When it comes to book buying, I might be more easily tricked than the average reader. I’ve bought books based on misleadingly positive book reviews from famous authors and regretted it. I’ve bought books because they had won awards or were book club recommendations and then realized later that I’d been suckered.
The worst was when I spent $1.00 for a kindle copy of Ernest Hemingway’s Six-Word Story. I should have known it was a scam when the free sample had only one word in it. Losing one dollar for five more words isn’t so bad, but when I realized the Six-Word Story was public domain, I felt stupid. No more manipulation, I thought.
Book publishers have every right to manipulate potential readers into buying their books. It’s up to us potential readers to recognize the manipulation and not fall for it. Book manipulation is bad behavior, and I dislike rewarding bad behavior. With that in mind, here are four common tricks that publishers use to manipulate people to spend money on their books:
1. Stir up (fake?) controversy/publicity
I can’t always prove that the controversy or publicity is fake. When critics badgered American Dirt author Jeanine Cummins for writing a book about Mexican immigrants even though she isn’t herself Mexican, book sales went up again, and weeks later the novel is still a bestseller. The controversy made me curious enough to read a sample of the the novel, and it’s not very good. Still, the controversy worked on me.
Now I wonder… was this controversy faked to sell more books? Maybe not, but publishers made sure the comments made by social media trolls that nobody had heard of got a ton of publicity. Enough people despise social media troublemakers to support the book, even if they don’t read it.
If you’re buying a book because it’s controversial, you’re probably falling for a trick.
2. Make it support a person/cause
I’m not saying Michelle Obama manipulated readers; it was probably her publisher who tricked us.
Sometimes a book has a greater purpose than itself, but it usually doesn’t. That greater purpose, when you look at it, is often fake. When Michelle Obama wrote Becoming, my wife bought it just to support her, and then she never read the book.
Michelle Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard and is wealthier than my family will ever be, so I didn’t see the need to support her. On the other hand, I don’t want Michelle Obama’s support either, so we’re even (except my wife has never bought any of my books).
At any rate, somewhere along the way, buying the book become a mission for millions(?) of readers. My wife even received a copy of Becoming from a friend simply because the friend knew she liked Michelle Obama. My wife didn’t read that copy either.
If you’re buying a book to support a cause/rich person/celebrity, then you’re probably falling for a trick.
3. Let’s bash Donald Trump (or the politician of your choice)
If you want to write a bestseller, he’s your topic.
A lot of people despise President Trump. He brings a lot of it on himself, but book publishers use this animosity against him to sell a bunch of garbage books.
Over the last few years book publishers have pawned off books like Fear by Bob Woodward and that one tell-all book written by a porn star and that bald lawyer who just got sent to prison. These books immediately hit the best sellers list, and then they’re outdated two weeks later when the new outrage has made all the previous outrages irrelevant. If I need an anti-Trump fix, I can get it for free in a bunch of places, and the outrage is usually current.
It’s not just Trump either. When Barack Obama was president, a bunch of writers/publishers profited off of garbage anti-Obama books as well. It was the same trick, just with a different audience. Those books also promised to give readers new insights that would bring down a presidency, but they were obsolete within a month.
If you’re buying a book because you despise a current president/politician, you’re probably falling for a trick.
4. It’s the next…!
I’ve never written a best selling novel, but I’ve read a few of them, so I’m an expert.
A few years ago a bunch of women-in-distress novels (usually written by women) were called “The next Gone Girl.” Gone Girl had been a huge bestseller, so a bunch of books like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window, rode its coattails. Some books even had blurbs from Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, on the covers of books just above the title.
If they’re going to compare a new novel to Gone Girl, it was cool to have the author praise the book (and then remind readers that the praise comes from the author of Gone Girl). Even though I liked Gone Girl, I’ve never actively looked for a book that was the next Gone Girl. I’ve already read Gone Girl. Why would I want to read the next Gone Girl when I’ve already read it?
Right now a bunch of fantasy readers are looking for books similar to A Game of Thrones, and I can understand that because the book version of the series isn’t finished (and the television show fizzled). Fans are dissatisfied and want something that has a sense of completion. Since A Game of Thrones might not get finished, book publishers can publicize something that’s already written as “The previous Game of Thrones… but it’s already completed!”
If you’re buying a book because it’s the next… something, you’re probably falling for a trick.
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When you’re looking for a good book, these are some tricks that publishers might use on you. I used to fall for the tricks. I might still fall for other tricks, but I don’t fall for these anymore.
What do you think? What other tricks do publishers use to manipulate readers into buying their books?
(image via wikimedia)
As an introvert, my biggest complaint about the coronavirus is that the scare isn’t working. I see people out in public wherever I go. Colleagues whom I try to avoid still track me down for unnecessary conversations. My family still wants to air travel to a destination I don’t want to go to for a vacation during Spring Break.
I was kind of hoping for a quick harmless panic, where people would stay away from each other for a while, but the coronavirus doesn’t seem to be scaring people, despite the BREAKING NEWS of each new potential victim.
You have to be careful with international scares like the coronavirus because you don’t know how seriously you should take them until it’s too late. You don’t want to just make lame jokes about it, and then realize it is horrible and that you’re just made lame jokes about thousands of horrible deaths.
On the other hand, you don’t want to lock yourself inside the house and become a hermit until the scare is over, but… well, maybe you do… NOT because you’re scared but because you like it.
The great thing about an international scare from an introvert’s point of view is that nobody wants to talk because talking might lead to spreading of the disease, and we introverts get left alone. Even if the health officials claim that the new virus isn’t contagious like that, this is no time to trust officials.
