A few years ago, our editor — a young whippersnapper — politely, but firmly, informed us that our writing “revealed” our age. We were, she reminded us, writing novels for readers in their twenties, thirties, and forties. “Don’t use figures of speech and allusions that only our readers’ parents will understand.”

She pointed out an example in a proposal that she’d just rejected. One of our key characters was a young woman who habitually spoke in clichés. We’d put the following words in her mouth: “The truth is, I’m a carbon copy of my mother.”

The editor insisted that no one under fifty would use “carbon copy” as an analogy — and that most twenty- and thirty-something readers would have no idea what it meant. She went on, “I want to see dialog full of contemporary idioms and figures of speech.”

We grit our teeth and obediently expunged all antique phrases from our follow-up proposal, but the exercise struck us as absurd. Novels have a long shelf life. Few readers mind that Sherlock Holmes speaks the occasional Victorian metaphor… lovers of Jane Austin’s novels actually relish “decoding” her Regency language… and Janet and I enjoy rereading dozens of mystery novels written sixty and seventy years ago without much bewilderment at vintage terms such as “roscoe.”

We also pointed out to each other that it’s impossible to stay absolutely current because readers keep aging. (A 2011 case in point: Those “young” Generation-X folks are now 35-45 years old. You could look it up!)

I recalled the great carbon copy brouhaha when I read one of the comments added to our last post. Mary Fagan agreed with the notion that late-blooming writers have a better grasp on grammar. She wrote, “We older types, who were relentlessly drilled in language mechanics, may well be the last line of defense [for correct English].

At first, I agreed with all of Mary’s comment — but then our former editor’s rebuke hove into view. All at once, I began to question the value of “correct English” when we sit down to write a contemporary novel.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if our late-bloomerly concerns for proper construction, appropriate punctuation, and “classic” literary allusions and metaphors might be negatives rather than positives. Are our “correct English” skills driving us to write novels that younger readers — those tuned to MTV, addicted to texting, and indifferent to good writing — simply can’t understand?

Well … I took a deep breath and decided that my imagination had run riot. Happily, things aren’t that grim.

But I kept thinking about my question. We had written “carbon copy” in our novel chiefly because it seemed (to us) a nifty way of expressing the concept of unusual generational sameness. Is there a newer way of conveying the same idea? If there is, it didn’t spring to mind back then — and it still doesn’t today. (“Clone” is a possibility, but it seems to imply too much sameness. Carbon copies are identical in some aspects, yet different in others.)

An obsolete analogy still seems right to us.

And then, last week, I ran smack into another antique phrase. A novelist we know used the term “country bumpkin” in a blurb she’d written to promote her new book. Because “carbon copy” had sensitized me, I couldn’t help musing about the meaning a typical younger reader of contemporary women’s fiction (my friend’s genre) might assign to “country bumpkin.”

Probably not what the writer intended.

I presume that my friend had written “country bumpkin” because she couldn’t think of a “more hip” equivalent — although “more hip” is probably an aging adjectival phrase.

The pair of examples worked together to illuminate the broader implications of what our editor had been trying to tell us. She guessed that Janet and I had written “carbon copy” because we didn’t have the makings of a more up-to-date analogy in our minds. She worried that our “writing worldview” to coin a phrase didn’t match the “reading worldview” of our younger readers.

We’d never before given a name to a clear-cut late-bloomer liability — writer/reader worldview mismatch — a problem we were vaguely aware of, but managed to avoid thinking about.

Novels typically have a long shelf life after they appeal to the readers of their day. Most of the “classics” that people enjoy reading today were popular successes when first published.

Our editor didn’t point this out that specifically — but she clearly meant: “We need to sell your books today. You won’t start a reader buzz if readers perceive your language is obsolete.”

What’s the solution?

One fix is to lock yourself in a bygone era and write historical fiction — if this will accommodate the stories you want to tell.

The solution we settled on has two parts:

1. We’re working to assiduously keep up to date with what my elementary school teachers called “current events.” We’re finding that the Internet is chock full of useful resources.
2. We’ve expanded our research efforts to include many more things that impact the lives of our characters, from contemporary clichés… to the latest technology toys… to major societal trends.

I know! These seem almost impossible tasks. They’re proving both tedious and time-consuming. Please… add a comment if you can suggest a better way to skin this cat.

