except that the main character is a thief who boasts that he can steal anything, and when he steals from the King, the King decides to make use of his skills. Even that description is horridly unsatisfying. All I can say is, read it! Read it!
  • THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA, by Scott Lynch. Also absolutely awesome, but in a totally different way. As a method of warning, I should tell you that this is a five-Sherman-Tank book–in other words, it’s a boy’s book. There are fights. There are cons. There are swear words–lots of them. There is a hidden god. There are tricksy little flashbacks that make you laugh and then make you say “mmmph!” later.  But 50 years ago, this sort of book would have had gurls in the background–as bits of fabric to be fought over and cosseted perhaps, with a few evil career-minded sluts making an appearance. But despite the fact that the main characters are male, this is not a book that treats men as superior to women. In fact, it’s a book that embraces strong women. There is an embarrassment of truly intelligent, capable women in both this book and its sequel. They aren’t part of the gang, no, but one doesn’t get the sense that they are there simply to be thrown away. I am eagerly awaiting the appearance of Sabetha.
  • HEIST SOCIETY by Ally Carter. I’ve loved Ally’s spy series, but I truly believe that HEIST SOCIETY is the best book she’s written yet. There’s something about it–the pacing, the language, the depth of the emotional and moral dilemma that shades what would otherwise be black and white into a thousand splintering shades of gray. It’s a fantastic book that has already been optioned for a movie (rights were auctioned off for a considerable sum). It features a teenage girl trying to go straight, who discovers that her father, a thief has pissed off the wrong person. Now, to save his life, she has to steal paintings back. And the clock starts ticking, immediately.

The RITA

I didn’t post this yesterday. I think I was still in a bit of shell-shock. But by now, the news has percolated just about everywhere: “This Wicked Gift,” my debut novella, the very first work that I have ever published, ever, anywhere–is a finalist in the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Contest. For those of you who don’t know, the RITA contest is the Big Enchilada of romance contests. In part this is because it’s run by the national organization of RWA, and so many of the romance books that are published are submitted. In part, it’s because the readers are authors and judges. In part, it’s because there are always upsets and surprises–names left off that nobody expected, and sometimes names added that nobody has heard about. It’s a big deal for authors, at least, to know that other authors read their works and enjoyed them.

There have been a lot of fantastic novellas written over the last year, and if I didn’t post about this yesterday, it was in part because I didn’t believe it until I saw my name up in lights on their website. In fact, after I hung up the phone, I promptly convinced myself that I must have dreamed and manufactured the whole thing. I’m still in a state of disbelief.

But there’s one part of this I do believe in, quite frankly, and I’m very proud to say one other thing. As you may know, from time to time my website features books written by other authors, and designates certain days as Buy a Book Not Written by Courtney day. In 2009, I featured five other authors (and a few more books than authors). One of those five authors did not enter the RITA contest. Of the other four, three of them were nominated for RITAs: Sherry Thomas, Victoria Dahl, and Tessa Dare.

If you go even further and look at some of the mini-book-recommendations I’ve featured on my blog, you’ll find that I picked even more of the finalists: Julia Quinn’s What Happened in London, Simone Elkeles’s Perfect Chemistry (picked, I should add with a gloat, well before it had become a runaway hit with hundreds of thousands of copies in print), and Kelly Gay’s double-nominated The Better Part of Darkness. Can I pick ’em or what?

But looking at the RITA list made me realize how remiss I had been in talking about the books I’ve enjoyed, ranging from Elizabeth Hoyt/Julia Harper’s wonderful books, to Carolyn Jewel’s excellent historicals (and paranormals). Betina Krahn’s Make Me Yours made me a huge fan of hers, and after I read it I searched out her entire backlist, to the extent I could find it. Laura Lee Guhrke’s With Seduction in Mind is one of my favorite books of hers, and one where she took a huge number of risks with her characters–in some cases, the kinds of risks that give authors a little pit of Oh-God-please-don’t-let-that-happen-to-me, and had them pay off in the end. I can’t believe I’ve never mentioned Ally Carter’s Spy Series, which has finally gotten a RITA nod. (And it’s an utter travesty that I haven’t mentioned that her HEIST SOCIETY was one of the best books I’ve read so far in 2010–smart and plotty and yet still focused on characters. It kept me on the edge of my seat!) And I’m only stopping now because once I start babbling about books I can go on and on and on!

Suffice it to say that in the next day, I think I’m going to have a celebration where I give away a select handful of awesome RITA-nominated books. And because there are never enough slots for all the deserving books that I would have liked to see final, I’m also going to be giving away a handful of books that I wish had been on the list, too–not to imply that anyone else should have lost their slot, but I sure wished yesterday that there had been more slots.

