I Coach Creatives

Your Cover is 40% Of Your Sales

2012-01-30T13:01:00.000-08:00

Price point is another 40%. Reviews and social and "I liked your last book so I'll give this one a go" is your remaining 20%. How great your book is does not affect sales directly, because no one has any way of knowing (aside from your social and reviews, which obviously can be manipulated, and people know this).

But you have total control over 80% of your sales, via cover and price point. Price point is more forgiving, and harder to predict. That makes it soggier. A book might do 500 copies in one month at $1.99 and 2,000 the next month at $3.99. You have to experiment, tweak, revise, review, until you find a groove for that title.

But cover? That's binary. A cover is either a cover or it isn't. It's very likely that yours... isn't. Let's take a look at some top-selling genre fiction (YA, fantasy, sci-fi) kindle editions at amazon.

Buyers judge books by their covers; it's all they have to go on.

COLOUR: Jewel tones. Notice that? Not "blue" or "red" or "green." But sapphire, ruby, emerald.

VIGNETTE: Most get darker around the edges (or at least one side), to tell you to ignore the images next to the cover, and draw the eye to the center.

TYPE: Look how little variation there is here. Trajan is the big winner by a huge margin, often with accentuated caps or letterspaced (L I K E T H I S). For sans-serif faces, long, narrow, condensed and closely set.

CONTRAST: Overwhelmingly, white or gold type set on a darker background.

FULL-BLEED: Image goes all the way to the edge, all 'round. It's not bordered, it's not in a box, it's not with a solid band of colour on top. In one example above, there's a semi-transparent box, in the same tones as the illustration, to give the white type some contrast.

CASE: Upper. I don't see any mixed upper and lower here.

MORE: You can't yet put "NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER" above your title, but you can likely put "A MAIN CHARACTER NOVEL" or "BY THE AUTHOR OF SOME OTHER BOOK". Sometimes you can throw in a one or two line slug "Oh my God... unbelievable... I couldn't put it down...amazing" - Some Writer Friend, author of Yet Another Book. There shouldn't be very much of this, but you can see where it goes from the samples above and how much there should be of it.

The cruel, ugly reality here is that if your cover doesn't look like this, it won't sell the way it should. This is what a book cover is: it's unforgiving, it's inflexible, it's binary. And it makes all the difference in the world.

There's no way to do this in Word. There's no way to do this with online cover generators – although by using the rules above you can probably get pretty close. You just need to really pay attention, and even if you hire a cover designer, keep asking yourself, and others around you, "Does it look like one of these?" Because it has to.

Word Count: How Long is a Piece of String?

2012-01-27T17:43:00.000-08:00

I get asked this one a lot.

The other day Cherie Priest commented on her blog that she had hit 108k on her latest manuscript. That seemed high to me, having read her other books. When I asked her about it, she mentioned that her first novel in her latest series tipped in at 120k.

Right now I'm working on a novel, and I think it'll settle somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words. This is the standard range for the YA (Young Adult) audience I'm aiming for.

That's in the neighbourhood 200 pages in trade paperback. One could cheat and make an "A format" pocketbook (4.3 x 7 inches) and set the thing in 14 point Goudy (like this copy of this book in my 9 year old daughter's fantasy box-set) and push it to just shy of 300 pages. Pricier to print but feels better in the hand. Up to you.

Your basic mystery novel, spy thriller etc. averages 80k, and fantasy – where you have to spend a lot of words explaining how objects and culture and politics and geographies work – can reach and exceed 120k.

For whatever reason, a lot of writers have 100,000 words in their heads as a "legitimate novel" length. I'm not sure where this comes from, except perhaps that it's an accidental inversion of the agent's tendency to NOT READ mss over 100k. So it's not a minimum, it's usually a maximum. (Obviously depending on genre, above).

There are of course exceptions to the rule. Twilight is the rare breakout YA novel that hit 120k. Collins' phenomenally successful Hunger Games squeaks in at 99k. But here's a little perspective, looking at some familiar classics, both adult and YA.

Rowling, Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone: 77k
Salinger, Catcher in the Rye: 73k
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises: 67k
Golding, Lord of the Flies: 60k
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five: 50k
Average Nancy Drew Novel: 47k
Bradbury, Farenheit 451: 47k

Vonnegut's manuscript is no less legitimate for weighing in at half your aspiring author's ideal length. The Science Fiction Writers of America define a "novel" as 40,000 words or above.

Even then, the market's understanding of "novel" is being radically re-invented by e-readers. Your cover image at 90 x 135 pixels, and your $2.99 price point, look as "valid' or as "legitimate" as anything put out by the Big 6 publishers. Your readers are going to buy your book if your cover is amazing, if your reviews are good; and they're going to love it if your writing is good. Word count is completely meaningless to your long term success. Is Farenheit 451 less of a novel than Twilight? Do I have to ask?

So tell your story with the best writing you wrench from your talent, and just don't worry about word count in your final manuscript. Worry about word count in your productivity.

How I'm Putting 50,000 - 60,000 Words Together

On Tuesdays, my (amazing) wife does everything with the kids. Gets them breakfast, makes their lunch, gets them to school, picks them up, makes them dinner, gives them a bath, gets them ready for bed. Everything. And I spend that one kid-free day per week writing 5,000 words. That's a pretty decent daily word-count. At this rate I'll have a solid first draft mid-March, And a few furious weeks of editing to make my mid-April deadline.

On Thursdays, I do everything with the kids so she can go to the studio and paint.

Thing is, I know I only get this one day per week to move the novel forward, so that time is sacrosanct, and I don't stop until I have 5,000 words on the screen. Takes me ten hours solid. I have a plan for exactly what has to get done each-writing day, and I don't waver. I don't cheat. I push. Because that's all I get. I don't care if I'm not inspired or if I don't feel like writing. I don't get to sleep until those 5,000 words get hammered into pixels, and that's that.

I have a plan for the first draft. I have a plan for the edit. I have a plan for revisions. I have a plan for proofing. I have a plan for the formatting, and eBooks, and promo and marketing. Even though I'm not even half way through the first draft, I've started shopping for a cover artist. Because the PLAN is the razor of truth and justice and fluffy kittens and that's just the way it is, dammit.

I'm so grateful for the ability (and the help!) to set this time aside and deliver on my commitment to my manuscript. But without goal, without limit, without PLAN, I could be at a-bunch-of-random-notes-and-great-ideas stage 6 months, 2 years, 5 years from now.

Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers

2012-01-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

9. Write that "million words of crap"; give yourself six years to get published; collect 250 rejections, etc etc..This advice is much like another piece of bad advice—buy pants with a 36-inch waist. Well, the plurality of people wear 36-inch pants, so... Outside of the basic advice of "Try, and a significant number of times", any specific measure is foolish and leads to aggravation. [...] This is how the Soviet Union ended up making tractor engines so heavy they'd fall out of the machines—they measured factory productivity via tonnage produced per year. Any advice that involves anything other than "Write something publishable, attempt many times to get it published" can lead to artificial goals such as the collection of rejection slips or the production of unpublishable stories.
The same is true about other "advice" like—write short stories first, writer shorter short stories rather than long ones, join a writer's group, make sure your characters are likable, write/don't write for the "market", etc. All of this is "buy typical pants" advice.

http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1732344.html

How Julian Schnabel Breaks Through Creator's Block

2012-01-21T16:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/julian-schnabel-creative-ruts_n_1209025.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

If you don't paint you're not a painter. If you don't write you're not a writer.

Konrath's $100,000

2012-01-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Self-publishing rock star JA Konrath reveals the numbers behind his strategy for success.

