Thanks to everyone who came out to Subterranean Books for Steve Wiegenstein’s launch event for his debut title, SLANT OF LIGHT. For those who couldn’t come, here’s a few photos of Steve and the standing room only crowd.
- Finish your current novel within a tight timeframe. Maybe give yourself 2 months to finish it, or start a new novel and give yourself 3 months. You need to prove to yourself that you can do this. If you can’t, that says something—perhaps you’d be more successful at focusing on short stories.
- Join a writers group. It’s possible you’ve already done this, but the key here is that you need to find writers who are not friends with you and work with them on a regular basis. It’s just as important that you get feedback from other writers as it is that you give them feedback too—the latter will improve your writing just as much as the former.
- Keep reading. A book a week would be ideal, but every two weeks would be fine too.
- Blog once a week. If you’re ever going to get published, you need to start building a fanbase now. Write about whatever you want—don’t overthink your target audience or anything like that. Just write about whatever you’re most excited about that week. Blogging will significantly help your writing—it teaches you to be succinct, entertaining (even though you’re writing about something that’s exciting to you, the challenge is presenting it in a way that is interesting to other people), and consistent. Plus, it’s nice to know that you can put something out there and people will actually read it right away.
With The Hunger Games movie coming out tonight, the meteoric rise of the books have been the talk of the town. Turns out that there’s no Rowling-esque story at the origin of The Hunger Games; Suzanne Collins was already an established writer with a young adult series under her belt. According to a Salon.com article, “Scholastic bought “The Hunger Games” on the strength of a four-page proposal covering all three books of the projected YA (young adult) trilogy.”
Imagine if were always that easy.
Now, Collins deserves a huge amount of credit for actually writing the series after that four-page proposal. Writing it quite well, in fact. The three books of the trilogy have sold over 24 million copies since the first book hit bookshelves in the fall of 2008.
All of us at Blank Slate Press have read the Hunger Games trilogy. We love the books, and we’ve watched how the books inspired the emerging field of YA dystopian fiction (dystopian fiction has been around for many years, of course, but never has it been this profitable). Divergent and Matched are two other recent YA dystopian novels that have done quite well.
What is it about these books that appeal to readers both young and old? Specifically, why do we hunger for The Hunger Games? Here are a few reasons:
- The Future Isn’t All That Futuristic: A friend asked me the other day for a book recommendation. She had just finished the Hunger Games trilogy and loved it. She said she was open to pretty much any book, but, she said, “I don’t like sci-fi.” My guess is that a vast contingent of people who read and loved The Hunger Games fit into that category–they don’t want spaceships and aliens and a world that looks completely different from their own. They want something familiar. I think this is the number 1 reason why dystopian fiction works–the world is different than ours, but it’s not foreign. In fact, in many ways it has regressed–Katniss hunts with a bow and arrow, not a rifle with AI enhancements. There’s a very organic, relatable feel to Panem. Even in the first chapter–don’t underestimate the first chapter–you feel like you know that world. If Collins had started off with a scene in the Capitol, I guarantee that many readers would have put down the book and never looked back.
- High Stakes: Remember at the end of The Goblet of Fire when you realized that children could die in the world of Harry Potter? It was a turning point for the books–they went from lively children’s books in which anyone with enough courage could beat significantly more powerful dark wizards and giant basilisks to children’s books in which bad things happen and things end, just like in the real world. Now look at The Hunger Games. The stakes are immense. 24 children enter the arena. Only 1 will walk out. Those, my friends, are high stakes.
- The “I Could Do That” Effect: If you’ve ever watched Survivor or Ninja Warrior, you’ve said to yourself, “I could do that!” Now, most of us don’t actually want to do that–who wants to starve on an island for 39 days or get pummeled by an obstacle course? Not me. Nor do I want to put my life on the line against 23 other contestants in The Hunger Games. But from my safe perspective as a couch spectator, I can feel the tension and elation of the Games because I’m convinced I could play along. Also, the element of sport in The Hunger Games made the books just as appealing to males as to females, despite the female protagonist.
- Pacing Is Everything: This is something that Collins (and her editors) does remarkably well. Every single chapter moves the story forward. It’s relentless. And it’s not just about cliffhangers. It’s about constant forward momentum. Every chapter escalates the action and the conflict. If you want to write a book that people can’t put down, don’t even give them a chance to put it down. Keep pushing them forward until they reach the last page.