I just finished reading a “full priced” (11.99) Kindle eBook written by one of my favorite authors. I mostly enjoyed the experience. The novel itself was fine, but the eBook’s many formatting glitches (along with several typos) frequently shattered my fictional dream — and kept reminding me that I’d paid top dollar for a sloppily produced eBook.

Many other people have remarked on the profusion of errors in eBooks, but I never took the problem seriously until I began to see an increase in “disruptive errors” — flaws that are unsettling enough to cause an annoyed reader to toss his or her Kindle across the room.

Even then, I clung tight to two beliefs I thought “sensible”:

1. The most egregious errors are found in self-published eBooks. After all, large publishing companies are hip-deep in production people who should know how to produce clean eBooks.
2. Late-blooming self-publishers do their best to produce error-free eBooks. For starters, our generation actually studied grammar and spelling. Moreover, we share the ethic that “books are permanent things.” It goes against our grain to produce a flawed book.

I now know that both assumptions are wishful thinking. Large publishers produce error-filled eBooks. And so do many late-blooming self-publishers.

I don’t know what big-publishers think about eBook errors, but in recent months I’ve chatted with several mature eBook self-publishers who have the notion that readers don’t — or shouldn’t — care about sloppy formatting and minor typos. Such people have lost (if they ever had it) the view that obvious typos makes a writer seem unprofessional. Consequently, publishing a hastily converted, un-proofed Word doc is, as the old expression goes, “good enough for government work.”

One of these folks told me … “Errors are no big deal because it’s easy to upload a corrected eBook. If anyone complains about errors, I’ll fix ‘em and publish a corrected copy.”

I generally don’t take the time to complain to writers/publishers of error filled work. Rather, I simply try to not buy any more eBooks from the same team. Sloppiness and errors do matter to Janet and me. As I’ve said earlier, they upset our fictional dreaming when they hove into view. Lifetimes of reading fiction have given us the expectation that published novels will be relatively error- and typo-free.

Eliminating errors takes work. My most recent non-fiction book (“Know Your Rights: A Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers”) went through four official proof readings at the publisher — with me adding my own read-through after each.

Few self-publishers will invest the bucks necessary to achieve this thorough a proofreading. Most novelists I know do the final reads themselves (“If I can write the book, I can certainly proof it.”).

Janet and I also get upset if an eBook doesn’t work right in our Kindle and iPad. Last winter, my Kindle for iPad app got stuck on a home-brew table of contents. I became so frustrated that I deleted the book as soon as I regained control of the gizmo. Happily, I’d only paid $.99 for the eBook.

Building a correctly functioning eBook is not as easy as many newcomers think — especially if you want to create a working table of contents and start new chapters at the top of eBook pages. This is big enough challenge that many self-published Kindle eBooks proclaim — in the books’ descriptions — that the table of contents works.

My chats with Kindle and Nook owners convince me that most readers care more about readability than nominal eBook functionality (many of them don’t even know how to access an eBook’s table of contents).

If this is generally true, all of us who self-publish eBooks should strive to reduce errors that offend the eye — grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. “Strive” is the operative word, because eliminating textual errors and typos in an eBook can be exceedingly difficult.

In my opinion, the worst eBook error-ers are authors who transform decades old out-of-print novels into eBooks. No… they aren’t bad people. The problem is that they typically don’t have a Word doc of the final book after the publisher completed all the edits and proofing. Rather than ePublish an earlier version, they disassemble a paper novel and scan the pages.

Alas, the scanning process introduces “demonic” errors that are devilishly difficult to spot. Actually, the problem is rarely the scanner itself, but rather the Optical Character Recognition software that transforms the image captured by the scanner into a word processor file. Many paper novels are especially difficult to scan, because:

1. The publisher the used fancy type at the beginning of chapters or for unusual text elements (e.g. letters, newspaper articles, signs)
2. The book was designed with small-size type to squeeze more words into fewer pages

Faced with challenging typography, the scanning/recognition process may…

• Perceive commas as periods (and vice versa)
• Confuse 1 and I
• Transform em dashes ( — ) turned into hyphens (-)
• Dutifully reproduce the hyphens used to hyphe-nate words
• Transform apostrophes into blank spaces—e.g. don t and can t
• Subtly change italicized words—e.g. I nover said that!

