Keeping Promises or The Roundup

I promised to scour the internet for accounts of Spring Fling 2012 to share and can I just say (preens, blows on nails), I hit the motherlode.  Future superstar and author of THE SIREN, Tiffany Reisz blogs about an elevator ride with a happy ending (not that kind!); Repeat offender Robyn Bachar (LOVE the pink hair), shares her experiences in two separate accounts to match the two days of the conference; YA author and chaptermate B.A. Binns weighs in; Author and Shutterbug Morgan Mandel provides a pictorial account; chaptermate and 2011 RITA-nominated author, Maureen Lang's account; and finally, Publisher's Weekly book maven Barbara Vey, wraps up with an awesome overview.

Anyone interested in owning the audio recording of the conference, here's the link.

  I've already started saving my pennies for the next time in 2014.

Genres and Labels

For a little while, my current manuscript and I were hopelessly stalled by the side of the road. Broken down. Not moving. Like a 1973 VW bus being driven from Des Moines to San Francisco with one and a half of the dual carburetors on the fritz. Seriously.

Thanks to a little NanoReviseMo mojo and the help of some friends and my critique partner, I'm unstuck and finally beginning to understand the tenets of goal, motivation and conflict in literature. Who knew that I didn't fully grasp the concept when I was taking all those literary theory classes at Jesuit university? Now that I do, things are looking up in terms of being able to pinpoint not only a description, blurb and elevator pitch for my tale, but I think I might even have drawn a bead on the genre.

What's that you say? How could you not know what GENRE you're writing! The horror!!! Well, you try figuring out if it's science fiction/fantasy with romantic elements or a historical paranormal romance. To top that off, what if it's single title (still not quite clear on that, someone PLEASE help) or Category. Here I thought, I'll just write down this story that keeps screaming inside my head but no, I have to tell you what it is. IT'S A STORY I MADE UP. Please stop confusing me. Or frightening me a little, in a good way by educating me with complex publishing-related math like Moonrat did over at Editorial Ass today. I mean your accountant might need an accountant to keep up with what's what in terms of earning out an advance. If you ever get one. Fortunately for me, I do already know that zero times any number is ALWAYS zero.

But thanks to publishing glossaries such as this one posted by blog fave, agent Nathan Bransford here or the anti-fairy version featured on fave 1.0, agent Janet Reid's shark infested waters here, I'm a little bit closer to the mark. Highly entertained though, but not necessarily as clear as I could be.

Please send chocolate.

Verisimilitude

Earlier this week, Moonrat's awesome blog Editorial Ass, linked an article by Andrew Wheeler on the practice of 'skipping.'  I won't recount it here since I have nothing of value to add to that particular conversation, but it did drag forward some amazing similarities between publishing and apparel.  Yes, apparel--as in clothes, jeans, jackets, belts, scarves, whatever.  But mostly apparel since that's what I know best.

Booksellers skip when an author's previous work didn't quite meet expectations, even if the author is well-known, respected and otherwise entrenched in the industry.  I can relate to this.  When I was still a business planner, I had to work with buyers, planning managers, executives from marketing and publicity to determine which products put their open to buy dollars to the best use.  And then those products needed to be marketed using co-op dollars and any advertising slicks which might help drive sales.    Placement is key as well--floor space and number of units are important to getting those magic numbers.  Once the crystal ball predicts which products will be your stars for that season, then the vigorous tracking of their rates of sale begin.  Sell-in is only verified by sell-through.   If you get your product through the door, that's great, but it needs to leave the building via the cash register at a shocking rate to guarantee you a smile the next time you see that buyer or general manager.   And last season's dark washed, skinny jean might be this season's high-waisted granny pant.  A dud, in other words.  To pilfer and paraphrase from Project Runway, 'one day you're in and the next, you're out.'  I guess it's the same with books.

My first thought after reading about the amazing similarity was, 'Oh dear, I might be at the wrong end of this horse.'   I never dreamed I was capable of designing a garment but I was very good at the sales, marketing and planning portion surrounding them.  So, I've decided to take a positive tack and hope that if ever I should land an agent and subsequently become published, this information will help me to not be such a pain in the ass because I'll understand the other side equally, if not better.