by Pari

Last week, I was complaining to my husband that there are too many "authors" around these days. We’re basically a-dime-a-dozen. I stuttered, red-faced, bemoaning how the accomplishment of publication via traditional houses has been diminished by the advent and ever-increasing popularity of self publication.

My husband, a.k.a. The King of Reality Checks, said, "What’s the big deal? Who cares about publishers anyway? No one looks at that."

Well that knocked the wind out of my self-righteous sails.

Then I read, in its entirety, A Book Publisher’s Manifesto for the 21st Century by Sara Lloyd. J.T. referred to it in her excellent post on Friday. In the manifesto, the author takes a cold, hard look at the relevance of book publishers today and whether they’ll have the savvy and cojones to survive tomorrow.

At a time when MWA and other professional writers’ organizations are beginning to toughen up membership requirements based on traditional publishing practices; when fan conventions are doing the same; when people are opting for more control over their work and the speed with which their writing is published; when there are all kinds of "co-op" publishers; when major publishers themselves have gravitated toward blockbuster products rather than midlist author development; where there are more books than ever before but fewer of them are being read; when grammar and editing seem to be falling by the wayside (I can think of several reasons why this is happening. Another post, perhaps?) . . .

A person has to ask:
Have traditional publishers simply become obsolete?

Does publisher brand matter at all? Do Harlequin or St. Martin’s mean anything anymore? Is Simon & Schuster still known for quality? Do Random House, Mira, Intrigue, Soho, Poisoned Pen or Tor carry any value-added as far as the customer is concerned?

I don’t know, but those questions beget more:
Will publishers as we know them become such behemoths, slow moving beasts, that even traditionally-published authors will opt to self-publish in order to get rid of the middlemen (publishers and distributors)? When the big chains install print-on-demand machines in their stores, will there be any benefit whatsover by going the traditional route?

When a person looks at the pure monetary outlay vs. income, self-publishing has a certain appeal.

But . . .
I like to think that the fact that I was published by an academic press with a sterling reputation and stringent standards means something. I’d like to think that readers expect a certain amount of vetting, editorial scrutiny, and high production values before a book comes to market.

Have I been deluding myself?
Do readers care?

by Pari

Saturday Afternoon, May 31, 1:33 pm:
I’m trying to get one of my children dressed for a cello recital. I, of course, have just stepped out of the shower. It’s hot in Albuquerque. Our family is one of two in the entire city that still hasn’t turned on the air conditioning, so the front door is wide open. The doorbell rings. Wrapped in a curtain, I peek out of the window in my office and don’t recognize the car parked in the driveway. DON’T ANSWER IT! DON’TANSWERIT! I screech.

An adult calls my name, pronouncing it correctly which means the person knows me. I put on an oversized Tee, my hair still dripping.
"Do you have the invitation to Sean’s birthday party?" a parent of one of my kid’s friends asks.
"What birthday party?"
"The one tonight."
"Oh, crap."
We search and can’t find the invite. We call another parent who threw hers away last week.

(Did I mention that my husband is at work? Yes, he’s at work on a Saturday.)

Our uninvited guest begins to back out of the front door, horror on her face, as she registers the condition of our house. We plan to make pillows out of all the dog hair on the floors and I think we could feed several homeless people with the crud on our kitchen counters . . .

Welcome to my world.

With three minutes to spare before leaving the house at 1:42, I turn to the Inbox. This is usually a stupid impulse, akin to gambling at a casino or using that penny to scrape a Scratcher. Most of the time I DON’t win.

But every once in a while . . .

There it was: The note from John Purcell, the Anthony Chair, telling me that Murderati had been nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Mystery Website for 2007. We’re in astounding company:
*  Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind — Sarah Weinman
*  Rap sheet/January Magazine  — J. Kingston Pierce
*  Murderati — a Writer’s Blog
*  Stop You’re Killing Me — Stan Ulrich & Lucinda Surber
*  Crime Fiction Dossier — David Montgomery

Do you notice ours is the only one that doesn’t have a single name associated with it? We’re almost a democracy here.

More than two years ago when Naomi Hirahara and I spoke about starting a blog, I had no idea it would morph into this living creature that creates and nurtures community in the mystery world. I simply wanted the blog to be different, to offer fresh content daily and to provide real fodder for thought and discussion. I hoped it would help market our books ( and J.T.’s writing enough to get her first contract). We hit the ether publicly on April 3, 2006.