One reason a coronavirus panic isn’t spreading is that the name is too long. Panic spreaders prefer contagions that have shorter names like bird flu or swine flu or Ebola. Five syllables is two too many for an international scare. You can’t even use it when you’re losing an argument.
If you get mad and have to say something hurtful or vicious, it’s pointless to yell: “I hope you get Coronavirus and die!!”
The word coronavirus takes too long to say. Plus, coronavirus doesn’t have the same urgency as something like cancer. Ebola, swine flu, even Sars, all sound more menacing than coronavirus. But nothing is more threatening than cancer. If I’m going to be scared of something, it would be cancer. And when it comes to scary afflictions, almost nothing beats cancer.
Three different people over the last ten years have told me that they hoped I’d get cancer and die! One of those people then got cancer. And then he died. I don’t know how I feel about that. I would never wish cancer on somebody, even if that person had the audacity to disagree with me about politics and wish cancer on me.
I wouldn’t wish coronavirus either, but it’s more difficult to say. If I wished coronavirus on somebody, I’d probably stutter and mess it up.
To be fair, this coronavirus has scared some people out of traveling. Book conferences are being cancelled (I mention that because I’m a book blogger). Introvert authors are probably glad that the conferences are called off because now they don’t have to go out in public so they can just stay home and write. But maybe the panic will still come. Maybe it’s too early to make the call.
I’m not saying that introverts should be glad about a potential coronavirus panic. As far as I know, we introverts didn’t cause the panic that makes people want to avoid each other. I hope it’s not an introvert behind the scare. It would be a passive-aggressive move to create an international scare just to avoid human contact, but passive-aggressive introverts are kind of dangerous. Hopefully no introvert would be that diabolical.
If the panic already exists, however, we introverts would be fools not to take advantage of it.
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Here’s the romantic comedy you can read and listen to…
Things are tough for independent authors. We don’t have the connections to build a large enough audience to make a living from our book sales. People don’t take us seriously because we’re not attached to the publishing industry. If we talk too much about the challenges that face us, then we’re accused of whining.
And now we have this demoralizing incident (Read more here! )! The independent author of the Healthy Holly children’s book series just got sentenced to three years in prison because she used her position as mayor of Baltimore to make money from her books. Some people are celebrating her punishment, but this is a prime example of what our system does to crush the independent author.
First of all, this author took a lot of time and effort to build a base of potential buyers. Most authors work on their craft first, and then promote their works on social media. Unfortunately, there are so many of us who do the same thing that we drown each other out.
This author was more creative. She became mayor of Baltimore, a city already with a reputation of being corrupt, and used her position to force employees and entities within the government to buy and store her books. Don’t get me wrong; I’m against government corruption, but if you’re going to abuse government power to sell books, choose a city where corruption is the established norm. I’m shocked that people are shocked by this corruption. I think this is just a case of selective outrage.
As far as corruption goes, this is a fairly benign example. The only reason people (pretend to) care is that this is an indie author, and the publishing industry can’t have indie author success stories like hers. If too many indie authors can find ways to make money off their books, then the publishing industry’s facade of fake superiority falls apart. From the publishing industry’s perspective, this creative author had to be crushed.
If James Patterson (a publishing industry favorite) had pulled a stunt like this, everybody would have talked about how brilliant he was. I have no proof to back this up, but that writing masterclass of his looks suspicious. There’s the possibility that Patterson has swindled more money from talentless writers than Pugh has swindled from taxpayers.
If you’ve taken Patterson’s masterclass, I’m NOT talking about you. You have talent. It’s the other writers that I’m referring to.
Politicians misuse taxpayer money all the time. A lot of taxpayers seem to like having their money misspent because they keep electing the same politicians who keep misspending the money. Patterson’s scam is worse because he’s giving writers false hope. At least Pugh was up front in her dishonesty by being a politician.
Since I’m only a book blogger, I try to stay out of politics. I don’t care which political party this author belongs to or what demographic she claims first when she announces herself in public. I see her as an indie author first, so I feel the need to defend her. Yeah, she abused her power. Yeah, she probably had a moral obligation to focus more on Baltimore’s problems than her own writing career (that’s the bad part about being a public servant), but it’s tough being an indie author.
I understand she broke the law and we can’t overlook that, but she’s an indie author. Things are tough for us.
(image via wikimedia)
Writing about The Holy Bible without mentioning religion isn’t easy, but I’m going to try. People have disagreements about what Bible verses mean or whether The Bible should be taken literally or as a series of metaphors or something in between.
I’m not getting into that. I’m just mentioning that I’ve decided to read the whole thing. Despite going to church a lot when I was a kid, I never read The Bible that much. We’d get some verses in Sunday school or Bible study, but I never felt the urge to read the entire book from beginning to end.
The Bible is a long book; at least it is by my standards. It’s been translated, and I don’t trust translated books because it’s nearly impossible to capture the precise tones and meanings of different languages. Plus, when I was younger, I was always being assigned really long, difficult books, and I was never assigned The Bible. If I had been assigned The Bible in school, I probably would have read it, but teachers weren’t allowed to assign it.
I’ve read a children’s version of The Bible, but that probably doesn’t count. Children’s versions of The Bible are great for telling the stories, but they don’t necessarily get into the hardcore morality that the adult version of The Bible does. I want to read about that hardcore morality, even if it’s seen as controversial today.
I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about The Bible, criticize The Bible, and I’ve even seen some people making a lot of money off of The Bible. I don’t even know if these people have actually read The Bible. I know some book reviewers don’t really read the books they review, so that probably applies to people who talk about The Bible as well. How do I know that some guy who’s gotten rich from talking about The Bible has actually read it? Instead of listening to others talk about it, I’ll read it myself.