We can directly and instantly reach hundreds of millions of consumers in a global marketplace. We can set the list price, and we get to keep the majority of that list price. Readers can buy our work instantly on devices that they love. They don't have to go to the store, the store is in their hands. Once a book is written and formatted it can sell unlimited copies, forever, without any costs to the writer other than the initial time investment and monetary investment (formatting, editing, cover.)

No other industry allows this. There are always continuing production costs and shipping costs. There are always middlemen who take cuts. There is always a limit to distribution. There are always times when something is sold out or unavailable.

Not anymore.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/01/100000.html

Kindle Format 8

2012-01-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

New specs are out for KF8...

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17TIRUIVI

What will YOU be self-publishing this year?

OmmWriter

2012-01-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, this would drive me com-puh-LETE-ly mental, but if you're looking for a word-processing experience that's more spa-like than Word...

http://www.ommwriter.com/

Now, on the plus side, you can strip the interface down to a beautiful, minimalist no-distractions user-experience that is among the best I've seen. The strength is that you can dial this thing from Bauhaus squeaky-clean antiseptic all the way to "Jimi Hendrix" freakout. If you crave stimulus while you get your wordsmith on, but find all the distractions distracting, this at least keeps all your distractions in one place, as it were.

Writing is an incredibly personal, intimate, finicky process. I would rather remove my own organs with a blunt stick than write an entire manuscript in Word. Personally, I use the get-outta-my-face Text editor that comes with a Mac for all my writing (yes, all my books were written in Text), unless it's a screenplay in which I case I use Final Draft and only-ever Final Draft.

I don't want style palettes and 30 format buttons across the top and pale, colour-coded icons parading around the outside of my anything. And I sure as hell don't want an American programmer correcting my grammar with a squiggly line simply because one of my characters said "ain't" in a line of dialogue. For me I want to get as close to a blank sheet of paper and a magic typewriter with copy-paste-undo as possible. The full screen mode in OS X Lion is great for that. A white expanse of limitless possibility, and each black letter a footprint in the snow. And nothing else. Just the writer and the naked, exposed word. A black null in a sea of liquid crystal. Nothing else going on.

Multi-tasking was a lie, but that's another blog post.

But to organize my thoughts, I have a $40 Cross steel-nibbed fountain pen and a small, hardcover Moleskine notebook (I'm addicted to these). I just can't read my handwriting after, but the process is valuable for me. Muscle memory, the way your writing has to slow down with a fountain pen, how you have to wait a moment before you turn the page as the ink dries. Sip coffee, think about it. So my own writing quirks run from the brutishly minimal to the exquisitely complicated, and often in the same hour.

Writers are weird. Creatives are weird. But the sooner you grok exactly the way in which you're weird, the sooner you can work with that and get down to it.

in honour of the fact that life is short: ecstatic sex, quitting, and wearing your best

2011-12-13T10:30:00.001-08:00

if you feel like you're always failing, consider that this is part of being an artist. let it be a divine inclination. keep going.

http://whitehottruth.com/white-hot/in-honour-of-the-fact-that-life-is-short/

10 Reasons Your Freelance Career is Failing

2011-12-05T12:06:00.001-08:00

If your freelance business isn’t where you want it to be, then it’s time to own up to your choices and make a change.
Here are 10 reasons your freelance career is failing. If you want to turn it around, then it’s up to you.
Consider this your “tough love” article of the week.
1. You know your craft, but not your business.
Sure, you’re an excellent artist or a skilled tradesman. You understand your task and you can do it well.
But you don’t understand marketing or sales or any of that other business stuff.
Guess what? It’s on you to figure it out. Learning new skills and adapting to the environment is part of the job.
You can either sit around and complain that less-skilled freelancers are beating you out because of “stupid marketing tactics” … or you can read some books, try some new things, and play the game.
2. You’re lazy.
Sorry. That’s not what you want to hear. And it’s not what I want to say.
But most of the time, it’s the truth.
Your business isn’t growing because you want to sleep in. Your business isn’t growing because you want to take Saturday off. Your business isn’t growing because you want to watch TV for two hours every night. Basically, you’re too lazy to build a business.
Don’t act like there isn’t enough time. Time doesn’t change. You can’t create more or less of it. You can only choose to use it better.

http://freelanceswitch.com/freelancing-essentials/failing-freelance-career/

Kobo to become a publisher

2011-10-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

Canadian-based e-book seller Kobo is following in Amazon's footsteps and creating a publishing arm that will deal directly with authors, CBC News has learned.

Kobo, whose major shareholder is Indigo Books, will roll out its program sometime next year, according to CEO Michael Serbinis.

Like Amazon, which announced two weeks ago that it would be publishing 122 original titles this fall, Kobo will be offering complete publishing services for authors, including book editing and design.
"It's part of the new market and if you expect to be a number 1 player in that market globally it's table stakes — you have to provide it," Serbinis told CBC News.

Amazon's move into publishing cuts out the middle man — the traditional publisher — and promises writers more of the proceeds from their e-book sales.

– more

NYT: Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing

2011-10-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.

[...] Amazon has started giving all authors, whether it publishes them or not, direct access to highly coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records how many physical books they are selling in individual markets like Milwaukee or New Orleans. It is introducing the sort of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans that used to happen only on book tours. It made an obscure German historical novel a runaway best seller without a single professional reviewer weighing in.

via NYT

Chick Lit Book Covers!

2011-09-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Covers for client, friend and author Nuala Reilly:

Web Portfolio

2011-09-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

Social Media Experiment (Phase II): 36 hours to get $100 worth of coaching for just $20

2010-10-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

The first phase was a discounted e-book, to a select network. Now I'm testing a different product, at a different price point, to a different network.

Here's how it works;

• Purchase a 45 minute coaching session to be conducted via Skype or phone - a $100 value. Learn more about the process and approach here: http://jordanstratford.com/icoachcreatives/

• Buy before Saturday, October 2 at midnight Pacific time, and you pay only $20.

• Send 3 questions relating to your business, creative venture or personal life to jordan@jordanstratford.com

• Include the name 1 person you'd like to meet for whatever reason, and I'll look through my network for someone who can be of similar benefit to you – and I may even know that person.

• We'll work out a schedule and conduct the coaching session in the next 60 days.

• When you purchase, share this link on your Facebook, Twitter, or network of choice.

Additionally, I'll share the methodology and the experiment results here on the blog – so we can learn collectively what works in terms of discount, reach, and network.

Never worked with a coach before? Here's a great way to experiment yourself.

Paypal will be processed by the lovely and talented Zandra via zandra (at) zandra dot ca

Here's the button!

Five Reasons Why Best-Selling Authors Are Going Direct

2010-09-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Many best-selling authors are going direct by publishing through epublishers instead of traditional publishing companies. Here's why.

The latest news has reflected a shift in best-selling authors who publish their manuscripts through epublishers rather than traditional publishing companies, and it's for a good reason. Readers are chomping at the bits for ebooks. Just recently the Association of American Publishers reported that ebook sales have increased by 176 percent in 2009, while print-book sales continues to decrease. The list of benefits for ebook writers is endless, but one major upside is that the authors are taking home more of the book sale profits. Not to mention that the editing process is simplified and that ebooks are produced much, much quicker. It also helps that authors have more control during the entire book production process and access to a whole new audience. The publishing industry is paying attention to the major move, including traditional publishers. More and more literary agencies, such as Andrew Wylie's agency, have plans to start agencies that deal exclusively with epublishers. It's no wonder why more authors are going direct.

- read more via Gizmodo

Screenwriters: What 4 words are you never going to put together in a script?