J.T. is the one to credit for the look of the site. She taught herself how to design the blog and did/does an astounding job. She’s the one to credit for the name, too, though we batted around some great ones (I was pushing for Murderama).

Blogging isn’t for everyone. It takes tremendous commitment and time. We worry when people don’t comment, when our numbers aren’t growing as fast as we’d like.

In two years, we’ve had 17 regular contributors (no particular order here).
Zoe Sharp     Louise Ure     Alex Sokoloff     JT Ellison      JD Rhoades     Brett Battles (congrats on the Barry nomination!!!)     Robert Gregory Browne     Toni McGee Causey       Michael Maclean       Naomi Hirahara      Simon Wood      Ken Bruen (congrats for the Anthony nod for Best Paperback Original)     Elaine Flinn       Deni Dietz     Jeffrey Cohen     Paul Guyot      et moi.

Yeah, that’s a lot. Believe me, it hasn’t always been easy. There have been flare-ups, ego conflicts, disagreements, emails flying back and forth, friendships threatened with dissolution. I’ve had to play Mama Bear when all I really wanted to do is run away screaming.

BUT
More often, there has been a wonderful camaraderie among the very different writers/personalities on this blog.

I think we’ve got something special here, a true and honest exchange. The crew we have now — including Tess Gerritsen who joins us on June 17 — gets along well. We’ve found our groove.

Thank you to everyone who nominated us. Thank you to everyone who visits this site.

We are truly honored.

P.S. I hadn’t planned on going to Bouchercon this year; my hubby is tired of all my travel. Now I’m trying to talk him into letting me fly out for a day or two. If anyone wants a tired New Mexican to sleep on her hotel room floor for a night, let me know. I want to bask in this joy.

by Pari

Today, like many of you, I’m thinking about war. So let me tell you about one of the finest nonfiction books about this subject that’s ever been published. Above all else, Kilroy Was There: A GI’s War in Photographs is an honest record of the mud, grime, fear and drudge of war. Combine these powerful images with Tony Hillerman’s moving, personal narrative and the result is an understated and immensely candid work.

What differentiates Kilroy Was There from other books about World War II is its intimacy. Open it to any page and you’ll see scenes that will remain with you for a long time. Here — an American medic lights the cigarette of a wounded German soldier whose face is lined with blood. There — a cocky SS officer holds his head high when he’s tied to a post in preparation for his execution by firing squad. Tranquil meadows and abandoned byways are gruesomely pocked with the charred remains of tanks and, worse, young men whose bodies are dehumanized by their deaths.

There’s no pretense, no posing here. The soldiers are kids from farms and factories, classrooms and mines, living the day-to-day reality of an extraordinary situation. Their lives are recorded by other kids — combat photographers in the Army Signal Corps — as they cook, walk, smoke and ride on the side of tanks. Those long-ago photographers were on the front lines too, in foxholes shivering with their buddies.

The truth in these black-and-white photographs moved Hillerman to become involved with the project because, "They didn’t make war look fun. They weren’t sanitized by a PR department."

The story of how the photos came to the university press is as remarkable as the book itself. It begins with Frank Kessler, an accountant, known as "Pops" (he was 26 years old) in his Army Signal Corps unit. One of his jobs was to assign photographers to particular shoots, log the photos and file them.

When the war ended, "Pops" didn’t know what would happen to the photographs; he just knew they were too valuable to be left behind or lost. So he took them, some 600 in all, and stored them in his attic at home. Later, he told his family he wasn’t sure if what he’d done was legal . . .

Fifty years passed. "Pops" died and his brother Lee found the photos. The younger Kessler had been a POW during much of WWII. For him, the pictures reflected a war he didn’t know — one he didn’t see as a prisoner. He understood their importance and spent time organizing the collection and carefully transcribing the captions as best he could.

Kessler approached editor Joanna H. Craig at Kent University Press with the idea of creating a book in time for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

"We were working backwards. We had the art, but didn’t have the text," she says. But Craig knew Hillerman had served in WWII. He’d been awarded the Purple heart, and the Silver and Bronze Stars. She also thought a celebrity forward would be a nice touch. She planned to have a prominent military historian write the majority of the text. It would’ve been a wonderful idea, but the man she’d asked became gravely ill.

Of course, Hillerman was too busy. He was on deadline for a new book. Still, a desperate Craig hoped he’d be willing to expand his foreward into the entire narrative. "I basically pleaded with him," she says.