Sometimes I read books just because they’re so huge in our popular culture. Last year I read Michelle Obama’s book because everybody was talking about it. I read parts of a James Patterson/Bill Clinton book because it was a highly publicized book. I even read parts of A Game of Thrones. Now those books are done; nobody cares about them anymore.
But The Bible? The Bible will be around for a while. The Bible will be around long after Michelle Obama or James Patterson or even George R.R. Martin are gone. So I think I’ll read it.
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Here’s the copy of The Bible that I’m reading. In the video below, I explain the background behind this particular copy and why I’m reading it.
What do you think? Have you read the entire Bible? When you read it, do you go from beginning to end, or do you just read whatever section you feel like reading?
(image via wikimedia)
The screens might seem like a new problem, but they have have been around for generations. The first screen, the television set, was often called “The idiot box” because people would stare vacantly while watching shows that we make fun of today. This was back when there were only three television channels. When my family finally got cable in the early 1980s, my dad would sit on the couch and click the remote mindlessly and be uninterested in everything. The screens are not new.
Today we have more screens than ever. Families might have more than one television, more than one computer/laptop screen, more than one phone/tablet screen. Most families (except for the Amish) probably have more screens than family members.
Even though I’ve lived most of my life without so many screens, I have been addicted just like almost everyone else. I held out against the smart phone for a little bit, but once I could read literature on a screen, I was hooked. For a few years, I was reading most books on a tablet or my phone. I then started watching videos and, even worse, I began reading the comments underneath the videos. I constantly checked headlines from dozens of news sites, despite knowing that most of the news sites had the same stories.
My posture got bad (it had never been good anyway). My eyes started twitching. I stared at my phone at random moments, even when I had no reason to. Luckily, I was born without all this technology and I’ve lived without it all my life, so it was easy to create a template that helps me rule the technology… or at least lets me think I do.
1. Read actual books instead of digital.
This one’s first for me because I’m (kind of) a book blogger. For a time, I really liked reading books on my phone. But whether it was the brightness or the size of the screen or whatever, my eyes started twitching and my vision got worse.
That’s okay. I’ve spent most of my life reading actual books. I easily went back to reading actual books, and soon my eyes stopped twitching, and my vision has improved a little. I have the advantage of a big city downtown library that gives me access to more free books than the average reader can get to, but a lot of people have access to big city main branch libraries and don’t take advantage of them.
2. Set the timer.
Social media sites want us to stay on as long as possible. If I’m not careful, I can lose hours just to mindless screen jumping. To avoid this, I set the timer. Yeah, I use the alarm on my phone, so I’m using the tech I’m trying to minimize to minimize the time I spend on tech, but it makes sense to me when I’m not trying to explain it, and it works.
3. No screens one hour before bedtime.
Since screens can get me riled up, I turn off the computer and put the phones away at least one hour before I go to bed. This way, I can concentrate on what I’m doing the next day. And I’m calm when I go to bed. If I read, I read a book that I know won’t get me fired up. If I get too interested, I start working on math. Math has always put me to sleep quickly.
4. Establish at least one non-screen habit.
When I was a kid, I collected comic books, and that kept me from watching too much television. Now that I’m older (and newer comic books suck), comic books don’t work for me anymore. I like to write, but that means sitting in front of a screen.
Now I’m writing the old fashioned way, like I used to do before word processors and computers were household items. I handwrite most of my rough drafts until they’re almost ready. Then I type them up. Even though it takes longer this way, I can write without being dependent on a screen. Yes, I need a screen to get an audience, but I’d rather rely on a screen than go to an actual writer’s group.
Writer’s groups… Ugh.
5. Set up a phone landline.
I’m not saying the tech grid is going down (I’m not that kind of blogger… yet), but if it does and cell phones stop working, then we’ll need our landlines again. When I stopped using my landline years ago, I thought I was being slick by saving some money. Instead I’m flushing even more money down the drain with cell phones (that all of us use). There’s no need to carry a cell phone with me all the time in my own house when I have a phone hanging on my wall.
Some people seem to like relying on their screens. That’s okay, I guess, but If you want to control how you use your technology, at least you know there are easy steps you can take.
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Even though I don’t want to give up too much of my dependence to the screens, I’d rather have the screens than have to go to writer’s groups again. If you’re a writer, and you’ve never been to a writer’s group, I have some horror stories for you.
Writer’s Group Horror Story: The Vulgar Guy
(image via wikimedia)
25 years ago, if you wanted anybody to read your writing and give you a free honest critique, you had to join a writer’s group. There were no blogs for writers to get feedback. Literary agents rarely sent anything except a form rejection letter. Publishers didn’t send anything back at all. Family members always loved what you wrote (or pretended to).
It was tough finding a good writer’s group after I had graduated from college, and I had to suffer through a few disasters before I found the right fit. This was before the internet, so I had to search through the ads of newspapers, looking for a writer putting a group together. I went to book shows and writer’s conventions, trying to make connections. I’m an introvert. I was horrible at making connections. I was always jealous of extrovert authors. Authors who could talk without effort, they had it made.
Back then, if I had wanted to publish an independent book, I’d have to use my own money to make copies and sell them from the trunk of my car in parking lots. I couldn’t just write an ebook like The Writing Prompt and put it up on the internet.
No, 25 years ago, if you were an aspiring author with no connections, you had to suffer through the writer’s group experience.
One of the first nightmare writer’s groups I tried met in the back of a book store. I learned about it in the want ads of a local newspaper. I lived in a major city at the time, and there were bookstores (and aspiring writers) all over the place. This bookstore belonged to a franchise that no longer exists and the store took up way too much space in a plaza that also no longer exists. The lot is for a condominium/townhome complex now.