2010-06-13T15:44:00.001-07:00

Book Launch 2.0

2010-06-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

For all my author clients:

$30 DIY GlideCam

2010-06-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

A $15 monopod, some PVC, and you have a steadycam based on the idea of extending the center of gravity out beyond the camera itself. Clever.

http://www.techtilt.com/2010/06/06/diy-glidepod/

For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path

2010-03-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Since graduation in 2008, Mr. Eich, 23, has gotten magazine assignments here and there, but “industrywide, the sentiment now, at least among my peers, is that this is not a sustainable thing,” he said. He has been supplementing magazine work with advertising and art projects, in a pastiche of ways to earn a living. “There was a path, and there isn’t anymore.”

[...]Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether.

“There are very few professional photographers who, right now, are not hurting,” said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of the magazine Photo District News.

That has left professional photographers with a bit of an identity crisis. Nine years ago, when Livia Corona was fresh out of art school, she got assignments from magazines like Travel and Leisure and Time. Then, she said, “three forces coincided.”

They were the advertising downturn, the popularity and accessibility of digital photography, and changes in the stock-photo market.

– NY Times

10 Tips for Indie Directors

2010-03-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

10 Tips for Indie Directors

1) Listen to light - Shoot stills
Work with the DOP to see where the light is and the shapes that are made from it. Maplethorpe isn't a great photographer because he shoots weird naked people, he's a great photographer because he works with angular blocks of light. So once your actors are blocked out, shoot digital stills and put them up on the monitor. Look at the geometry of the shot and use it for dramatic effect (or change it with lighting).

2) PA's
Use your production assistants. They're excited, they're happy to be there, and they'll endure a 14 hour day and come back and do it again. So give them something to do and tell them why it matters. Blocking street traffic matters while you're trying to get a noise-free shot. Getting coffee matters because you're cross-eyed before your fourth Americano and you can't read the shot list. Ask them if they've had a break, or had enough to eat. The answer will be "no" but as a director you'll seem less self-involved.

3) Rehearse, but not too much
Let the actors rehearse amongst themselves at the location, getting comfortable, listening to their voice-throw. Stay out of their way. Then do one or possibly two runs through the scene with you. Not too much. Give them notes, but don't let them rehearse the notes to keep it fresh. Some directors like to rehearse a LOT, so it's a matter of taste.

4) Don't sit down
Director-chairs are cliché. Stand up next to the script super but not too close to the DOP. Let them work, but why should you sit down when your crew is on their feet on a concrete floor all day?

5) Locked master
Just in case it's all going to go horribly, horribly wrong, lock down the camera and get a wide master shot of the whole scene first. That way if technical or personal crap rears its ugly head, you can still keep that scene in the movie. Entire films are made with locked-down master shots. Visually boring, but it's an insurance policy.

6) Block actors with the shot list; clockwise over shoulders
Let the actors see the storyboards just before go-time. Double check the shot list and block accordingly. Then, after your master shot take, you can move the camera over a shoulder and get the first "pup". Move the camera again over another shoulder and get the second "pup". If you have more than two actors in a scene, shoot your over-the-shoulders clockwise. But...

7) Don't break the line
If you cross over the invisible meridian line, your footage will have characters flipping back and forth. In the footage, character A should ALWAYS be on the left, and character B should ALWAYS be on the right. Otherwise your audience will recoil in horror without knowing why.

8) Cat in the window
Okay, so far your two actors have done one with-director rehearsal, one master take, and two pups. You need them to go through one more take with a moving camera, shooting close up of hands, or props, or tie-straightening, or some kind of ambient element in the location (a cat in the window). This gives the editor something to cut away to if a fly goes up the starlet's nose.

9) Don't produce while you're directing
More than half of indie director projects mean double-duty for the director, and writer/director/producer combos are becoming the norm rather than the exception. But while you're directing, direct. Use your associate / assistant producer to handle producer shite while you're shooting. You don't want to be mid-notes with the actors when someone from the location wants to talk about parking or to tell you craft services needs a cheque.

10) Establishing shot on the way out
Don't get your establishing shot when you show up – get it on the way out. You'll have a different understanding of the place after you've been there for a few hours and it will inform your shot. Also you need to spend daylight on your actors. A drive-by establishing shot is the easiest (possibly the only easy) shot to get later if you run out of time.

Bang! Bang! Writing Gunplay

2010-03-16T15:14:00.001-07:00

This is of interest to me as I'm in the middle of writing not one but two crime-drama scripts for clients, and one of those scripts has a lot of shoot-em-up.

4 That 100 yard “sniper shot”? Piece. Of. Cake. Unless you’re using a pistol.

Range is a funny thing. Barrel length, bullet-shape, -size, and -weight, wind direction and speed all alter this number. Hell, even the grain count between two types of rounds in the same gun can change the maximum range. And, at certain distances, the round isn’t traveling with enough energy to do damage. To cut out the ambiguity, shooters tend to focus more on the “maximum effective range” – the largest theoretical distance at which damage can be inflicted upon a target with a specific firearm under the broadest conditions.

Besides maximum effective range, there are other things to consider – like the vision of the shooter, the lighting conditions, attached optics, and how exposed the target is. The equations can get complicated but here are a few rules of thumb – for a snub nose revolver you’re working in feet, ten or fifteen at most for an accurate shot. For a full-sized pistol, a man-sized target twenty-five to fifty meters away is a two-handed reality with practice. And with a rifle? Even without optics, a 300 meter shot is fairly easy with minimal training.

– Read the whole thing

Free / Cheap 3D Book Cover images for E-Book Sales

2010-03-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

This looks pretty good, and is worth checking out.

Remember, your cover IS your book.

1) Amateur cover signals amateur, poorly-written book. Hire an experienced cover designer.

2) Generic covers signals "already read it" to potential buyers.

3) Aim for distinctive, not "unusual". The latter means "too far outside readers' experience".

4) No one will or should read anything that's been contaminated with clip art or Comic Sans.

That being said, maybe you have a simple graphic or photo background and Helvetica in mind, and this thing will crank out a "photo" of a stack of your books, even if you never print a single copy. $10 allows you to make 100 covers in one month, so if you have 4 or 5 e-books this could make a lot of sense.

Also works for CDs, credit-card looking membership cards, DVD clamshells, software boxes, 3-ring binders... Clever.

How To Write A Hollywood Rom-Com in 10 Easy Steps

2010-03-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

The truth is, they make that kind of scratch because they tap into a familiar formula that boring people find comforting and recognize as one of their own, rather than attacking with pitchforks like they would an intellectual challenge, or the town ogre. And now, because I’m such a righteous dude, I’m here to explain that formula to you, the cretinous layperson.

[...] Step 2: Title

The last thing you want in a rom-com is confusion or surprises, so your number one goal in a title should be an already-familiar phrase (preferably a song title) which communicates the entire premise. I.e., The Proposal, What Happens in Vegas, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Runaway Bride, 27 Dresses, Ghost of Girlfriends Past, The Break Up, My Best Friend’s Girl, etc.

Snarky, but spot-on.

More from Gizmodo: 2 Great Posts About the Inner Machinations of the Record Industry

2010-03-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

This is survival-level information for independent recording artists looking at either going it alone or signing with a major label

The first:

The biggest music stores are now virtual, so there's no need for someone to go gladhand every Sam Goody manager so they give you endcap space for Use Your Illusion II. The iTunes Music Store sells 25% of the music sold in America as of last August, and that number is definitely going up, not down.

[...] But for unsigned bands, companies such as TuneCore and CD Baby act as middlemen between them and digital storefronts like iTunes for very small amounts of money; getting your album up on major stores such as iTunes, Amazon and eMusic will set you back about $47 through TuneCore. And you retain all ownership of your music and keep all royalties, unlike working with a record label.

[...] Furthermore, these days it's easier than ever for musicians to record music without an expensive studio. Software such as Reason, Pro Tools and Logic can be bought for $300 or less, and run on a mid-range laptop. Cheap mics and gear can be found all over eBay and Craigslist. Tie everything together with a $200 to $500 mic preamp analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog box, and you have a mini-studio in your bedroom.