On Entitlement

I know. I still owe you the third part of my discussion about copyright and the internet. In my defense, I have to think to write it, and at this moment all spare brain cells (all three of them) are devoted to writing books. In the broader sense, this is good for me and you, but not so good for my discussion of copyright.

But I have something to say about entitlement, and I don’t even have to think about it to write it down, so here goes.

In the last handful of weeks, I saw an instance in which an agent accused a writer of “entitlement.” The agent in question is Lori Perkins; the post is here if you are interested. I mention this, but I don’t mean to single out Lori Perkins in this post as the sole source of bad behavior; there were a number of people who have done similar-ish things in the past that have grated on my nerves. This is just the one that pushed me over the edge.

In any event, in the post in question, this agent labeled a writer as “entitled” because he sent two polite inquiries about a partial sent out in July. One inquiry was sent in November, at which point he was told that he would get a response sometime in December. The second inquiry was sent in February.

“Entitlement” is one of those words that has a certain morality embedded in it by implication. That is, if you say someone is “entitled,” in modern times we mean “this person is acting as if they are owed something, when they in fact are not.” In other words, when we say someone is “entitled” we usually mean that they are falsely entitled. Leaving off that modifier in regular speech means that certain things often go unspoken. That is: if you say someone is “entitled” you should also explain what is false about their sense of entitlement. Because there is nothing blameworthy about someone acting as if they are owed something, when, in fact, they are owed something.

In this case, the gentleman in question had not heard anything on the pages he sent to the agent for over six months. He did not insist that the agent in question read them instantly; he asked instead for an update on his status, and was roundly berated for that. And I just want to take a step aback and say… wait, what? In what sense is a person ever not entitled to ask about partials sent at the request of an agent, and not answered? How is asking for a status update, in a polite manner, ever indicative of a false sense of entitlement? And what does it say about the agent in question, that she thinks that the author did not deserve even this bare courtesy?

So let’s start with the basics. No, you are not entitled to be a diva. You should not expect agents to drop everything to meet your every need, before you’re signed as a client–but we’re not talking about that kind of person. We’re talking about the average writer. We’re talking about someone perhaps like the gentleman featured on Lori Perkins’s blog, or maybe someone like you.

You wrote a book. You submitted it to an agent. Now you’re getting a little worried. Maybe your book isn’t there yet. Maybe your characterization is not zipping. Maybe your plot could be more original. Maybe your query letter has a howling clunker in it. Maybe it does. The last I checked, those things didn’t turn you into a piece of granite, unworthy of basic human civility. And an agent–a good agent–knows that even if this book isn’t there yet, you might move on to book #2 or #3 or #4, and one day, your book will be there. In any event, at a bare minimum, you are one of the very few people who had the courage and stamina to write a whole book.

You are entitled to someone who thinks of you as a potentially valuable asset, who starts off what might be a long, profitable relationship with a sense of professionalism and respect. It is not too much to ask that if an agent says she will get back to you in ten weeks, that at the end of ten weeks you can send a status update asking for more details. And if she responds, “I haven’t gotten to it yet; give me another month,” it is not completely beyond the pale to ask for another update several months later, and if that person fails to respond that time, to e-mail her boss to see if she is still around. You are entitled to civility and professionalism.

You get what you see with agents. If someone doesn’t treat writers with respect on her blog or on twitter, chances are she doesn’t magically morph into someone who treats her clients with respect once she signs them. And yes, you can tell. My agent? She respects writers–even the ones who aren’t there yet. You can tell from her blog, and the effort she goes through to educate people about the query process and the business of publishing. She’s not the only one. Take the late, lamented Miss Snark (aka Janet Reid, aka the Query Shark). She respects writers, too, and you can feel it, even though her tone is quite different. Nathan Bransford? Ditto. Jim McCarthy? You betcha.

Want to know how to judge an agent? Pay attention to how they make you feel as a writer. And anyone who makes you think you’re an insignificant worm, and you’re falsely entitled merely because you think you deserve common courtesy?

Run away. Run away now.

Because if there’s one thing you are entitled to, it is an agent who thinks you have something to offer her.

Limitations on Liability (part 2 of 3)

This is the second of a three part series, entitled “What every romance author should know about copyright law online.”

Yesterday I explained that, under traditional doctrines, an author whose book has been put on the internet, unauthorized, and then downloaded, may have suits against three distinct types of entities: the user who uploads it and the user who downloads it (end users); the server who hosts the material, and the intervening network hubs that pass traffic.