Technology is great (especially if you know how to control it), but you appreciate it even more when you’ve lived most of your life without it. And speaking of screens…
Old Things That Are Tough To Explain: You Could Only Watch it Once
“It won’t fast forward!” my youngest daughter complained as she waved the remote control at the television and dvr box.
“That’s because the show is live,” my oldest daughter said.
My youngest looked exasperated. She has been accustomed to watching recorded programs or videos uploaded on sites like YouTube. The concept of a television show being broadcast sometimes doesn’t make sense to her. She understands it, but she forgets every once in a while, and then she gets mad. I don’t know if she gets mad because she can’t fast-forward or because she forgot she can’t fast-forward.
“That’s stupid,” she said and flung the remote onto the couch.
When I was a kid, I told her, we didn’t even have remotes. You had to get up and change the channel. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. There was no VCR or DVR. If you really enjoyed a scene on TV, all you had was the memory of it. You couldn’t go back and rewatch it.
If somebody at home interrupted the show, or stood in front of the television, you couldn’t go back to see what you missed. If you disagreed with another viewer about something that happened or what a character said, you couldn’t go back and replay it to prove who was right. All you could do was argue.
What do you think? Do you spend too much of your time on a screen? What else can you do to control the power of the screens?
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins was meant to be an important novel. The cover features a reviewer’s comment that calls American Dirt “A Grapes of Wrath for our times.” That’s a big deal. American Dirt became an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Sandra Cisneros has praised this book. Even prolific horror author Stephen King even gave advanced accolades for the novel.
I should mention that American Dirt has become a bit controversial (you can read more about it here) because the author is not of Mexican heritage and allegedly gets a bunch of details about immigration wrong. Some critics say that because the author is not of Mexican descent and hasn’t experienced that particular immigration experience that she had no business writing the book in the first place.
This type of thing has been an issue for a while. A few years ago publishing companies started hiring sensitivity readers to double check stuff for writers who were writing about experiences they hadn’t experienced. I guess at the very least, the sensitivity readers for American Dirt didn’t do a good job.
Anyway, I’m more interested in Jeanine Cumming’s writing in American Dirt. Is this book really any good Did this novel deserve the hype? What makes other people think this writing is so great?
When Stephen King praised American Dirt, he wrote,”I defy anyone to read the first seven pages and not finish it.”
I enjoy defying Stephen King, so I’ve done exactly what he defied me to do. I read the first seven pages of American Dirt and decided not to finish it.
The first scene (or the first seven pages) depicts a boy Luca and his mother hiding in a bathtub listening to their family get massacred outside. It’s meant to be an emotional scene. It was probably a difficult scene to write because it’s from the boy’s point of view and the semi-stream of consciousness for an eight year-old boy makes the scene plod a bit.
Plus, the author is not an eight year-old boy (and has never been an eight year-old boy) and (according to today’s online mob critics) has no business trying to tell the story of an eight year-old boy. It’s not the author’s story to tell.
I’m kidding.
Like I said earlier, I’m more interested in the author’s writing style. Here’s a sample of what I mean (the parenthesis are my commentary):
The clatter of gunfire outside continues, joined by an odor of charcoal and burning meat. Papi Is grilling carne asada out there and Luca’s favorite chicken drumsticks. He likes them only a tiny bit blackened (misplaced detail), the crispy tang of the skins (misplaced detail). His mother pulls her head up long enough to look him in the eye. She puts her hands on both of his face and tries to cover his ears (she’d probably hold him still and cover his mouth). Outside, the gunfire slows. It ceases and then returns in short bursts, mirroring, Luca thinks, the sporadic and wild rhythm of his heart (would he really think that?). In between the racket, Luca can still hear the radio, a woman’s voice announcing Le Mejor 100.1 FM Acapulco! followed by Banda MS singing about how happy they are to be in love. Someone shoots the radio (I guess someone doesn’t like Banda MS), and there’s laughter (nobody in that group likes Banda MS?). Men’s voices. Two or three, Luca can’t tell. Hard bootsteps on Abuela’s patio.
This scene might have worked better from an adult’s point-of-view, especially with the “…mirroring, Luca thinks, the sporadic and wild rhythm of his heart” kind of insights that literary authors feel like they have to put into important books.
But I could be wrong. Editors, and Oprah, and Sandra Cisneros, and Stephen King disagree. I thought the first seven pages were a little sloppy. The story could have been gripping, but the author’s style (and her cultural misappropriation… haha) got in the way. An important novel really should be written more carefully than that.
American Dirt isn’t the only highly publicized novel that I didn’t finish. Two decades ago, I actually got angry at the following novel, but it wasn’t because of cultural misappropriation. As much as I hate admitting this, it was for a much dumber reason.
Literary Glance: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
When The Corrections came out in 2001, I didn’t want to read it because I thought the author Jonathan Franzen came across as a prick. He looked like a prick in his publicity photos. To be fair, a lot of authors look pretentious in their publicity photos, but Franzen came across even worse than most. Plus, he was going through a literary feud with Oprah Winfrey that didn’t make him look good. Even people who despised Oprah Winfrey thought Franzen came across like a prick during their feud.
I admit, most of my anti-Franzen attitude was my own bitterness. Every unsuccessful writer should be allowed to go through a bitter stage, and 2001-2003 was mine. I had just given up on writing after ten years of several projects, one coming kind of close to getting published (“kind of close to” probably meant “never had a chance of,” but I was at least told I was “kind of close”) and I was bitter that some guy like Franzen who wasn’t much older than me was getting published, getting publicized, and then almost winning a Pulitzer, while I had nothing to show for my own efforts. I tried reading The Corrections just so that I could be justified in hating it.