And music blogs have turned the way artists are discovered on its head. It used to be that high-paid A&R executives would scour clubs to find underground bands to sign, acting as the filter between the millions of mediocre bands and the discriminating public. Today, obsessive music fans scour clubs and the web for free, discovering new acts and writing about them on blogs. Labels then discover bands from these blogs. The A&R system is no longer as relevant.

[...] And signing to an indie instantly connects you to that labels fans, Bonacci says. "Nobody really cares about Sony records or Universal. You don't seek out stuff that's being released on Universal as a fan. Independent labels, be it Domino or SubPop or whatever, those labels have fans."

[...] The fact of the matter is that bands do still need someone working for them, 360 deal or not. For some bands, just having a small team of a dedicated manager, publicist and lawyer who can handle the nitty-gritty of online sales, tour organization, merchandising and marketing will be enough for them. But many can still benefit from the huge networks that labels have with their contacts in every facet of the industry. Sure, you can print your own t-shirts, but a label with contacts with clothing manufacturers, stores and distributors can make that process a lot easier. And just how much of this work do you want to do yourself?

[...] But clearly, the money that's to be made in music is no longer just in album sales. And bands seem to be presented with a choice: they can either allow labels to become more involved in everything that they do, and give up money that used to go exclusively to them in the process, or strike out on their own. Either way, they'll entering a landscape where getting their song on Gossip Girl for 40 seconds is more important than any amount of FM radio play, where getting a music video posted to Stereogum is more important than getting it on MTV and where you make more money touring behind an album than selling that same album.

And there's this one:

My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads

E-books, Formats, and Devices

2010-03-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

I've been following with great interest the various device-and-format standards for indie pubishers / self-published authors. I'm predicting that the iPad will open up huge opportunities for small-press publications, doubling the sales of obscure, vertical and sort-of-out-of-print books – which is to say, if your Lulu-published guide to hamster grooming sold only 200 copies, you're about to sell another 200 copies on the iPad.

So gizmodo has a great field guide to the issues and challenges around open formats available for publishers here.

Okay, so the easiest way to put this in perspective is to quickly list what formats the major ebook readers support. (Why these four? Well, they're the ones due to sell over 2 million units this year, except for Barnes & Noble's, which we're including as a direct contrast to Kindle just because.)

• Amazon Kindle: Kindle (AZW, TPZ), TXT, MOBI, PRC and PDF natively; HTML and DOC through conversion
• Apple iPad: EPUB, PDF, HTML, DOC (plus iPad Apps, which could include Kindle and Barnes & Noble readers)
• Barnes & Noble Nook: EPUB, PDB, PDF
• Sony Reader: EPUB, PDF, TXT, RTF; DOC through conversion

You'll notice a pattern there: Everybody (except for Amazon) supports EPUB as their primary ebook format. Turns out, there's a good reason for that.

[...] The other path for digital publishers: Build an app to hold your books and magazines. This is the route magazines are taking, because they're envisioning some fancy digital jujitsu. With Adobe AIR, which is what Wired and the NYT are using in various incarnations for their respective rags, they're able to do more advanced layouts, more rich multimedia, Flash craziness, and other designer bling that EPUB can't handle, says Adobe's Bogarty. Also, importantly you can dynamically update content, like when new issues arrive, which you can't really do with EPUB.

Interestingly, the publisher Penguin is also taking the app route for their books, building apps using web technologies like HTML5 for the iPad, so their books are in fact, way more like games and applications than mere books. So it's another tack publishers could take...

Craig Mod on the iPad, and What To Print

2010-03-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.
The airport paperback.
The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dregs of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

Once we dump this weight we can prune our increasingly obsolete network of distribution. As physicality disappears, so too does the need to fly dead trees around the world.

You already know the potential gains: edgier, riskier books in digital form, born from a lower barrier-to-entry to publish. New modes of storytelling. Less environmental impact. A rise in importance of editors. And, yes — paradoxically — a marked increase in the quality of things that do get printed.

[...]

I propose the following to be considered whenever we think of printing a book:

The Books We Make embrace their physicality — working in concert with the content to illuminate the narrative.
The Books We Make are confident in form and usage of material.
The Books We Make exploit the advantages of print.
The Books We Make are built to last.

The result of this is:

The Books We Make will feel whole and solid in the hands.
The Books We Make will smell like now forgotten, far away libraries.
The Books We Make will be something of which even our children — who have fully embraced all things digital — will understand the worth.
The Books We Make will always remind people that the printed book can be a sculpture for thoughts and ideas.
Anything less than this will be stepped over and promptly forgotten in the digital march forward.

Goodbye disposable books.

Hello new canvases.

– http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/

The Math Behind E-Book Publishing

2010-03-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.

Publishers largely agree, which is why in negotiations with Apple, five of the six largest publishers of trade books have said they would price most digital editions of new fiction and nonfiction books from $12.99 to $14.99 on the forthcoming iPad tablet — significantly lower than the average $26 price for a hardcover book.

But publishers also say consumers exaggerate the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations about how low the prices of e-books can go. Yes, they say, printing costs may vanish, but a raft of expenses that apply to all books, like overhead, marketing and royalties, are still in effect.

All of which raises the question: Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?

[...] Now let’s look at an e-book. Under the agreements with Apple, the publishers will set the consumer price and the retailer will act as an agent, earning a 30 percent commission on each sale. So on a $12.99 e-book, the publisher takes in $9.09. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about 50 cents to convert the text to a digital file, typeset it in digital form and copy-edit it. Marketing is about 78 cents.

The author’s royalty — a subject of fierce debate between literary agents and publishing executives — is calculated among some of the large trade publishers as 25 percent of the gross revenue, while others are calculating it off the consumer price. So on a $12.99 e-book, the royalty could be anywhere from $2.27 to $3.25.

All that leaves the publisher with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.

– New York Times

Interesting and useful article, well worth checking out. Written from a consumer-information perspective, but still useful for self-publishers and indies who often forget that books need paid copy-editors, proofreaders, designers, websites, launch events, (and in the case of print-editions, review copies, envelopes and couriers and shipping and and and...)

Ten rules for writing fiction from Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman...

2010-02-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Elmore Leonard:
Using adverbs is a mortal sin.

Neil Gaiman:
Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

PD James:
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Margaret Atwood:
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Roddy Doyle:
Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Hilary Mantel:
Are you serious about this? Then get an accountant.

Michael Moorcock:
Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.

Joyce Carol Oates:
Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.

Annie Proulx:
Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.

Will Self:
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.

Jeanette Winterson:
Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.

– Guardian article, part 1 and part 2

"Creativity comes from trust."

2010-02-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.
– Rita Mae Brown

The New 10 Commandments of Screenwriting

2010-01-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

There are thousands of things you can learn as a screenwriter that will be valuable for you. But break these commandments and your soul will be damned to eternal amateur-damnation…

…Or maybe it’ll just be a bit more difficult to become a pro. Either way, you’ll want to really consider these guidelines as you write or rewrite your screenplay.

1. Entertain us…or it’s over!

Entertainment is the number one reason that people go to movies. Every producer and agent knows that. So it should be the #1 focus of your screenwriting. Become a master at making any character or situation entertaining and you’ll be a writer in demand.

To be blunt, if there is anything in your script that doesn’t entertain, fix it.

2. Make EVERYTHING more interesting.

The industry is filled with readers who are fed a gourmet diet of professional screenplays. If you want yours to stand out, it has to captivate their attention and cause them to forget that they are doing a job.

This should be an ongoing campaign of yours. Make your scenes more interesting. Make your characters more interesting. Make your dialogue more interesting. Make everything more interesting...