Traditional doctrines, however, have been supplanted by immunity provisions found in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, codified at 17 USC § 512. (The DMCA also implemented several sections that criminalize, among other things, the removal of DRM; those portions of the DMCA have nothing to do with our discussion today.)

So let’s go through our three types of groups, one by one, and see what the DMCA says.

Continue reading →

What every romance author needs to know about copyright online (1 of 3)

One of the things I happen to know a decent amount about is the state of the law regarding copyright online (in the United States).

One of the things I’ve noticed when talking to authors about piracy is that a surprisingly small number of them understand how the law of copyright online pertains to them. They know what they think should be the law, but very rarely have much of an understanding as to how it actually works out in practice. This is an explanation I have given out individually to several people, but I’m getting tired of repeating myself, and thought that it might be useful to actually write something out so I can just give someone a link.

In order to understand how copyright liability functions on the internet, you need to understand the threat that copyright liability poses to the internet, and the solutions that Congress has come up with to make it possible for the internet to function. This is going to be a three-part blog post, spread out over three days, and it will cover:

  • Why copyright law, without limitations, would destroy the internet (this is today’s post)
  • How federal law immunizes various service providers from lawsuit, and who you can hold liable
  • Why the law we ended up with is actually fairly good (and if anything, not protective enough of users)

The first two will be informational in nature only; the last one, opinion.

So, after the jump: Why copyright law pre-internet days would destroy the internet

Continue reading →

Interview!

Victoria Dahl and I interviewed each other for Rhapsody Magazine, and we went a little overboard… Okay, a lot overboard! So much so that Rhapsody couldn’t print the whole thing.

Now, Vicki has posted the whole thing, in all its trembling, cowering glory on her blog, for you to read. Ever wonder how many boas a romance author has, or what laundry gremlins do? Now you can find out.

Bad Author!

So, it is March 1st, and not only does that mean that courtneymilan.com is yellow, but it also means that I was supposed to tell all of you that if you live in Australia or New Zealand (and even if you do not!) you can get your hands on a copy of Proof by Seduction in gorgeous trade paperback, from Mira Australia. On the cover, they’ve zoomed in on the model’s face, so it’s slightly different than the US version.Proof by Seduction

Plus, the first of my local versions of courtneymilan.com is now live. Check out my tiny website, just for Australians and New Zealanders! There will be more of these–for people who live in places other than Australia and New Zealand.

What do you think of the modified cover? What do you think of the Australia site? And how should I start placing the “local” sites within courtneymilan.com? It’s a daunting task–there will need to be several languages, and I’m trying to place flags without it looking terribly busy….

Bad Reviews & Libre Digital

So Harlequin and Libre Digital spent the last week at the Tools of Change conference talking about the promotion they did with my debut novel, Proof by Seduction, on Living Social. I wasn’t there, but I’m told they highlighted positive quotes from people who read the book and loved it–a lot of anecdotal evidence, the kind that ought to give anyone a warm fuzzy feeling.

What they didn’t do was post slides with the negative reviews. I don’t know if they even mentioned them. [ETA: Angela James tells me that they did mention them.] But those negative reviews were very valuable for me as an author. Here; go read the full spectrum of reviews. They range from one extreme of hyperbole (“This is one of the best debut romance novels I’ve ever come across”) to the other (“This is the single most trashy novel I have ever subjected myself to”).

This is not going to be an “I am a delicate flower” post. It’s not going to be about my feelings at all. No matter what my feelings were about these reviews (and yes I read them all, because even though I am not a delicate flower, I am an antsy debut author who is searching for meaningful data in a world composed entirely of anecdote; and no, I did not ever respond to any of these, nor am I going to now), I realized something halfway through.

Many of the people they were offering my book to were not romance readers. They said so outright in their reviews. This was initially a source of consternation for me. But the non-romance readers split into two crowds. Half of them said, “I do not read romance, and this book did nothing to change my mind about that stance.” The other half said, “I do not read romance, but maybe I should reconsider, because this was a fun read.”

The number of those people who would have read my book had they not had it forcibly shoved down their throats? Zero. The negative reviews were a sign that my book was getting into the hands of a diverse population, not just the regular romance readers who were most likely to purchase my book. The only way for me to forgo those negative reviews would have been to make sure that my book just landed in the hands of the easy readers who already adore this particular type of historical romance. And while that would have been great for my authorial ego, in the long run, it probably wouldn’t have been great for growing my readership.