Not every book is important. Some are MUST-READ novels. Must-read novels are more important than important novels because readers are manipulated into thinking that something will be missing from their lives if they don’t read these must-read books.
I have heard (truism alert!) that people regret what they haven’t done more than what they have done. I’m not sure this applies to books. There are a lot of must-read books that I’m glad I haven’t read.
The Literary Rants: Must-Read Novels
There are only two legitimate reasons for a book to be a “must-read.” You fail a class if you don’t read it. Or you get fired from a job for not reading it. I don’t have to worry about failing classes anymore, and I don’t have to read books for my job (I have to read stuff that’s worse than most books), so there are no must-read books anymore.
I understand that using the term must-read is hyperbole. I have nothing against a little hyperbole. And I usually don’t like it when people take hyperbole literally. During the political season, politicians use hyperbole, and then other politicians accuse each other of lying when they were using hyperbole.
What do you think? Does American Dirt sound like an important novel, a must-read novel, or neither? Should fiction authors write only about cultures and events that they have experienced? Have you read the first seven pages of American Dirt, and if so, are you willing to defy Stephen King?
Even James Patterson hasn’t read all of these books.
This is a legitimate question (I think), and it’s bothered me for years. James Patterson puts out at least one book a month, most of them with a coauthor. Most of the books have bad dialogue, no sense of setting, huge plot holes, and one-page chapters.
By most standards of writing, James Patterson’s books are filled with bad writing. Despite all of this, every Patterson novel becomes a best seller. He even teaches a masterclass about how to write fiction, and I think people pay money for it.
This shouldn’t happen. James Patterson should be shamed for writing so many books (I usually call them “rough drafts”), and publishers should be shamed for releasing these rough drafts to the public.
I don’t even believe in shame tactics. I think shame tactics are used by people with weak arguments. But if I were to ever use a shame tactic (and I won’t), it would be on James Patterson and his book publishers (but NOT on the people who buy his books).
Somewhere along the way, there should be a hiccup in James Patterson’s book sales. At least one of his books should bomb, but they never do. Why is that?
Why do so many people read James Patterson books?
I think I finally have the answer. And I explain it in the video below.
I don’t want to bash James Patterson all the time because that can get old. He’s not the only author who might be scamming readers. Here’s an author who struck it big with a debut novel a couple years ago but turned out to be (in my opinion) kind of shady.
Famous Author Lifestyle Strategy: Lie about Having Cancer
When The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn came out last year, I was immediately suspicious of it. The novel was promoted as “the next Gone Girl.” A bunch of other extra promotion was going into the novel, way too much for a first time author. The final straw was Stephen King calling the book “unputdownable.” I’d been burned by King’s overly positive reviews of mediocre fiction in the past, and I knew something was going on.
Then in an interview, I discovered that AJ Finn’s real name was Dan Mallory and that he’d actually worked as an executive editor for the publishing company that was putting out the book. No wonder The Woman in the Window was getting so much publicity, I thought, nepotism. Journalists didn’t seem to see anything wrong with that. I understood; if journalists voice their concerns, they won’t get future interviews.
Despite all the super-hype for a first time novelist (I’m always suspicious of super-hype), I felt I needed to read at least an excerpt of The Woman in the Window. Maybe the novel really was that unputdownable. It happens, though I can’t think of an example offhand. Usually a novel that is that unputdownable takes a while to get noticed. Still, I decided to read the first few chapters (without spending any money).
Writing too much about James Patterson or the author who lied about having cancer or other authors who lied/cheated to get book deals can get negative. I don’t want to be negative all the time. Even though writers can get frustrated by aspects of publishing, now is a great time to be a writer.
5 Reasons Why It’s Great To Be A Writer Today!
It’s easy for most writers to be negative. It’s tough to make enough money to earn a living. We’re never satisfied with what we’ve written. No matter how many people read and respond to our work, it’s never enough. But even with these challenges, it’s better to be a writer today than it’s ever been.
1. Writing is physically easier than it’s ever been.
Authors used to have to physically hold a pencil or a pen and physically write out each word on a sheet of paper. Even worse, back in the really old days, writers had to dip quills into ink and then got beaten by monks if they made a mistake.
I’m not sure that ever really happened because there’s no ancient video footage of monks beating writers who made mistakes. If there’s no video footage of an event, I’m skeptical that it ever happened. Then again, back in the 1970s I saw nuns rap student knuckles with rulers, so if nuns in the 1970s were doing that, I’m pretty sure in the really old days monks did much worse to young writers who made errors on their parchments. After all, nothing inspires perfection like the threat of violence.
What do you think? Why do you think so many people read James Patterson books? Do you think James Patterson is scamming readers? If lying about cancer is bad, what kind of a lie is okay for a writer to tell the public?
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After more than ten years of blogging, I’ve finally written a novel.
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can really be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon and from the trunk of my car at various local bookstores… until parking lot security kicks me out. Buy it now while supplies last!
I haven’t read any bestselling fiction from 2019 yet. Maybe a book blogger shouldn’t admit something like that. I’m supposed to keep up with all the novels and all the latest publishing trends, but books take a long time to read, and publishing companies keep churning out stuff faster than readers can read them.
Sometimes I think I should have chosen to be a movie vlogger instead. They have it easy. They can watch a movie in two hours and be an expert. If a movie weekend is slow, movie vloggers can even critique trailers. I’ve seen 20 minute videos critiquing two-minute movie trailers. I haven’t watched any of them; I have just seen that these videos exist.
Anyway, book reviewers have to finish entire books, and that takes time. We can’t even critique book trailers because every book trailer sucks, so it’s pointless to critique them.. Even trailers for great books suck.