– From screenwritingu.com

Introduction to Screenwriting

2010-01-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

Course outline for my Pac Film class that I start teaching tomorrow:

1. Introduction to Screenwriting

- 3 Act Structure
- screenwriting conventions
- idea to outline
- reading assignment (any feature screenplay)

2. Theme and Plot

- identifying theme
- plot vs. story
- analysis of selected screenplay
- reading assignment (assigned screenplay)

3. Genre

- identifying genres
- genre beats
- trope and cliché
- analysis of selected screenplay
- reading assignment (any feature screenplay)

4. Character & Dialogue

- character arc
- impetus
- dialogue structure
- avoiding stereotypes
- analysis of selected screenplay
- reading assignment (assigned screenplay)

5. Setting, Situation, Scene

- JEDI screenwriting
- reading assignment
- analysis of selected screenplay
- reading assignment (any feature screenplay)

6. Business of Screenwriting

- agents
- fielding
- guilds & registration
- credit
- options
- writer-for-hire
- script doctors
- permissions
- producing your own scripts

Should be fun!

The 7 keys to social branding

2010-01-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

Dear sweet merciful Buddha, how I've come to loathe the word "branding". It's not its fault, the poor word. But it's been so abused in the last decade I think it deserves some time left alone on a beach somewhere.

That being said, creative individuals who want to make the transition to being a creative professional need to understand what I call the narrative of professional identity. That's cumbersome, and I should call it something else, but like I said the B word is on holiday and recuperating, send flowers.

Despite lip-service to two-way communication, branding has often been a one-way effort: we decided what we wanted people to think about our companies and designed marketing and communications that made that happen.

Or so we hoped.

But a brand is the collective impression people gain not only from you and your marketing efforts, but from all of their interactions with you—and the interactions others have as well (newly amplified through social media).

That means we need to look at the process of branding in different way: through a social lens.

– Tamsen McMahon (keep reading...)

Hat tip to Anna Pollock

Advice for Genre Fiction Writers: Lose the Adverb

2010-01-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

"Troy spun around, grabbing for the gun, but it was already firmly in Erek's hand with the safety off." There are more problematic adverbs in this sentence than you notice at first.

First of all, "around" is pure clutter — is there any other way to spin? There's also the way Troy's attempt to grab the gun is part of the act of spinning, but that's not an adverb problem, so we'll skip over it.

Then there are two adverbs in a row: "already firmly." And the phrase "already firmly" is a symptom of a bigger problem with the sentence. Break the compound sentence into two parts — the subject of the second half is "it" and the verb is "was." The gun just appears in Erek's hand. And poor Erek, who has heroically seized the gun and turned the safety off in time to thwart Troy, doesn't even get to be the subject of his own half-sentence. The gun isn't even the subject. Instead, the subject is "it," which refers to the gun. Also, "firmly" is meant to tell us that Erek grips the gun or aims the gun, but it's not as interesting as either of those verbs would have been.

It's kind of sad how boring all of this spinning and grabbing and gunplay turns out to be.

[...]

Look at the most famous adverb in science-fiction history: Captain Kirk's "To boldly go where no man has gone before." What do you notice? Okay, yes, it's a split infinitive. But look past that. The verb is "go," which doesn't really tell us much in itself.

What would happen if you took the adverb out of that sentence? You get: "To go where no man has gone before." Which sounds bland, and a little apologetic. ("Hey, we're, uh, going, ummm, somewhere that we haven't gone before." "Oh. Are we there yet?" "No.")

From that, you might conclude that the adverb is necessary. But actually, it's more that the verb is weak. "Go" just doesn't give us much, and it definitely doesn't have the swashbuckling feeling Captain Kirk's ringing voiceover demands. So the best bet is to replace it with a stronger verb, like "venture," or "explore."

– via io9

Jessica Hagy: The Visual Grammar of Ideas

2010-01-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Melding a love of data, a razor-sharp wit, and an old-school comic strip aesthetic, Jessica Hagy crafts simply drawn charts and diagrams that play like philosophical punchlines. They contemplate complex issues, like the challenges of choosing which ideas to nurture, and simple truisms, like the relationship between joy and bacon.

- via the99percent

"Tell the World You Don't Suck"

2010-01-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

The whip-smart Leslie Burns has a new marketing book in both e-book and print form; "Tell the World You Don't Suck". While aimed at commercial photogs, this is great, juicy information for marketing any creative venture from commercial illustrators to copywriters;

What I generally ﬁnd in my clients who are struggling with their own marketing is that they have, for the most part, forgotten that they are always creatives. That is, they think that when it comes to the business side of their business, they somehow have to stop being creative or something.

Trouble is, when you try to sublimate your gifts, what you make isn’t so great. Whether that is your images or your marketing tools—it doesn’t matter. So here’s what I really hope you will do while you are reading this book: remember to be your full creative self. If you get some wacky idea while reading, jot it down someplace because it might be one hell of a winner. Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

[...] You get to pick which team you want to be a member of: Team Cheap-o or Team Vision.
Team Cheap-o can only be proﬁtable by working more and more as the prices get lower and lower. Quality is sacriﬁced for quantity, and one of the ﬁrst things to get eliminated from the business plan is basing your business on licensing the value of your images. You’ll have to stay busy and drive your costs lower and lower in order to make any money. And, because you either give unlimited usage or (gasp!) sign away your copyright with each project, you will never earn any more money for any of your projects. Yes, there is money in the bank today, but will there be tomorrow? Doubtful.

Team Vision, on the other hand, will work less but for more money per project. The work will be more creatively satisfying, and the productions will be better because the quality of the image(s) is what counts. A member of Team Vision will generally work less with local clients and more with clients all over the country, and even the world, because those clients will be looking for the photographer with the best vision to match their idea for a speciﬁc project. This also means that there is no ugly competition between photographers—price is not the deciding factor in these projects, so all that ugly price-war stuff doesn’t happen.

Team Vision members can easily base their pricing on the usage value of their images because their kind of images are clearly of value to their clients—the clients want to work with one of these photographers because of the individual vision professed. And, by licensing the rights to the images as needed, Team Vision photographers will be able to generate additional revenue from their images with future re-use and stock sales, thus adding to the likelihood of future income and money in the bank. Money now, money later, and greater creative satisfaction overall.

What I am asking you to do is to join Team Vision. There are plenty of projects out there for the creative photographer. This book is based on the premise that you will choose to make this step. If you have faith in your abilities and skills, if you love making images, if you feel that doing anything else would suck as a way to make a living (or at least not be as good), then by our earlier deﬁnitions, you are indeed a Creative Professional Photographer. It’s time to honor that.

And get paid for it.

Great, sane, real-world advice throughout.

The Greatest Guide to Wedding Photography Pricing That Ever Was and Ever Will Be

2010-01-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

Wedding photog Stacy Reeves has put together a critical step-by-step guide to making sure you get paid what you're worth. This presents some great rules-of-thumb for any creative pro, regardless of medium.

Buy Yourself A New Year's Present

2010-01-02T15:01:00.000-08:00

“In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative. No one can give you your subject matter, your creative content; if they could, it would be their creation and not yours. But there’s a process that generates creativity – and you can learn it. And you can make it habitual.”

– Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

Four Secrets for Creative Professionals

2009-12-31T11:35:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season to be making lists and checking them twice, and Christmas was last week. I speak of course of your New Year's Resolutions, and if you're here, that means you've resolved to finishing your manuscript, writing that screenplay, making your primary income through your art or getting your music on iTunes.

Obviously each – and possibly all – these things can happen this year. But experience has taught you that they won't. I suggest that what's been missing has been a combination of four factors; who you think you are, what you're doing, and how and when you're doing it.