- Romance Is a Choice: You want to know why young readers–particularly young women–want to read about romance and love triangles? Because romance is a choice at a time in a young person’s life when they don’t feel like they get to make many choices of their own. They live with their parents. They go to class and do homework and can only see their friends when their parents can drive them around. They feel like they have very little control or power of their own. However, no one can control their romantic feelings. That’s something they have all to themselves, just like Katniss.
- Brilliant Cover Design: It’s an iconic cover, an instant classic. There are so many ways that Scholastic could have messed up the cover, but they didn’t. Genre fiction has been weighed down by bad cover art for many years, and I’m glad publishing houses are finally coming to their senses about how to package it.
One non-Hunger Games note: Kristy has completed the book trailer for Blank Slate Press’ upcoming novel, Slant of Light. Check it out below or click this link.
Thank you all who voted and offered feedback on the cover of Steve Wiegenstein’s debut novel, Slant of Light. We’re really happy with the end result:
We randomly selected one of the commenters on the cover selection entry, and the winner of a copy of Slant of Light is Ellen Kobayashi. Ellen, we’ll be in touch to see which format you’d prefer.
The early reviews are starting to come in for Slant of Light, and we like what we see!
Book Review: SLANT OF LIGHT by Steve Wiegenstein
Blank Slate Press
Review by Margo L. Dill
Published in the Champaign News-Gazette (Champaign, IL)
Steve Wiegenstein is a debut novelist with a brand new, independent publisher. But his historical fiction novel, “Slant of Light,” is so well-written, immediately transforming readers to Missouri in the late 1850s, that they’ll think he has been writing and publishing books for decades. His descriptions are perfect, his dialogue realistic, and his plot captivating. If you’re a historical fiction fan, you must put “Slant of Light” at the top of your to-be-read list.
The novel focuses on three main characters, each unique and interesting in their own way. James Turner is a writer, lecturer, and idealist, who wrote a book titled, “Travels to Daybreak,” which describes a utopian community. George Webb, a resident of Missouri, grants Turner some land to start his town, so he’s off to actually set up what he believed was only in his book as theory. He has to leave his new bride, Charlotte, whom he plans to send for once he gets matters settled.
However Charlotte, feisty and hard-working, has plans of her own and decides she will not wait for her husband to send for her. Against her father’s wishes and in spite of the turmoil rising in the region, she takes a boat from Kansas to St. Louis and then travels by land the rest of the way to Southern Missouri.
She winds up not having to travel alone after her father, Captain Carr, rescues a man, Adam Cabot, from being hung in front of the hotel in Leavenworth, Kansas by an angry mob. Cabot was running for office as an abolitionist, wanting to be Leavenworth’s representative to the Constitutional Convention, when he met men on the road who had some different opinions.
Thus, the three main characters find themselves in Daybreak, a new community where everyone is supposed to work together for the common good, or at least that’s the idea. But things quickly become difficult with problems like disease and the country moving toward Civil War, start affecting the utopian lifestyle.
As the book cover states, “Charlotte, confronted with the hardships of rural life, must mature in a hurry to deal with the challenges of building the community while facing her husband’s betrayals and her growing attraction to Cabot.. . Ultimately, each member of Daybreak must take a stand—both in their political and personal lives.”
Wiegenstein does a remarkable job of handling all three characters, their viewpoints, and voices as well as painting a realistic portrayal of life in Missouri during this time period. He knows how to tell a story and how to make readers care about the characters—flaws and all.
He was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks, and he received a PhD in English from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He currently is the associate dean of graduate studies at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri, where he lives with his wife. In his bio on the publisher’s website, it states that he has been interested in utopian societies since he learned about one in 1840s Texas.
“Slant of Light” will be published in April. You can pre-order your copy from the Blank Slate Press website, which states, “Blank Slate Press was founded with the mission of discovering, nurturing, publishing and promoting the most exciting authors in the greater Saint Louis region. We’re now expanding our area to accept applications from authors throughout ‘flyover country’ (a.k.a. the heartland).”
They definitely chose a terrific author with a great voice and wonderful style when they published Steve Wiegenstein and his debut novel, “Slant of Light”.
Margo Dill has a degree in English from Truman State University and often reviews books as a columnist for “WOW! Women On Writing” e-zine and her blog, “Margo Dill’s Read These Books and Use Them.” (http://margodill.com/blog/) She lives in St. Louis with her family.
One of our authors, Fred Venturini, posted a must-read blog entry about his first year as a published author. Lots of honest insights here. The last one might be my favorite, because it’s so true, and so frustrating:
Here are a few questions we often receive from authors. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.
What kind of books do we publish? Novels. We publish novels. We’re open to any type of novel in any genre. If we love the novel and we think we can sell it, we’ll consider it.