If I decide to read a bestselling novel from 2019, it would be Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. You don’t have to convince me. I’ve already convinced myself. For one, it sold more copies than any other book in 2019. It sold more ebooks and more audiobooks, at least according to Publishers Weekly ( read more here )… if you trust them.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t read books just because a lot of other people read them. But when a book sells that many copies, a book blogger probably should look into it.
I read Michelle Obama’s Becoming because it was so popular, but also because my wife had two copies and never got around to reading it. I figured since we had spent our own money on it, one of us ought to read it. My wife hasn’t even bought one copy of Where the Crawdads Sing, but it still outsold Becoming, so there’s that.
Early in 2019, I reviewed the first chapter of Where the Crawdads Sing. I read the free sample on my e-reader and wrote about how well-written the setting was. Then I compared it to the setting in a James Patterson book. Maybe that wasn’t a good approach. Every author looks good when compared to James Patterson, except maybe James Patterson’s coauthors.
One reason I don’t read current bestsellers is that they’re overpriced and they’re always checked out at the library (I guess that’s two reasons). Now that the book is older, it will be more available and paperbacks or secondhand copies will be easier to find. Being a cheapskate is no longer a reason.
That does it! I’ve convinced myself. I will find a way to read Where the Crawdads Sing without spending a bunch of money.
Here’s what I thought about Where the Crawdads Sing when I read the first chapter last year.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens- A Lesson on How to Write Setting
Setting can be tough for an author. If you write too much, you can make the reader bored. If you don’t write enough, the story can feel incomplete.
Getting the setting wrong can ruin a book for a reader. My teenage daughter complains that too many pages in classic literature are devoted to descriptions of place. She already knows what all that stuff looks like, she says. I remind her that the internet didn’t exist when classic literature was written, so stuff had to be described. Back then, literature was relatively new. There were places, people, and ideas that had never been put into words before. A lot was new.
When it comes to words and ideas, not so much is new today. Almost everything has been described. It’s difficult to come up with new was to say the same thing. But it’s lazy to not try. I respect any current author who tries.
It was easy to persuade me to read Where the Crawdads Sing, but other novels might be more difficult. Here’s a novel that could have appealed to me, except it… it… it… didn’t. I’m not sure anybody could persuade me to read it now.
Why Should I Read This? Ulysses by James Joyce
I should have known from the cover that this book wasn’t about Roman mythology.
When it comes to reading classic literature, there are a lot of challenges. The writing style from novels published generations ago can confuse today’s readers. Some of the books have lots of references that today’s readers don’t understand. And a lot of those classic novels are just too long for our short attention spans. Any one of those challenges can deter people like me from trying a book. But when a novel is challenging on every level, I know I’m screwed.
The worst of all of these classic novels might be Ulysses by James Joyce. I don’t know if Ulysses really is the worst of all the tough classic novels because I haven’t read most of the tough classic novels. I’ve been told it’s not fair to judge a book that you haven’t read, but I disagree. You can judge most books within a few pages, if you can make it that far. I’ve read the first few pages of Ulysses, and I know I don’t want to read it anymore.
I’ve never heard anybody say that they actually liked Ulysses. Supposedly, Vladimir Nabokov said it was brilliant, but he wrote Lolita, so he’s a literary author and his opinion doesn’t count. Besides, I’ve never seen video of Nabokov saying Ulysses was brilliant, so I don’t necessarily believe that he said it.
Yeah, yeah, I know everybody is tired of A Game of Thrones. The television series is over, Season 8 was a disastrous letdown, and everybody is emotionally done with it. Even fans of the books are pretty sure that the author George R.R. Martin will never finish writing his own series. He’s too busy blogging, going to fan conventions, and writing histories of his fictional world. Still, maybe there’s a case for reading the books.
Why Should I Read This? A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
At least Ned Stark doesn’t have to read all seven books to find out what happens to him.
No matter what time of year it is, people who watch Game of Thrones like to talk about Game of Thrones. It can be annoying to the innocent bystanders who don’t watch it. Even worse are the book snobs who have read the books and watch the show. The book snobs have had an advantage for years because they’ve known what was going to happen on the show and would like to sprinkle spoiler hints just to piss off the rest of us who haven’t read the books.
Just so you know, I have nothing against book snobs. I was a book snob when the Lord of the Rings movies came out. And I’m still a comic book snob when it comes to superhero movies. I’ve bored many non-comic book readers about how the movies are different from the original comic books. I’ve lost friendships over it, and I don’t even have many friends. So being a book snob isn’t necessarily meant as a negative.
As much as I respect them, it’s fun to annoy the book snobs by calling the book series A Game of Thrones. A Game of Thrones is the name of the first book, the book snobs keep telling me. The name of the entire series is A Song of Ice and Fire. The book snobs are right, but they don’t need to remind me every time I mention the Game of Thrones books. Everybody knows what I mean. If I say A Song of Ice and Fire, a bunch of people who know about the Game of Thrones TV show but don’t give a crap about the books won’t know what I’m talking about.
What do you think? What books have you vowed to never read? What bestselling novels from 2019 are worth reading? Is anything from 2020 any good? Does anybody want to persuade me to NOT read Where the Crawdads Sing?
(image via wikimedia)
The Romance Writers of America announced recently that it is cancelling its 2020 Rita Contest because of some really convoluted controversy. I tried to read about it. I really did, but it’s very complicated and it gave me a headache.
The short version (I think) is that one RWA Ethics chairperson was removed (or fired) because of a complaint against her for allegedly harassing(?)/talking about another author for something that author had written over twenty years ago. Then the fired RWA chairperson (who claims to be from a marginalized group) went to social media and a Twitter outrage mob forced a couple other people to either resign or get fired, and now everybody is angry and filing ethics charges against each other.