Creative Identity
This, I think, is the key to the whole thing. If you identify yourself as a bank teller who's writing a detective novel in her spare time (BTWWADNIHST), this is where you'll likely remain. But if you identify yourself as a writer of detective novels working in a bank to pay the bills until your current manuscript is ready to stand on its own (WODNWIABTPTB) – that's a very different story. BTWWADNIHST is more likely to have bank and home and family stuff interrupt her manuscript, which is fair enough. On the other hand, WODNWIABTPTB is a novelist, first and foremost, and is going to make time and space to nurture her book to completion. With my creative coaching clients, making this switch to an identity as a creative professional is often their biggest challenge, and has the greatest effect once it happens. Remember that your creative identity is yours. Hunter Thompson was not Truman Capote. Mozart was not Joey Ramone.

When I teach at film schools, the first thing I tell my students is that they ARE filmmakers. Then I get them to make a "movie" with finger puppets and a cell phone camera. Or PowerPoint. Then I encourage them to make a better movie with better tools, and that this process never ends. The point is, if you ARE a creative professional (author, painter, actor, musician) then you DO produce. This is even more important than all the goal-setting you'll be doing – and goal-setting is important.

The Dharma of Your Ass
Dharma is a Buddhist term meaning "ultimate inescapable reality". In this context, it means the commitment you make to show up to work as a creative professional. If your butt is on the couch or in the car or at the office, it's not in the studio in front of the canvas. It's not in your favourite café with your laptop and a savagely annotated copy of your first draft. Even if you don't want to work, don't feel like working, aren't inspired to work – I don't care. Show up. Show up and doodle. Show up and stare at the blank screen. Get your tuckus to where you can produce, and stay there until past the point where it's no longer comfortable. If you worked at store, you wouldn't leave at 2:00 in the afternoon because you weren't inspired.

Respect Rituals, But Don't Take Hostages
Creatives tend to be highly ritualistic. All the really prolific creators you admire have a "thing they gotta do" whether it's one-and-a-half cups of a certain type of coffee in their favourite mug, a yoga sun salutation, or closing the blinds and dancing to polka music for four minutes before picking up a paintbrush. Develop a ritual. Respect it. It's valid, whatever it is. It's yours. Tell no one. Tell everyone. Who cares? Creatives are eccentric, which is why less-creative types keep us around as pets. The flipside to this ritual business is not holding your work hostage to the ritual. Running out of your favourite coffee doesn't mean you don't show up and work. Your MP3 player dying, depriving you of polka music, is not a reason to put things off. Rituals are there to spark creativity, sharpen your tools, and create a consistent space for your imagination and effort. They're not an excuse to not work today.

Tuesday Meatloaf
The great illusion is the idea that creative work is exciting. It's not. It's usually lonely and boring and repetitive. Of course there's also a high when you hit on an idea and you watch it take form – but you only get to that high one of two ways:

Accident, which happens maybe once or twice a year
Grueling labour, in which case you'll experience the high once a month, or more.

As a creative coach and educator, I'm in the grueling labour business. I know what I'm doing next Tuesday, and the Tuesday after that. Here's my schedule, just as an example:

Mondays: scheduling, e-mail, proposals, invoicing, planning. Start early, finish early.
Tuesdays: coaching, client calls. Start very early, finish very late.
Wednesdays: writing-that-isn't-screenwriting. Right now this is a manuscript I'm editing for a publisher, and activities around an extensive strategic marketing plan for a client. Start later, finish late.
Thursdays: film stuff, writing screenplays in the morning, teaching screenwriting at the film school after lunch, production documentation until evening.

I try to take Fridays off. Maybe there'll be a client call or two who's schedule I'm happy to accommodate, but it's a slack day for me for the most part.

This makes me look incredibly focused and organized. I'm not. I drink coffee, go for walks, browse bookstores, soak in the hottub, get my kids to and from school, read voraciously and correct misinformed and opinionated strangers on the internet (that'll learn 'em). What I am is just barely focused and organized enough to contain my creativity. But I do know – because I have an understanding of my creative identity – that if I don't impose some kind of structure that my ideas that will never see a page, let alone the light of day.

So;

What are you doing today that reinforces your identity as a creative professional (not a hobbyist, a professional)?
Where exactly are you going to drag your butt until you can generate the kind of work you set out to do?
What's your ritual that keeps you sharp, keeps you focused?
What does your creative schedule look like? If the only block of time you have is Wednesday evenings between 5:15 and 6:45, keep it sacrosanct. You can accomplish any creative goal with that short period of time if you do it consistently (a screenplay in a month, a novel in two, a mastered album in six weeks). Think about the last time you had a pure, uninterrupted, uninterruptible 90 minutes to do creative work. Amazing, wasn't it? Imagine doing that every week, for the rest of your life. This is what we're talking about.

Here's wishing you all a creative, productive, and genuinely happy 2010.

Virginia Woolf on Creativity

2009-12-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."

Why Isn't My Self-Published Book Selling?

2009-12-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

You did the first part right: you researched, outlined, wrote, rewrote, proofed, edited, formatted, designed, conformed, registered, paid, and posted your own book. After your first box of 40 sold, and the rosy glow of your first $100 royalty cheque faded, your book sales seem to have reached a standstill.

This assumes you've used an on-demand self-publishing service such as Booksurge / CreateSpace, Lulu, or Lightning Source, and here's hoping you didn't get talked into "biting the bullet" and have 1,000 copies in your garage (or at a monthly-rental flooring house), or almost worse, paying $2,000 or more for a "service" which charges you for filling out a form on a POD site you can do yourself for free.

So it's time to ask the difficult question: why aren't my books moving?
First you need to understand what conventional book publishers actually do; If your title had been picked by one of these, you'd have employees who would show up every single day and do all the things you inadvertently committed to doing yourself: fielding reviews, giving away promotional copies, hosting events, attending conferences, exhibiting at trade shows, translating into different languages, and exploring other markets. When a book sells 100,000 copies, it's because there's a small army of full-time employees making it all happen. This is not to say that you've made a mistake going the self-publishing route: that 100,000 copy author is making less than you will if you sell 10,000 copies. But what if you haven't sold 800 yet?

It's not the quality: Sadly, it doesn't matter how well researched, written, proofed and edited your book is. All your careful word choices and pet-phrase-sacrifices over which you agonized have zero to do with sales. It's tragic, really. But at least you can stop beating yourself up over leaving in that one imperfect paragraph in Chapter 4. That's not the problem.

Cover: Of course you can judge a book by its cover, if you're judging sales. This is why cover designers charge five times as much for two pages than book designers charge for 200 interior pages. Go to the bookstore, and look at the covers in your book's category. Does it speak the same visual language, or did you make the mistake of trying to "stand out"? Self-help books have one of three fonts in the title. Did you choose one of those? Business books use one of only two fonts. This is because book purchases are largely dependent upon "confirmation of expectation" – book buyers expect your book to be a little different, but not too different. If your book isn't selling, your cover is probably "too different".

You also want to avoid the obvious exceptions to the rule. Chicken Soup and For Dummies books sell despite their hideous covers, not because of them. After early accidental success, they were stuck with the execrable design while they churned out moneymakers. This is almost certainly not going to happen to you.

Title: Did you do anything weird? Or if you did something weird, did you remember to support it with a sane tagline? You can call your business book "Shaving the Zebra" so long as the full title is "Shaving the Zebra: Strategies for Reinventing Supply-Side Procurement." If your book isn't selling, you may have "orphaned" the title to the point where readers who may be looking for your content can't realize it.

Amazon: Selling your book on Amazon means you're taking a painful hit on your per-book profit. But it does "legitimize" your title in a way nothing else can. Even if your book's audience doesn't buy via Amazon, but chooses instead to buy from you directly or via the Paypal link on your website or blog, the fact that it's available on Amazon gives it credibility. I realize this doesn't entirely make sense, but as any bookseller can attest, publishing is a mercurial and emotional business. Not playing Amazon's game will almost always result in poor sales.