Do we accept non-St.Louis area authors? Yes, although as of two months ago the answer would have been no. While we still want to be St. Louis-based, and while we will continue to work on behalf of writers and publishing in St. Louis, this year we’re opening our application process to authors everywhere. What we really like about working with regional authors is the chance to meet and work face-to-face. We’ll sacrifice that with a non-local author, but our primary focus is on discovering, nurturing, publishing and promoting new voices who deserve recognition.
Do we accept YA fiction applications? Definitely. In fact, Kristy and I both love to read well-done YA and are eager to publish a YA book. We won’t give it preference over a better novel in a different genre/category, but we’re very open to it.
How does the application process work? It’s pretty simple. Read this, then answer a few questions, and then send us a sample of your novel (whether it’s completed or still in progress–either way as we’re all about the discovery of new talent instead of the requirement that the novel be completed). For the first two years of our existence, we only reviewed applications once a year, but in 2012, we’re going to review applications as we receive them. We feel that’s better for all of you writers out there.
How does the selection process work? Kristy and I read all the samples and pick out the ones that are really well written, tell a good story, and make us want to keep reading. Then we send our favorites out to our editorial board, which is comprised of readers in the St. Louis area. We meet with them, chat about the books, cast our votes, and in the end, based on that feedback, we make our final decision. So there are many checks and balances, and we are acutely aware of what people want to read. That is very, very important to us.
What kinds of connections do we have with bookstores? We’ll be honest–because we’re so small, we don’t have an extensive distribution network. Our books are available through St. Louis-based distributor Unique Books and through Ingram, from which bookstores large and small can order. And our books are in local independent bookstores and a few select independent bookstores around the country. We promote our books at conferences, at events, and through social media. Again, remember our goal is to discover, nurture, publish and promote wonderful new voices and by doing that we hope to not only to grow Blank Slate Press as a business, but, importantly, to get the work of new writers out into the marketplace where others (readers, agents, foreign publishers, larger publishers???) can discover them as well.
What format do we publish in? Paperback and e-books. Our authors’ work is available online at the major retailers and for Kindle, Nook, Kobe, and iPad.
PLEASE VOTE for the one SLANT OF LIGHT cover concept you like best. From the very abstract to the photographic to the historical, we’ve got very different design ideas to consider. Please feel free to share your comments–we’ll take all votes and comments into consideration. And if you vote and leave a comment (tell us in the comments which cover you voted for and why), you’ll be automatically entered to win a copy of the book when it’s released.
First, here’s the summary of the novel:
With the nation moving toward Civil War, James Turner, a charming, impulsive writer and lecturer, Charlotte, his down-to-earth bride, and Henry Cabot, an idealistic Harvard-educated abolitionist are drawn together in a social experiment deep in the Missouri Ozarks.
Inspired by utopian dreams of building a new society, Turner is given a tract of land to found the community of Daybreak. But not everyone involved in the project is a willing partner and being the leader of a farming community out in the middle of nowhere isn’t exactly the life Turner envisioned.
Charlotte, confronted with the hardships of rural life, must mature in a hurry to deal with the challenges of building the community while facing her husband’s betrayals and her growing attraction to Cabot. In turn, Cabot struggles to reconcile his need to leave Daybreak to join the fight against slavery and his desire to stay near the woman he loves.
As the war draws ever closer, the utopians try to remain neutral and friendly to all, but soon find neutrality is not an option. When war finally breaks out, Missouri descends into its uniquely savage brand of conflict in which guerrilla bands terrorize the countryside while Federal troops control the cities, and in which neither side offers or expects quarter. Ultimately, each member of Daybreak must take a stand—both in their political and personal lives.
Remember, these are concepts–not finished covers. Let us know what you like and why, what would make you pick the book up, turn it over and read the back cover or thumb through the pages, and what would make you pass it by.
To see a larger version of the covers, click the cover.
And…now you can pre-order your copy of SLANT OF LIGHT and have it delivered to you as soon as the books are available:
I wrote most of my first novel my senior year of college, way back in the golden days of 2003. As many first novels are, it was semi-autobiographical, and at the time, it was brilliant. An instant bestseller, in my mind.
It stalled out, and a year later, I went back and read over it. It was the most self-centered thing I’ve ever written or read. To me it was still fascinating, like reading a journal entry from your middle school years, but no one else (except maybe family and close friends, another reason why you’re not going to get real feedback from family and close friends) would ever want to read it.