You can find more information about the topic here . It’s a lot to take in. On one hand, I respect a blogger who puts all those sources together in one blog post. On the other hand, it’s too much for me to keep track of. Go ahead if you want. This blogger put a lot of work into details.
Just so you know, I don’t have any stakes in this issue. I’m not a romance author. I don’t read romance novels. I’ll never win a contest for any of my writing. I don’t belong to a marginalized group (unless being left-handed counts).
In fact, some guy who claimed to belong to a marginalized group once told me that I can’t have an opinion about these kinds of issues involving people from marginalized groups because I’m not marginalized, but I know he can’t stop me from having an opinion so I ignored him because he doesn’t speak for everybody who considers themselves marginalized. I figured that since our backgrounds were different, we could trade perceptions (without arguing) to figure things out, but he wasn’t interested.
That’s okay. I’m still interested in how people who disagree with me think. Just don’t try to get me fired… and please don’t send an outrage mob at me.
Even though I’m not a romance author, I feel sympathy for the romance authors who aren’t involved. Most of them probably just want to write romance novels and enjoy some camaraderie with other authors. Instead, they see bickering over stuff that could have been avoided with a little diplomacy.
As far as who is to blame, I don’t know. There’s always stuff that the average person doesn’t know in these situations. It’s probably one of those conflicts where both sides are right in some way, but both sides distrust each other, so nothing will ever be able to get worked out. No matter how much is written, I’ll never know which side broke the trust first.
One of the problems in situations like this is that stuff that was (thought to be) acceptable in the past isn’t acceptable anymore, and people have a tough time adjusting. A couple years ago I ran into a problem where I wrote the phrase “I hit like a girl” a few times and got called out for it on my own blog. So I asked the question…
Is This Phrase Sexist?
Every once in a while, I tell people that I hit like a girl. I don’t say it often, but it comes up occasionally in conversation or in my writing. I’ve never given the phrase a second thought. I just thought it was a simple expression that explains that I’m not a good fighter.
I’ve been told several times recently that I shouldn’t say that I hit like a girl, that the phrase is sexist. A woman at work told me that it was an inappropriate thing to say. I apologized and made a mental note be very careful about what I say around her from now on. A couple commenters on this blog claim that it was a phrase that I should not use. I’ve even been told that women can hit just as hard as men.
At first, I was surprised I was getting criticism for saying/writing that I hit like a girl. I mean, I’ve written some objectionable stuff on this blog. I’ve written about adult situations. I’ve written about vulgar language and have even used some profanity. I’ve suggested that James Patterson might be a hack (as outrageous as that claim might be). I’ve even written porn jokes, and nobody complained that the porn jokes were sexist. They just said the porn jokes were stupid.
I understand why people would think it’s sexist to say “I hit like a girl.” They think I’m making fun of girls, and I’m saying that the way girls hit is inferior to the way boys hit. I agree that some women can hit just as hard as some men.
Some content creators don’t want to face accusations on social media. One way to avoid this is to simply not publish anything that might be controversial. Here is an author who self-banned her own book after she received outrage criticism over her portrayal of a character.
Author Self-Bans Book Because Of Outrage Mob
She looks ticked off. I’d be ticked off too if an outrage mob attacked my book.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have been interested in this book without the outrage mob. First of all, I don’t like YA fiction because there are always too many kids in the books. I don’t usually like reading books from the kid’s point-of-view. It’s okay occasionally, but I’m in my early 50s, and it would probably be kind of weird if I liked YA fiction too much.
Plus, this book is fantasy. Man, I have read way too much fantasy in my life. I’m so bored by fantasy that when I watch Game of Thrones, I enjoy the political intrigue but I yawn when I see dragons and ice zombies.
As much as I don’t like YA fantasy, I truly despise outrage mobs. They react too quickly and too forcefully to stuff and don’t give people time to process information. Even if the outrage mob is right about a specific point (they usually aren’t), they act so obnoxious that they ruin any point they had.
Just so you know, I’m referring to an unpublished book called Blood Heir by Amelie Wen-Zhao. The author has decided not to publish her book after an outrage mob attacked her for a variety of reasons. I’m not going into those reasons, but you can find them here and here . These two articles (especially the second one) explain the situation better than I could. You can also go to Twitter and look up Blood Heir, but I don’t recommend that. Twitter, ugh.
Critics today often use current standards to judge people or art from generations ago. It happens a lot, but this one caught my attention because it involves a prominent American book series that hadn’t been thought of as controversial before.
Is Little House on the Prairie Racist?
(image via wikimedia)
This is one of those topics where it’s not really necessary to have an opinion, but people will anyway. Last week the American Library Association changed the name of its children’s literature award from the Laura Ingalls Wilder award to the Children’s Literature Legacy award. That by itself might not seem like a big deal. I read a lot of books, and I had never heard of (or don’t remember hearing about) the Laura Ingalls Wilder award before. Under most circumstances, most people wouldn’t care what the name of the award is.
Then people found out that the award name was changed because of some stuff in the Little House on the Prairie books that is considered racist.
RACIST?
Did you say RACIST?
Did you say The Little House on the Prairie books are RACIST?
AW, CRAP!! That means everybody has to have an opinion!! Look out!!!!
Before everybody starts taking their predictable sides, let’s try to get some of the facts… and then we can take our predictable sides.
The Laura Ingalls Wilder award was first given out in 1954 to Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is kind of cool, I guess, to win an award that was named after you. This also shows that in 1954 the Little House on the Prairie books weren’t considered racist. Or it might mean that racism wasn’t an issue that the ALA paid attention to. Or it might mean that the ALA was an organization filled with racist librarians. Racist librarians are the most dangerous racists because they control the books. Plus, I always hear that it’s those quiet people you have to watch out for, and that includes quiet librarian racists.