What a coup.
Through Hillerman’s masterful words, we learn about oft-ignored aspects of war. With the empathy of someone who has been there, he describes the palpable fear of troops scouting around street corners — possibly walking straight into gunfire or death. We itch when Hillerman explains what it was like to go without showers for months at a time. We can taste the food, C-rations and the much worse K-rations, neither one very good . . . never enough. Think about it, most of those kids were still teens; they were still growing boys. And the author tells us how these adolescents fought, marched, hid, killed and watched their friends die.

"War is mean,  damaging and dirty," says Hillerman. "These pictures show the mud and blood." Through his spare narrative and the equally unadorned photos that Frank Kessler so wisely saved, Kilroy Was There emerges as an incredible reflection of a critical — and still meaningful — time in the history of the world.

. . . To everyone reading this post who has lost a loved one in war, known someone who fought or is fighting now — may this Memorial Day be one of peace and remembering.

My respects,
Pari

by Pari

Last night, while flipping channels, I watched snippets of the American Country Music Awards show. I’ll say it: I’m not a huge fan of country. There’s an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism, mocking higher learning, that distresses me. But during the last year, I’ve begun to listen to more of it because of the marvelous story telling in those three-minute vignettes.

On the glitterati stage Sunday night, musicians sang. Fans packed the cavernous MGM Grand, their hands held out as if the air around the performers was holy. They screamed, applauded, swooned and gave standing ovations.

Ah, fame.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have that response when we had book signings? Can you imagine fans so enthusiastic they’d wait days to buy a ticket to a reading?

Most of the writers who’ve earned similar followings were entertainers — singers, actors — or televangelists/preachers, before they ever decided to pen a book. And most of what they write is, ostensibly, nonfiction.

Why don’t novelists earn this kind of rabid devotion? Is it that we’re behind the scenes — that we eschew being recognized — that we’re creators rather than performers?

(Well, hells bells, I’d love the chance to perform!)

Okay, okay. There are exceptions. I bet J.K. Rowling wouldn’t have a problem filling a stadium. Alexander McCall Smith might manage it. Stephen King? Nora Roberts?

Maybe I’m being near-sighted here, but I can’t name a darn mystery author, one who solely writes mysteries, who’d pull in those numbers to a live gig. Not even in Europe, where book events tend to be better attended.

What gives?

Is it that books take more effort to access than sitting back and listening to music? Is it the media exposure factor, that novelists simply aren’t seen enough to make an impression? Is it harder work to sing or act than it is to write a novel (Hell, NO!) Are fiction writers doughy and repugnant (not!) so that large numbers of people wouldn’t want to see them in the first place?

I don’t buy it. Anyone who goes to mystery conventions knows that we’ve got one heck of a talent pool. And I’m not just talking about words on paper here.

Maybe some writers would hate to be that popular. I sure wouldn’t. And I’d love to see that kind of rock star craziness — flicking the cigarette lighters, swaying to the sounds of an author reading a great chapter — for novelists overall. Imagine if our signings generated the kind of super-heated buzz of a Garth Brooks concert, if scalpers routinely haunted the fronts of bookstores because all the tickets had sold out.

What’s your take?
     Why aren’t novelists rock stars? (Or are they?)
     Would it be horrible to be that famous? Would it be horrible for readers if authors WERE that famous?
     What is fame in the first place? Does it matter?

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes it’s just great to be mama bear here at Murderati. Last week, I was so upset about Ken’s departure . . .

This week, I’m overjoyed to announce that beginning June 17, author extraordinaire Tess Gerritsen will join us on alternating Tuesdays.

. . . Tomorrow, we’ll have L.J. Sellers as our guest.

Pretty wonderful, huh?

by Pari

"Is it possible to gulp a book? That’s what I did . . . "

So began an email to me the other day. It was from a woman in Germany and had arrived at my website amid a flurry of spam.

We writers spend a lot of time worrying about, and looking at, our reviews. The ones that stick with us the most — at least from what I’ve observed — are the negatives, the nasties and disgruntleds.

But what about "fan" mail? Are those notes, the ones that readers take the time to compose and send us, worth less? Sure, they’re private. They’re not printed in newspapers or posted on Amazon, but why don’t we celebrate them more? 

When I get one of these lovelies, it’s like a piece of candy that lasts and lasts. I even have a file where I put these gifts. On days when things are bad, when I wonder what the hell I’m doing trying to write, I go to that file and feel vastly better.