Website: Is your book's website clear, attractive, professional, and Google-able? Does it contain a sample chapter, a little author-info, an interview, a legitimate third-party review and endorsements? Or is it full of distractions, such as Google ads, pictures of your pets or links to your favourite charity? That may be why you're getting site traffic but no conversions to sales. Remember, every pixel of your website tells a story, and the story you want to tell is the drawing of a straight line from your reader through the site's information to the purchase of the book. That's it. The only information that should be on there is just enough to empower the book buyer to make an informed decision – and be excited about – purchasing your book.

Blogs: Building your website is like buying a bllboard in the desert. You need informed, targeted traffic – not a million people randomly descending on your site, but the right thousand. Blogs make that happen. If your book sales are flat, odds are you neglected the bloggers. Respect that people who blog about your book's subject matter are always looking for appropriate contact, and they're looking to be treated like the influential media professionals they are. This rarely happens. So a polite inquiry letter to the top dozen subject-bloggers, followed up by a PRINT copy of your book with a personal note, can generate a lot of the right kind of buzz. Just remember that if your book doesn't serve its intended market well, this is the way you're going to find out.

Bookstores: No matter where you live in North America, the odds are pretty good that two hours travel in any direction yeilds a market with a million people (I live on a tiny rural island with 10,000 people, but I'm 30 minutes Victoria with a population of half a million, 90 minutes from Vancouver's nearly 3 million and the same distance from Seattle's 2 million). The point is, you don't need to be in national bookstore chains to generate significant and sustained sales. You just need to meet individual stores' criteria, and service their needs. Some will "consign" copies and give you 40% of the cover price once they sell. Others will buy your copies outright, but at 20% of the cover price. They'll all want a free copy or two for evaluation purposes. Regardless, you need to invest lots of face-time. Get to know the retailers, and make their job (selling your book) as effortless as possible. Then go back. Offer to buy back unsold books. Try again when the season changes or things pick up. You have to decide if the significant time commitment is worth it, but bear in mind that booksellers become your champions, and bookstore browsers today might become online book-buyers tomorrow.

Speaking: For a majority of self-published authors, the book is primarily a kind of calling-card for speaking gigs. "Back of the room" sales, after a speaking engagement, often comprise the lion's share of copies out there in the world. Obviously this is far less a factor for fiction titles, but even then "genre fiction" creates opportunities for readings, signings and sales. A realistic goal for a first, self-published book is a thousand copies, and 700-800 of those will be from such in-person sales. If you're not showing up for your book, why should your readers?

Viability: If you've gone through the list and done everything right (great cover, coherent title, Amazon sales, professional website, social networking, reaching out to bloggers, courting bookstores, booking appearances) and your book still isn't moving, you may need to re-evaluate the viability of your book. Perhaps your subject is just too narrow to achieve broad appeal. Yes, those first 50 copies of "Ferret Grooming for Left-Handed Orthodontists" were very much appreciated, but you've reached and saturated the market.

Now what?

If you find you've fallen short on two or more of the above, it may be time to find someone to help you navigate through the self-publishing process. Pull your book. Get a new ISBN, rethink the title, refresh the cover, get a new strategy for promotion and publicity and follow through. Come back stronger and more determined, set realistic goals in realistic time frames, and meet those targets. Ultimately, it's respecting the fact that a manuscript is not a book, and that publishing is a business; with standards, conventions, protocols, and expectations. Take your book seriously and give it the attention it deserves. Leverage your creative investment and use it to fuel your next creative venture.

Want to talk about what that looks like? Drop me a line at jordan@jordanstratford.com.

Secrets of the 7 Day Screenplay

2009-12-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

Jordan Stratford is a Creative Coach, optioned screenwriter, former Vancouver Film School instructor and currently the screenwriting instructor at Pac Film in Victoria BC.

Everybody walks around with a movie in their head. Maybe they screen the trailer for it once or twice a year, over drinks or during "you know what would be great..." conversations. There are literally tens millions of these unmade, unwritten films that will never see a page, let alone a bucket of popcorn. So what distinguishes you from the 10,000,000 wannabe's? You are going to write yours down. In one week. After work.

This is all due to two secrets of screenwriting:

1) There's not a lot of typing. There's a LOT less typing than a novel, and you have all the exciting bits you'd put in your novel if you ever decided to write that. In fact, a formatted screenplay takes about as long to type as it does to play out on the screen – about a minute a page. The rules say that's about 100 pages – but there are a ton of 72 minute feature films out there, so that's a 72 page script. That's ten minutes of typing per day for a week. Twenty if you hunt 'n peck.

2) All good screenplays were originally lousy first drafts, so go ahead and finish the lousy first draft. It's okay. I'm sure the second draft will be brilliant (no it won't. That will be draft six or so). But it's all you need to move you from the great herd of tens of millions with an unwritten idea to the elite corps of select hundreds of thousands with a clunky first draft screenplay.

Day One: The Treatment
You don't need special software to write a screenplay; you can do it in TextEdit or NotePad. But you'll be much much happier with the industry standard, Final Draft, or with CeltX, which is free and has lots of features to help you out down the road. But today, you can use a crayon and a cocktail napkin, if you have to. We won't be firing up the software 'til tomorrow.

No, right now you're going to copy down the following words, and fill in the blanks:

Theme:
Genre:
Title:
Logline:
Beginning:
Middle:
End:

Now for a little explanation. Theme is, for practical purposes, the moral of the story. "Heroes must fulfill their destiny", "You can't change the people you love", "Redemption is possible but difficult". Whatever. It's your movie. Keep it simple; a ten-word theme is too much.

Genre is of course the style in which your going to explore the theme. Western. Sci-fi. Horror. Thriller. Romantic Comedy. Or be more specific: Techno-thriller. Urban Fantasy. Noir. Survival Horror.

Title can be anything. No, really. Anything. You can't copyright a title, so if you want to call your movie "Titanic" or "Citizen Kane", you can do that. Don't do that. You can always change the title later. Heck, you can even change the genre later. The one thing you can't change is the theme, because every element of the story will be hanging on that.

Okay, now we come to the logline. This is the "info" button or directory listing of your film. You know it already because you've been talking about it for years at cocktail parties. "A small-time con-artist stumbles upon a legal way to make a fortune, but an online love interest makes her re-evaluate her priorities. The love interest turns out to be an artificial intelligence living in an advanced cellular phone – belonging to the cop who's determined to put our heroine away." That's of course terrible, and I did that on purpose. Even then, worse films have been made. You have two sentences. One is better.

Each of these next three should be a paragraph. Two, if you're feeling antsy.

Beginning: Where do we start? How do we meet the characters? Who are the characters, and how old are they? What do they want? What are they afraid of?

Middle: What's going on that makes the characters MOVE - physically, emotionally, personally, dramatically? What risks do they have to take? What sacrifices are made?

End: Happily ever after? On an island in the Caribbean with a suitcase full of money? Weeping at a graveside?

Guess what? You just wrote what's known as a "treatment", and you're officially a screenwriter. Call your mom. She's proud of you. Of the ten million people who've been thinking about "their" movie for years, not one in a thousand have done what you just did. Congratulations!

Day Two: Doodling
Regardless of medium, writers are readers. So go read a screenplay. Won't take you an hour – do it over lunch so it doesn't cut into your twenty-minutes-a-day writing schedule (and if you can get away with it, read a different script every lunch hour all week). Go to My PDF Scripts or the Internet Movie Script Database and pick something; maybe something you've seen, or something you haven't. You'll get the basic idea. How dialogue is presented, how there are no adjectives (that saves on they typing – never describe the furniture unless it matters to what the characters are doing with it.) Leave "painting the scene" to the scene painters. Leave the director something to do. Screenwriting is sparse. It's more like describing a movie you've already seen than evoking mood through language. Read a feature screenplay, and you'll understand that after a few pages.