As for Kristy’s first novel, written in 1990, it wasn’t autobiographical (per se) but was, instead, a (pre) Dan Brown-type thriller complete with nefarious Vatican operatives trying to steal the rumored Quelle Codex from the grandchildren of the unsuspecting Palestinian farmer and his Jewish wife who found the document of Jesus’s sayings that formed the foundation of the Gospel of Thomas in a dry well on their property before the outbreak of World War I. While she believed the general concept was a good one, she actually thought, once she read it over years later, that the plot was far too ridiculous for anyone to want to read such a thing, and, worse yet, that she had so obviously infused the whole thing with her personal religious/ political point of view as to be one long harangue. Today, she is thankful that the one printed copy was lost in a move and the electronic copy was lost in a hard drive crash so that she would never have to embarrass herself again by reading even the first chapter.
As for me, I started a new novel, this one a historical thriller based on some little-known facts about Frank Lloyd Wright. It was fascinating, another instant bestseller…in my mind. Kristy, too, started another novel. Hers was a poignant retelling of her great aunt’s life as a sort of rustic poet in the early 1900s. Fascinating stuff, right?
My second novel stalled out just as my first one did and a year later, I went back and read over it. It was the most self-centered thing I’ve ever written or read. (Are you seeing the pattern?) Again it was fascinating to ME, because I was the one to discover these little-known facts and because they were TRUE, but it was still so self-centered. It’s amazing that little known facts about a famous architect had so much to do with ME.
As for Kristy’s novel, she realized, before she was finished, that the whole thing was trite beyond belief and that she needed to stop and reevaluate her writing goals. So, she started her third novel (still in progress) and found along the way that the more she kept her own personality out of the story, the more true and lifelike her characters became. And then, she began her fourth novel–The Oracles of Delphi–in which she truly allowed her characters to come to life on their own and to determine their own fates. Of course, this required discipline and at one point, when she had finished her gazillionth draft she went back in and cut 20,000 words (taking it from 114,000 to 92,000 words) to ensure that her own pontificating didn’t slow down the narrative of the murder mystery or again get in the way of the story.
Our personal experiences highlight a couple of lessons all new writers need to take to heart. One is that personal experience does not necessarily a fascinating tale make. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t write about things that interest you or infuse yourself into the story. By all means, write what you’re excited about, and put your knowledge, hopes, and fears into your characters. Just keep in mind that the motivation is that when you write what you know, the point is that you can write about that topic well, not that people are going to inherently find it interesting.
For example, I know a lot about studying abroad in Japan because I did it three times. So if I wanted to include an ancillary character in a novel who was studying abroad in Japan, I could write quite accurately about that experience. However, I’d have to constantly remind myself that just because I know about studying abroad in Japan–this niche piece of knowledge I have–does not mean that people will inherently find it interesting. It will only be interesting to readers if I’m telling a good story. My eclectic knowledge is the tiniest supporting player when it comes to building a great story.
So your first few novels are, most likely, going to be way too self-centered–about you or about things YOU find fascinating–for anyone else to care about. Every sentence will be poetry, every chapter the best chapter ever written…because it’s about you! Or it’s about something you discovered. And the thing is, that’s okay. Get it out of your system.
Another lesson is that just because something is true doesn’t mean it is interesting. That little nugget you found in a tattered newspaper from 1892 may be something interesting to share at your next dinner party, but it is only useful in a novel if you have a great story to tell and if you let your characters tell it. And what about the fact that you were raised by wolves as a child? Sure, it’s true, and your dentist probably finds the story behind pronounced canine teeth fascinating, but unless you can weave a great story, don’t write a novel about it.
The point is that telling a great story is your number one objective when you put pen to paper/fingers to keyboard. If your focus is sharing the truth with the world or pontificating on your beliefs, write a blog.
If you want to be a novelist, go ahead and write those first few novels so you can stop thinking about your life and your research as the most fascinating topics on the planet–and then move on to the good stuff.
Now, if you just finished your first or second novel, you might think that you’re the exception to these rules. That’s okay. There’s nothing stopping you from trying to sell those novels. After all, writing a novel is a lot of work, and you don’t want it to just sit there in your desk gathering dust.
Who knows, you might be the exception to the general rule and be the one who writes a brilliant first novel that is bought up in a flash and hailed as a literary or market phenomenon. But, if not, and if your masterpiece still hasn’t sold in a year, go back and read it again. Chuckle at how self-centered you were in the past, how oddly fascinated you were with yourself, your oh-so-uniquely interesting family, your fascinating historical discovery, or your incisive political knowledge. Then put your ego aside and simply tell a great story. In the end, you’ll be thankful no one ever read those self-serving ego trips masquerading (in your own mind) as Pulitzer-worthy fiction, and so will the readers of your new book–your first real novel.