I also write fan mail. I’ve been sending notes since middle school. My first letter was to Leonard Bernstein. He didn’t respond and I didn’t care. I wanted to thank him for his musical Mass. In the ensuing 35+ years, I’ve thanked too many authors to count; a couple of movie stars; musicians; a talk show host or two (I sent a huge one to David Letterman for demonstrating such respect for writers during the WGA strike); and a few cartoonists. Some have responded — Madeleine L’Engle, Lois McMaster Bujold, Lynn Johnston. Some haven’t. Who knows if every one of my thank-yous even arrived on the targeted person’s desk?

It doesn’t matter to me. The important thing is to be grateful and to express that gratitude to the people who’ve evoked it. Call it increasing the quotient of good vibes in the world.

Back to the mail I’ve received: Every note, letter and email makes me feel wonderful. More than any positive printed review, these heartfelt and personal communications mean a tremendous amount to me. They’re the reason I write for publication rather than keeping my manuscripts to myself.

So today, let’s talk fan mail
1. Have you ever written a fan letter? To whom? Why?
2. Have you ever wanted to write one, but didn’t know how or where to find the person? (I’ve wanted to write Alice Hoffman for years. Maybe contacting her publicists would work . . .)
3. Is there someone from history you’d like to thank?
4. Writers: what’s the best fan letter you’ve ever received?

It’s Monday. Most people complain of the blahs. Join this conversation today and let’s see if we can generate enough great feelings to carry us all through the rest of the week. 

by Pari

It’s the summer of 2010. Gas costs $8/gallon. Air fares have nearly doubled. Hundreds of thousands of books have been published. Hundreds of thousands more writers have published books themselves.

The American Booksellers Association has lost more than 50 percent of its membership. The biggest national bookstore chains have merged into one super corporation AND this new entity is now in the publishing business too. AND it’s only carrying its own products or those produced by "affiliates."

Sorry to be a bummer, man, but the landscape is changing.

When things look bleakest, I am an optimist. Maybe it’s my contrary spirit. I just don’t like being told that anything is all gloom and doom. In the middle of great change, great opportunity exists.

What will our brave new world of literary livelihood look like? With the millions of voices sure to be flogging their works in the near future — and doing it to a shrinking market — how will we writers continue to build careers, to make enough to send our kids to college or pay for that pesky root canal?

Believe it or not, I’m not upset or even worried . . . not yet.

My agent, who has been in the business for more than 20 years, talks about how people have bemoaned the demise of the industry, of books, for as long as he’s been selling manuscripts. Yet, books and the biz are still around.

I suspect that staying power will still be the name of the game. That, and sheer determination.

But I want my crystal ball to start working NOW! I want to find the mechanisms to meaningfully connect with potential readers even if I don’t travel to their neck o’ the woods. There must be new ways to engender that personal touch besides "Friending" or "Guesting on Blogs" (Virtual book tours, as they’re practiced today, are the same kind of thing).

Do you remember when acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood came up with the LongPen? Everyone scoffed. Not so, now. Virtual book signings — real events with interactive video — may be the way of the future. They’d certainly be greener.

What about the authors who have managed to turn their websites into entire and vital communities? Charlaine Harris has done it. I met 16 of her fans who traveled from as far away as Texas to attend Malice Domestic this year. She’s got a message board and all kinds of conversations going with her fans. Now the fans are taking some of the load off of her, but she still visits and posts often.

Are there media out there that we haven’t ever discussed, only dreamed about, that may truly aid us all? What about holographic book tours? Why not? How about books you can talk with — and where the author answers back?

What else is out there — or might be — if we just let ourselves have fun and imagine?

Come on, jump in and let’s see what we can come up with. It’s time to have some fun.

by Pari

I’m on the road today in Oakmont, PA at the Mystery Lovers Book Festival. Chances are I’ll meet a lot of people and some of them will sign up for my email updates. To stay in touch with readers, I use a private Yahoo group to which no one else can post. It’s a clunky solution. However, it doesn’t cost me anything and it’s not offensive to the people who’ve opted in.

I’ve also been on the receiving end of quite a few author electronic newsletters. I end up deleting and/or unsubscribing from most of them. Often, they’ve come without an opt-in; someone has harvested my email address and assumed I’d be interested in his or her story. Wrong-o.