If nobody hates your book, that means your book hasn’t found its way into the hands of enough new people. And, from an author’s point of view, that is never a good thing.

Winners and more things to win

I finally pick the winners of Sara Lindsey’s Promise Me Tonight:

ms bookjunkie
Julie
Fedora

Send me your snailmail addresses and I will get your books in the mail!

While we are at it, All About Romance is giving away a massive basket of books by debut authors, gift cards, chocolate, and a pink Snuggie. One of the books you can win is mine! Enter a comment to win over on their website. So that is pretty awesome.

And while we are at it, I recently found out that my book will be released in Australia/New Zealand on March of 2010. This means I must escalate my plans to have an international version of my site so that it predates the actual release. You will see a contest relating to that shortly….

Why we need books priced over $9.99

There’s a debate ranging about pricing. I’m not trying to take sides between the parties that have been on opposite sides for the last week (Macmillan/Amazon). For the record: I am 50% less likely to buy a St. Martin’s press book, because they are pricing their e-books of mass market releases at $14, than I am to buy books from any other house. If I bother to get a St. Martins book in print, I will read it. Otherwise, sorry, too bad. Macmillan, a $14 price on a mass market release is stupid. You should never charge more for the e-book than for the print book. And you should seriously consider making the e-book more valuable to readers by allowing for limited sharing capabilities and removing DRM.

Also for the record: Nothing that I say in this post about a price point higher than $9.99 is applicable to what I think of as general-interest fiction: mainstream romance, science fiction, probably even vast swathes of literary fiction, non-fiction like biographies of famous stars… you get the drift.

Also also for the record: It’s obvious hyperbole to say publishing can’t survive at a $9.99 price point. Harlequin Enterprises (my publisher) has been very profitable in these down times. In a given month, they release hundreds of books. One or two of those–maybe–will be a hardcover or a trade paperback. So threats that publishing will disappear if prices are lowered are to my mind demonstrably, provably wrong. Publishing will survive. It is obviously possible to make a price point much lower than $9.99 profitable, and to run a publishing company on that basis.

But this is not to say that publishing won’t change as a result of a $9.99 price, and while some of those changes would be welcome, some of them sound pretty awful to me. In order for a publisher to decide to print a book, they create a profit/loss sheet. I have never seen one. I don’t know what it looks like. I have no idea what goes into it. But in limited form, it goes something like this:

Expected fixed costs: Editing: $W. Cover: $X. Copy-editing: $Y. Author’s advance: $Z. Marketing: $0 (ha ha, just a little joke, I’m kidding)

Expected variable costs: Printing: $A. Shipping: $B. Author royalties (once the author has earned out). (and so forth)

Expected gross income=(# of copies sold) * price * percentage that publisher takes.

The “expected gross income” will vary substantially from book to book. The publisher understands that increasing price decreases number of copies sold. The publisher (ideally) wants to set the price such that it maximizes the expected profit. If there is no price where the publisher can make a profit, the publisher will choose not to publish the book. (Incidentally, the author is making a similar calculus: she’s adding up profits and losses and figuring out if it’s worth her time to write a book. Some of the author’s profits will not be strictly monetary, but that shouldn’t stop you.)

Now, as I said earlier, I firmly believe that anything written for a general-purpose audience is such that the expected profit will be maximized at or below a price of $9.99. This is because I think general-purpose audiences read primarily for entertainment and enjoyment. When you price things within their budget, they will choose to read more; if you price things out of their budget, they’ll choose to either read other things, priced at $9.99, or will engage in some of reading’s economic substitutes, like seeing movies or going miniature golfing. Most general fiction, and certain kinds of non-fiction, have somewhat elastic demand curves: lowering price easily increases demand, and so when you’re looking at your “expected income” line above, twiggling the price down a bit gives you a corresponding twiggle up in the number of sales. You can see this effect in action:  paperback versions of most books sell way more copies than the hardcovers of the same book

But there are some books where demand is not so elastic in response to price. Take, for instance, this book: The Parkinson’s Disease Treatment Book: Partnering with Your Doctor to Get the Most from Your Medications. This is not something that I would go out and purchase, ever, whether it was priced at $9.99, $49.99, or $1.99. If I had Parkinson’s Disease, or a loved one had Parkinson’s Disease, my guess is I would not say “screw this book and its $37.95 price! I am going to go play miniature golf instead.” The number of copies the publisher can expect to sell of this book is probably small, relative to, say, Palin’s Going Rogue. If the maximum price they can choose to put on it is $9.99, do you think they’re going to publish it? My guess is no.