–Jamey
We’ve been following the rapidly-changing publishing landscape and, of course, that includes the entertaining ongoing dialogue between two well known self-published authors and advocates, JA Konrath and Barry Eisler (the guy who famously turned down a $500,000 advance to self publish instead). Their latest discussion centered on Hachette’s internal memo about the value publishers offer authors.
There was one section in the dialogue that summarizes what Konrath and Eisler wish big publishers did better. We couldn’t help but pat ourselves on the back when we read this. Here are the 6 things (in bold) that they mentioned, followed by self-congratulatory remarks.
- Offer much better royalties to authors. Konrath and Eisler make a big deal about authors earning only 17.5% royalties on digital copies, while the publishers get 52.5% (in that example, Amazon gets the other 30%). BSP splits the ebook revenue 50/50 with the author, so they get 35% royalties. That’s double what most publishers give.
- Release titles faster. It can take 18 months after a book is turned in to be published. I can do it myself in a week. I would guess that a week is a bit of an exaggeration. If Konrath turns in a completed manuscript to a publisher, it still needs to be copyedited, content edited, typeset, proofread, formatted for digital, process for ISBN and other registrations, and have the cover designed. All of that takes a while. But it doesn’t take 18 months. In BSP’s first year, we had two novels, and each one took about 4 months to be completely and professionally published after we received the completed manuscript. Creating a quality product takes time, but not 18 months.
- Use up-to-date accounting methods that are trackable by the author, and pay royalties monthly. This is an area where we can improve. Although we have complete financial transparency with our authors, it’s not trackable online, and we pay royalties twice a year. We do, however, pay authors quarterly stipends throughout their contract with BSP regardless of sales as long as they are working on their next BSP project.
- Lower ebook prices. The idea is that you increase the size of your audience by making books more price-accessible, if not even impulse buys. And the key is to be nimble–you have to go through a lot of bureaucracy to get change the price of your book with a big publisher. Not at BSP. The Samaritan currently has a Kindle price of $3.82, and Dancing with Gravity is $4.99.
- Stop futilely fighting piracy. Hint: all such fighting is futile. Piracy can only be made redundant with cost and convenience. We worked hard to create our books, and our authors spent an incredible amount of time writing and revising. We will only stay in business if people buy our books. But we don’t want someone standing guard over our bookshelves to prevent us from sharing a much-loved book with a friend, and we don’t want to do that to our reader’s ebooks. So we don’t use DRM controls to limit readers from sharing our author’s work. Besides, as Konrath and Eisler point out, it doesn’t work.
- Start marketing effectively. Ads and catalogue copy aren’t enough. Neither is your imprint’s Twitter feed. Especially if your author has more Twitter followers than you do. Big publishers certainly have an advantage here. With their deep pockets, they can buy a full-page spread in the Times, they can get you on The Daily Show, and they afford huge banner ads on the most visited websites. But you have to do more than throw money at marketing if you’re going to find loyal readers. For them you have to foster engagement and connection. And yes, a lot of that comes from the author him/herself, but publishers can do many things to facilitate that connection. BSP has tried a number of different marketing ideas since its inception–some that worked, some that didn’t–but we’ll keep trying.
And here’s a couple of other points:
1) Publishers should work more cooperatively with authors on titles and cover design. We’ve all seen horribly bad covers and confusingly weird titles that simply don’t make sense or don’t have anything to do with the book. One of the advantages small presses offer–and Blank Slate Press believes fervently in–is that a bureaucratic marketing department doesn’t dictate titles and design down from on high. Our process for selecting titles and designing covers is completely collaborative. Of course, someone has to have a final say, but nothing is dictated by anyone to anyone. That’s just not the way we work.
2) Both Konrath and Eisler have had good things to say about some of the experiences they’ve had with editors–and they both agree that books need editors. Even experienced authors need extra sets of eyes on the work as well as a proofreader to review the final copy. From what we’ve learned from many authors, however, is that no matter how hard the editor him/herself is working to make the manuscript the best it can be, those ever-present bureaucratic marketing realities can filter into the editing process.
At a small press like ours, the relationship between the author and the editor is so open that the chance of editorial being adversly affected by marketing is effectively nil. After all, the editorial, design, marketing team is all made up by the same people with the same goals.
If this sounds appealing to you, we’d love to hear from you. Apply as an author at Blank Slate Press today.
–Jamey