But there are some missives that keep me reading. I don’t care a whit about photos, graphics or other layout issues (of course, legibility is a plus). For me, the biggie is content. The newsletters I like best are those that include something beyond the author’s ego — professional tips, interesting tidbits, reasonable personal revelations . . .

I tend to send out my own updates infrequently. Often, I don’t get it together to send them out on a regular basis. And I never send just to stay in touch; I have to have something important to say. You see, I hate getting spam and don’t want my efforts to be considered as such.

My updates are personal, about my writing life, what I’m up to and hope to accomplish. I assume that every single person who has opted in wants to know this information.

Lately, I’ve been doing something different. In my last update, I sent a short selection from The Socorro Blast featuring a character that didn’t make it into the final book. I loved this guy, Byron Hicks, loved everything about him. Only problem was . . . he didn’t have anything to do with the story.

My update readers really enjoyed getting something that no one else had seen. I adored the fact that Byron could take a bow, that he had an audience after all.

Today, let’s look at author newsletters:
What kinds do you like? Despise? Got examples?
What do you feel is important to include?
Heck  . . . are they even worth doing in the first place?

— — — — — — — — —
I’ll try to check in on the conversation today. If I can’t, I’ll respond to any comments on Wed.

by Pari

Last Wednesday, our home was Matzo-ball Central. You see, I was preparing for our Seder. Of all the Jewish holidays, Passover is my favorite. I go crazy inviting too many guests, cooking like a lunatic, and loving the feeling of comradeship and discussion that the first meal of the season brings.

The thing about our Passover celebration is that our guests are mostly not Jewish. This isn’t intentional; it’s just the way things have evolved during the last few years. Friends want to come. We want them here to share this joy with us.

However, since I have so many people who don’t come from my same cultural heritage, I feel compelled to explain and illuminate and explore concepts that might be taken for granted elsewhere.

At its core, Passover is about freedom from slavery and religious persecution. These two themes can be found in many Jewish observances, but they have special meaing at this time of year. When we read the Passover story in our Haggadahs, we’re reliving the Jewish escape from slavery in Egypt AND praying that the world will be freed from any kind of slavery, anywhere, soon.

So, on Wednesday, while I formed the matzo balls (around 60-70), I had plenty of time to think about bondage and what it means today. Many children around the world are sold into ghastly forced labor situations because they’re families are too poor to support them. There are sex slaves and prisoners of war who become slaves.

On a more esoteric level, thralldom can be a state of mind. I’m not trivializing its horrors, merely extending them.

Most people I know have sub-dermal shackles.
In some, they’re behavioral patterns that destroy chances at happiness or deep personal relationships. In others, they’re intellectual chains–knee-jerk arguments and justifications, insecurities that paralyze progress. And there are the emotional manacles–jealousy, bitterness, resentment . . .

This week, while I eat my daily matzo, I’ll be trying to identify my own mental leg irons. I’ll search out the fetters that limit my perceptions and/or interactions, that prevent me from flying even freer in my creativity, that stiffle the best in my life and loves.

To me, once they’re seen for what they are, I have at least a fighting chance to punch them out of existence. 

Can any of you identify the chains in your life?
Have you done this kind of exercise before?
Have you managed to kick one out for good?

by Pari

I’m sitting here in the airport in Albuquerque, getting acquainted with my new Eee PC. It’s six inches long and about five inches wide. The keyboard is tiny, made for literary gnats perhaps. But I’m determined. I want to use this little baby when I travel. I want to throw it into my purse (it’s solid state so it can take some abuse) and take it to Tae Kwon Do when the kids are in class. I want to go to the coffee shop with it.

In short, I want it to strip me of excuses.

Let me backtrack here. I am sooooooooooo not a technology nut. I shun all those electronic innovations–no iPod, no iPhone. Nada.

I’m a writer in search of the right tools to do my job as conveniently as possible.

Not that long ago, just having a laptop was an incredible gift, a revolution for people who wanted to work on the go. After prices went down far enough, my husband and I bought one. I thought it would revolutionize my work.

Well, it didn’t.

For some reason, I was scared of that computer. I was scared to use it, to lose it, that it would get stolen, that I’d lose all my work. I didn’t trust thumb drives either. Still, determined to work no matter what, I lugged that thing around on all my trips. Only problem was that after I pulled it out for security, it never came out of its case again.

It’s embarrassing to admit that I was so uncomfortable, so intimidated by technology.

When I finally learned how to use it with ease, I still felt creatively constipated. We just never bonded.  A pencil and paper yielded more satisfying results.