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What do you think? Can issues like these get settled with diplomacy, or do these conflicts need to escalate until people get fired and books get boycotted? If you choose to NOT have an opinion, are you then part of the problem for not being involved? Or if you choose to be vocal about your opinion, are you part of the problem by escalating a conflict that could have been solved with tact and diplomacy? Are you a fan of false binaries, or do you think false binaries cause unnecessary arguing?
Stephen King might think this is a stupid question. (image via wikimedia)
Stephen King isn’t dead. As far as I know, he’s alive and well, and I hope he stays that way for a long time. This isn’t meant to be a morbid post.
But I’m curious, will anything weird happen when Stephen King dies? Will he have a ghost? Would his ghost haunt fictional sections of Maine for all eternity? Would his ghost be a demonic clown luring little kids into gutters? Or would King’s spirit tempt writers into using too many –ly adverbs in their prose?
Or maybe nothing will happen. Maybe people will just write quick social media posts about him and get on with their lives. And if King did come back as a ghost, maybe nobody would notice; there’s a lot of stuff going on right now that’s much weirder than Stephen King’s ghost popping up.
Even though Stephen King sometimes writes about evil spirits, a lot of people who read his books probably don’t believe in that stuff. I’m mildly interested because I think a ghost lived in my house when I was kid. It was an old guy staring into my bedroom from the hallway (great, a weirdo ghost, but at least he wasn’t staring into my older sister’s room. Actually, I don’t know which would be worse.).
I kept my mouth shut because I thought it was probably my imagination. Then decades later my mom mentioned how she thought we’d had a ghost in that house, and we compared stories. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it would hover in the hallway near my room. My room. It had to be my room.
I don’t know why I started wondering what Stephen King’s ghost would be like. It doesn’t make for a long blog post, but I’d rather write about it while he’s still alive. Anyway, I don’t want to come across as morbid, so here’s some other stuff I’ve written about Stephen King… while he’s still alive… and will be for many many more years to come.
Thank You, Stephen King!
(image via wikipedia)
A few weeks ago, a friend of my wife came over unannounced and uninvited with her family. Any visitors we get are because of my wife. I don’t have friends, so nobody comes over to see me. My wife has lots of friends, and sometimes we end up entertaining families of people whom I barely know. Most of the time I don’t mind, but I don’t like it when the visitors are unannounced and uninvited.
In this case, the family had a teenage son who, according to his parents, is addicted to video games and hates to read. He’s capable of reading, my wife’s friend said, but he won’t do it unless it’s a school assignment.
“At least he completes his school assignments,” I said to my wife’s friend.
“Yeah,” the son said to his mom, but she gave him a dirty look.
I could sympathize with the kid because he reminded me of a bunch of friends I had in high school (a time in my life when I actually had friends).
My high school friends weren’t functionally illiterate. They were dysfunctionally literate. They knew how to read but chose not to. If they were going to read, it would be a smut book like Massage Parlor by Jennifer Sills or a parody book like Bored of the Rings. If my high school friends had had internet and cell phones and they wouldn’t have read even those books. With the internet, teenage boys don’t need smut books anymore.
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Even though Stephen King is a prolific writer and has written some iconic novels, he admits some of his writing isn’t as good as it could have been. When I reread one of his best-known horror novels The Shining, I saw what he meant.
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Shining by Stephen King
(image via wikipedia)
The Shining by Stephen King might not be a classic yet, but it probably will be. It was written in the 1970s, and people still read it today and it’s still relevent, so I’m guessing that people will still read it 50 years from now.
Even though The Shining is a great book, it has some bad writing in it. At least, by Stephen King’s standards, there are some bad sentences. In his book On Writing, Stephen King maligns the adverb with one of the all-time most famous quotes about writing: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs,…”
When the Modern Master of Horror equates a part of speech with eternal damnation, you have to take that seriously.
Stephen King weighs in on a lot of political issues nowadays. Even if he ticks off a bunch of people and they stop reading his books, he still will have a massive audience, so there’s not much for him to lose. A few years ago, he wrote a quick ebook essay about guns, and I thought about reading it. Usually I don’t bother with celebrities and their opinions, but I give Stephen King credit for his unique perspective on this issue.
On Stephen King and his Essay about Guns
Even though Stephen King’s essay “Guns” is about gun control, my essay about Stephen King’s essay is not (about gun control). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Stephen King wrote a 25 page essay about gun control, put it on the Amazon Kindle, and now it’s a top ten Amazon Kindle bestseller. I’m not going to read a 25 page essay about gun control (that may be more a reflection on me than Stephen King). I can barely read the 2nd Amendment without seeing the yellow dots of sleep.
25 pages isn’t long for an essay about gun control. I bet any gun control legislation that is passed (or proposed) will be way over 25 pages long (and probably filled with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with guns). If it’s any consolation, I won’t read that either.
I usually get annoyed at celebrities who spout off about politics, but I don’t get annoyed at authors who write about political issues. That’s what writers should do. If there’s one group of celebrity that should talk (or write) about politics, it’s authors. I may not always agree with the ideas of other writers, but their views are probably better thought out than those of most celebrities (like actors, singers, musicians, or athletes).
In fact, I hope other famous authors start writing about gun control too. Maybe Tom Clancy can write a response, except he’d probably make it a 1,000 pages long with way too much filler.
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What do you think? What would Stephen King’s ghost be like? Would his ghost be any different from the average ghost? Or do you think ghosts don’t exist and all that supernatural stuff is a crock?
Dysfunctional Literacy 