Now it's your turn. Fire up that sofware. Write something awful. It doesn't have to make sense or start at the beginning, but give yourself ten minutes to play with the characters. BOB enters the café and sits down next to JULIE, who's not surprised to see him. He takes off his hat. She doesn't look up and says.... Whatever, it's your movie. Maybe this scene makes your film, and maybe it doesn't. It doesn't matter at this stage. But see what I mean about how fast you fill up a page? The columns are skinny and the font is big. You can bash out a 3 page scene in under five minutes.

Day Three: Mapping
Movies are made up of scenes, and each scene has a beginning, middle, and end. The only real purpose of each scene is to link the previous scene to the next scene in a way that moves the story forward, while making sense. As a rule of thumb, your film is going to have 40 scenes in it; 10 in the Beginning you outlined yesterday, 20 in the Middle, and 10 in the End. Today you're going to make your map of what happens, where.

So write this down:

Beginning:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Just remember, Scene 1 should grab the audience, wake them up, and make a first impression of character, setting, situation. By Scene 6 we need to know that Scenes 1-5 were just the beginning, and we don't know the whole story. There's a hook in Scene 6. By scene 10, all our pieces are in place – we know what's at risk for our characters, personally, physically, financially, emotionally, etc.

Middle:

11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

Scene 11 is "the Journey begins". There's a change in mood or place or circumstance that shakes up the world we learned about in the Beginning. Scene 16 gives us a "hey, that's interesting", but Scene 24 takes it away. By Scene 28 we're conflicted, rooting for one side or the other, but learning about contradictions. Scenes 29 and 30 are game-changers. In a horror movie, this is when the stalked victim decides to turn the tables and hunt down the bad guy.

End:

31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.

Scenes 31-37 is where the fast-cut dramatic sequences in your movie trailer come from. In an action movie, this is where the cars explode. The movie is pretty much over by Scene 38; we're just tying up lose ends.

That's it. Now you have a map. Now you know everything that happens in your movie. Now you have a list of INT. JULIE'S KITCHEN - DAY and EXT. TRUCKSTOP PARKING LOT - NIGHT and all that's left is just writing the scenes, one at a time. Reality check: it's the end of Day Three, and you still don't have something you can hand to an actor and say "say this while I film you", which is all that a script is, ultimately.

Day Four: Once Upon a Time...
Today you're going to write scenes which will actually appear in your film – or at least in the first draft, which is all we care about at this point. You know what you're writing about because of the map ("scene breakdown") you wrote yesterday. The first words out of your characters' mouths will define them, at least for a few minutes until we get to Scene 6, or until they get on with whatever they're going to do by Scene 10. The only advice I can give is what I call JEDI screenwriting: Just Enough Dramatic Information. Don't let the characters talk too much about the story. Let the audience colour-in why Grandma changes the subject when people talk about the war, or why Dave is monosyllabic when people ask him if he took his medication. Let us figure it out. It's okay if we get it wrong, because there'll be more clues later. Anyway, 20 minutes or so of typing, and that's Act One ("the Beginning") in the bag.

Day Five: When Suddenly...
This is your first half of Act Two ("the Middle"). Again, you're going to your scene breakdown and filling in the gaps. If you get lost or the scenes ramble, go back to your Theme from Day One and ask how this relates to what's going on in the story. Bring it back in line. This is the Honeymoon Day, because you have all your keyboard shortcuts down pat in CeltX or Final Draft, your characters are doing interesting things, the story still has that new-car smell, and you're actually writing a screenplay! You're wondering who to ask as your Oscar date. You might even want to type for more than twenty minutes today. You may want to touch up scenes you've already written, but don't do this. Lots of time for the rewrite later. Just move forward, towards the end.

Day Six: Oh No!...
"Oh No!" for two reasons: First, this is where your characters find themselves in crisis, with their biggest challenge (betrayal, loss, deception, injury), and secondly because that usually happens in just one of the ten scenes of Act Two you write today, and the other nine can seem... hollow. It doesn't matter. One of your characters can go shoe shopping. Another has a dentist appointment. Just populate those scenes, and don't overthink it at this stage. All screenwriters hate this part. But forward, forward, to that dramatic turn of events in Scene 30, where the detective finally knows the identity of the serial killer, and decides to set a trap...

Day Seven: Finally...
Now you're past the barren wasteland of Act Two, and the scenes are coming fast and furious. Yes, you'll likely fall for half the movie clichés you've ever seen, but that's better than falling for all of them. Rewrite later. Just crank out those scenes and get it to the finish line. Your cowgirl rides off into the sunset...

You just wrote a feature screenplay. In a week. This takes most people years – well, forever, technically as most people never start. There are a few quick things to do before you call your mom again.

1) Spell-check it. Could be embarrassing later on when your coffee-ringed first draft printout makes it into the Smithsonian.

2) Give it a quick read. Throw out extraneous adjectives. Fix that character name you changed half way through (GUIDO is now DELORES).

3) Register your script: Go here https://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/dataentry.asp , give them $20 and an electronic copy of your script. They won't read it. But they WILL protect your rights if someone you show your script to makes your movie without you. Besides, it's what all the real screenwriters do.

4) Print it out. Punch holes. Get those little brass bendy doodads ("brads") from the office supply store. Now it looks like a real script – and you can hand this to an actor and say "say this while I film you."

Okay, now you can call your mom.

What's next?

Rewrites. Kill the boring scenes. Kill the boring characters. Lose the clichés. Take more risks. Say less about what's going on. Invent new secrets. Keep some of them. You know those 72 minute movies with 72 page scripts? They were (for the most part) produced by the writer. Anything shy of 90 pages will not make it past studio script-readers. Rewrite until you love it, until it's perfect. It's not perfect. You know that 40 scene structure? It makes your story formulaic and forced. Move the scenes around so the story flows. Work with a script doctor. Buy actors pizza and get them to do a table-read where you record them actually saying your lines. Let them ask questions. Let them do weird things to your ideas. Take notes. Rewrite again.

But there's time for all of that. Right now it's just you, and the sound your script makes when you drop it on your desk – a sound akin to the smack of a newborn's butt. You just wrote a screenplay in seven days. Go bask.

(and then get back to that second draft).

Interested in having an experienced guide for your screenwriting week? 7 Day Screenwriting Coaching, with daily chat sessions and Q&A available for just $275 from jordan@jordanstratford.com

Matt Groening on Creativity

2009-12-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

"Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people."

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

2009-12-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

The Creative Class and the End of the Corporate Ladder

2009-12-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

A few interesting observations;

the corporate ladder is gone

So this means two things;

zero

reinventing themselves

So What Happens Now?

There's a huge trend in the Western world right now of individuals realigning themselves, in terms of what they create, how they connect and how they contribute. Skype has made it possible for the world to collaborate at virtually no cost, and social networking turns friends into champions and co-promoters. iTunes, Etsy and publish-on-demand services put creative products in front of a global audience with next-to-no overhead or startup capital. Cell phones and PVRs are hungry for varied creative content. A culture of cheap sameness and mass production is being slowly replaced by a desire for handmade, custom, unique items. People are asking themselves the big questions, setting new priorities and taking more time.

Why CAN'T I pursue my dream of being a novelist, a screenwriter, a painter, a musician, and make a decent living?

Well, you probably can. Self-publishing with the right tools will give you ten times the profit per book to the right market than a major publisher can. You can be your own record label, distribute internationally and pay all your bills at the end of the month. But like any other business, you need a plan. You need discipline. You need tools. And you need someone on your side.

We'll be exploring planning and promotion tools in future posts, but if you'd like to talk about collaborating on your creative venture, drop me a line at jordan@jordanstratford.com