And even if you think that publisher would make money on that particular book about Parkinson’s above, are you sure you can say the same for books like Living with Haemophilia or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Guide for Patients and Families?

The people who need these books really need them, and the people who don’t won’t buy them at any price. Publishers will only publish books that they believe (however rightly or wrongly) will make money. Authors will want to get some minimum compensation for their time–and will at least hope that their advance covers their fixed costs. If there is a book that holds a tremendous appeal for a small demographic, a set $9.99 price tag might not cover costs (either author costs or publisher costs). Books that are needed (or wanted) by a small segment of the population will cease to be profitable, and a $9.99 price tag means we’ll stop seeing some of these books altogether.

Likewise, there are some kinds of fiction that do not usually appeal to the general population. The audience for these books is small, but their demand is insatiable. They would rather pay $14.99, or $19.99, or even $29.99 for these books, than not have them appear at all. The general population usually won’t pick up these books for any number of reasons. Today, these books get published because publishers can charge $29.99 for them and recoup the editing investment–hoping that the small group of insatiable fans of these sorts of work will buy enough copies to make their money back. In a world where books cost $9.99, I’m not sure that will be true.

And maybe you’re thinking–well, so what, Courtney? If most people don’t want to buy those books, why should we care about them?

Well. That’s because those are going to be books written overwhelmingly by minorities: gays and lesbians, african americans, latinos and latinas, certain religious groups. Walk through the African American Studies section sometime, and count how many mass market paperbacks there are–and then compare that to the number of mass market paperbacks there are in the general “romance” or “mystery” sections. Count the number of hardcovers and trade paperbacks. (It’s the hardcover releases that are the true bellwether here: if a book has a planned release that is hardcover only, it is because the publisher doesn’t think a trade/mass market release will be profitable.)

It breaks my heart that books written by and about black people (and by and about other minority groups) are not usually purchased by the general population. But it’s true. And so when people start saying that categorically, no books should ever cost more than $9.99, and state with certainty that all purchases would increase if the price point were just low enough, to the point where it would make up the difference in sales… I just have to wonder if those people are considering the sort of books where you aren’t going to get those extra numbers, anywhere, no matter where you set the price.

A $9.99 price wouldn’t kill publishing. But it would change it. In some ways–in many ways–it would be a good thing. But I think that a hard price ceiling would kill diversity in publishing. It would mean that the only market rational business people could go after was a general purpose market. And I think that would leave us, as a society, impoverished.

I’m not saying that Macmillan is right–far from it. I’m not saying that Amazon is wrong–far from it. I am saying that we need to avoid categorical statements. Some books really do need to be priced over $9.99, or it simply won’t be profitable to produce them. And if we drive those books out, publishing will adapt by not selling them.

(Before you say the solution is then to self-publish, do keep in mind that the author is making the same calculus as the publisher. This is especially true for nonfiction. If the maximum price is one where it’s not worth the author’s time and effort, there is no point publishing whether as a self-publisher or otherwise. Self-publishing may be the answer for some of this, but it’s not the answer for many of these books. If we relied on self-publishing, I suspect that investigative nonfiction would disappear–nobody is going to spend 8 years figuring things out if they can’t get compensation. Self-help books based on useful facts and studies will disappear, for a similar reason. But even authors of fiction written for small demographics will find themselves writing fewer books, as they have to work more to compensate for the reduced income. Self-publishing might save some of the books that would otherwise get priced out of the market, but it won’t save all of them.)

Before I end, I want to repeat what I said at the beginning: This isn’t about Macmillan/Amazon. My goal is not to defend either Macmillan’s or Amazon’s current pricing practices. I have no financial dog in this race: my books (in North America[1]) are already priced below $9.99, and my publisher already prices the e-book version of my book below the print version of the book. I do not imagine a future when a book I write will be released in hardcover. But I do think that it’s naive to think that all hardcover releases are like Stephen King hardcover releases: books set at a price point designed to gouge the public into price discrimination. Some of them are priced at that point because it is the only profitable price at which that book can be produced, and removing the price point means the book won’t be published.

——

[1] A footnote: I started thinking about this question because I discovered my debut novel will be out from Mira in Australia/New Zealand in March of this year. Which is great! And they’ve featured the Anna Campbell quote, which is doubly great. The price tag, however, absolutely shocked me. A friend of mine from Down Under assured me that this was normal: the market there is 7% of the size of the North American market, and so the fixed costs for the books get averaged out over fewer books, resulting in what looks to my US-trained eye like fairly hefty prices. I’m very curious to see how AU/NZ pricing will hold up under increased pressure from global bookstores.