And now, I’ve got this microscopic machine. Eee PC. Hell, I even like its name.

Today, the main challenge is that I keep hitting the "Enter" key when I mean to hit "Shift." I’m also hunching my shoulders like some kind of she-ghoul. Typing is slow, but the keyboard action is fine.

Sure. I’m predisposed to liking this new instrument in my repertoire. I bought it with birthday money, so it feels more like it’s mine, just for me. It’s a little buddy, a friend that is going to help me do the job I need to do, to write every single day, to practice and hone my craft by doing, doing, doing.

I know too many people who postpone writing for thousands of different reasons. Many of them have to do with instruments: "My computer crashed." "I don’t have the right paper." "My laptop is too heavy, too slow." "My monitor is too big, too small, too bright, too dark." "I can’t get rid of the damn anti-virus software."

I’m not saying that the Eee PC is going to change all of that for me, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Maybe it doesn’t even have to do with this new tool at all, maybe it’s simply my attitude toward it. Whatever the reason, it seems to be working.

I sure am.

My questions for you today:
What writing tools do you use: big computer, laptop, pen & paper, charcoal & papyrus?
How do you relate to them?
Have you ever bought an instrument that opened your mind, eased the process?
Have you ever experienced the opposite effect?

by Pari

My mind is a big ol’ pile of mush right now. It’s good mush, steaming on the plate with a dollop of butter and a splash of B-grade maple syrup.

The Novelists, Inc. conference in New York blew me away. I’m still processing. My brain hurts from the massive effort.

It’s astoundingly powerful to hang out with a group of novelists where the average member has had sixteen published books. You know I’m on the low end with three. Think of how many were on the high end.

I went to the conference with no game plan, no highlighted list of agents or editors to pitch, no stores to visit or people to impress. Having such an open mind made the experience even more pleasurable and valuable. I learned so much about the business even my toenails are smarter.

Some of you have heard the sad tale of my two devastating experiences with lit-fic folks days after I signed my first contract with UNM Press in 2003. I won’t go into details publicly, but can say that they shook me and that I worried about being part of the book biz, part of any writing community.

Shell-shocked and nervous, I went to my first Left Coast Crime and was met with pure generosity and warmth. From that, I concluded that mystery writers were the kindest anywhere. This conviction has proven true time and again.

But I’m starting to rethink its parameters.

At the Novelists, Inc. conference, I met writers who’d seen and done it all. Everything. They’d watching publishing lines born, crest and die. They’d had editors buy, leave houses and die. Agents had lauded their work, dumped them . . . and died. (There’s a book in here somewhere.)

Many of the attendees had reinvented themselves so many times they’d forgotten most of their pseudonyms, even the titles of their books.

You know what? They all still love to write. Every one feels there is more to learn, that his or her craft can be honed.

I didn’t witness an ounce of snobbery or self-satisfaction during my three days with them. These romance, science fiction, fantasy and mystery writers talked openly about their lessons learned rather than hold them close or keep secrets to get the upper hand.

On the plane back to Albuquerque, I wondered if my paradigm about mystery writers needed to be expanded.

It does.

Novelists — at least those who write genre fiction — are in the business of entertainment. It’s a glorious profession. And, IMHO, we’re in it together.

We’re the key to continued literacy. Without good, compelling fiction — books that a large audience wants to read — written works will go the way of the Edsel. (This, of course, extends to some nonfiction as well, but that’s another discussion.)

I think there are writers who lose sight of this commonality. They wear a kind of genre or subgenre superiority. Worse, many of them feel like they’re in a life/death race with every other novelist for the much-touted decreasing pool of readers, of book buyers.

Here’s my simple analysis:

There are sharer-novelists and competitive-novelists.

The sharers realize that information is indeed power, that the more we work together for readers, for our rights as creative entrepreneurs, for mutual success — the more we’ll all benefit.

The competitors start from the same place: information is power. Only, they want to keep it all to themselves. They belive it’s only possible to succeed by pushing the competition down. These are the people who denigrate other writers or genres in order to make themselves look better. Frankly, they spend a lot of time spreading negativity and worry.

We can learn a tremendous amount from each other across genres. Together we can either turn, or slow, the destructive tides and trends in publishing. We can unite for our common good AND readers’ good.

I’ve met far more sharer-novelists in my life. I hope others feel that way about me.

So, what do you think? Does this super simple perspective work? Is it way too naive?