Even if the author/publisher manages to produce a clean Word document, that doesn’t mean the resulting eBook will also be clean.

I’ve experimented with popular conversion software. They don’t change spelling or grammar, but they can do (and do do) weird things to line spacing, paragraph formatting, typography, and some punctuation.

All of this means that you should do the conversions yourself to eBook files, then proofread those files on an actual eReader (or a eBook app for Mac or PC).

That is … if you think that readers care about sloppy errors and typos. The jury is still out, because quite a few best selling eBooks are barely good enough for government work.

Maybe it’s a sneaky form of denial, but I’m convinced that being a late-blooming novelist increased my susceptibility to the agenting scam I fell for many years ago.

I found an apparently reputable agent who “loved” my early fiction writing. He loved it so much, in fact, that he convinced me to let him messenger queries (at my expense, of course) to interested editors. “My goal is to differentiate you from other writers,” he explained. “That’s what counts when you’re new in the business. You have to stand out from the crowd.” I eventually figured out that he …

• Pocketed the messenger money
• Received kickbacks from the photographer he hired to take (also at my expense) “the kind of photos that editors expect to see, so that your submission will look truly professional”
• Served as the “industry expert” he supposedly commissioned (again at my expense) to give my manuscript an “insider read … so we can fine tune your final draft before we submit it.”

Why did my status as a late bloomer make me so vulnerable to a bad actor? Well, I’ve come up with three likely reasons:

First — I had reached the stage in my career where I could afford to make reasonable investments to advance my writing dreams. The total amount of money I lost was comparable to the cost of attending a good writers’ conference. The bottom line: I thought about writing those checks … but not very hard.

Second — I’d spend decades working in major corporations and had acquired a fair knowledge of “effective marketing.” I saw logic in my agent’s argument that “looking professional” is important and that hand-delivery would make my manuscript seem more “attractive” than all those others on offer.

Third — I’d sat through several writers’ conference presentations given by editors who acknowledged that they looked for reasons to reject most of the flood of proposals they received. Making my proposals “distinctively un-amateur” (to quote the agent), might keep them in the running longer than less-elegant queries.

I wince every time I recall my gullibility. It’s not the money I wasted that bothers me, but rather the foolishness of my assumption that an editor would bother to take notice of whom or what delivered a query.

And while I’m making admissions … I also have to fess up that my first manuscript was not really good enough to be considered publishable. In effect, I had installed Rolls-Royce hubcaps on the literary equivalent of a blue-smoke-blowing Rambler.

I don’t know how many true scammers prey on late-blooming novelists these days, but I still see many examples of mature novelists putting Rolls-Royce hubcaps on decrepit clunkers.

Not long ago, I ran across a self-published novel that was printed on expensive “archival” paper. After reading a few lines I doubted that anyone — other than the author’s mother — would want to own a copy, much less archive it for posterity. Paper designed to last forever did nothing to enhance the weak voice and shoddy storytelling, despite the author’s fond (but foolish) hopes.

I began to wonder why the novelist hadn’t spent the price of fancy paper on a good editor — or (even before that) courses on how to write effective fiction. Instead, she’d been sold (conned?) on the notion that readers are more interested in the pages than the words thereon.

Other common examples of metaphorical Rolls-Royce hubcaps are:

• Many of the book trailers produced to promote self-published books. I know that a good trailer can help to sell a novel — if the book is a good read. I don’t know of any cases where a fancy trailer has started a buzz for a mediocre novel.
• Ditto … for many book promotion campaigns and blog tours. Again, those that work over the long haul promote publishable books.
• Queries and proposals that are submitted — to agents and editors — in fancy folders and binders. Some of these submission packages include overblown “one sheets” that look like slick marketing brochures. (During her agenting days, Janet received hundreds. “They never make a difference,” she notes. “We look for what readers want: a good story, well told.”)
• Lastly … one of my pet peeves: Taglines in email and post “signatures” that might befit authors who’ve written scads of novels, but which sound rather pompous when put forth by a yet-to-be-published novelist.

Late-blooming novelists love paper books. I find that’s true even for late bloomers who are convinced that the eBook is becoming the medium of choice for publishing fiction.

It’s even true about me—a determined advocate of eBooks. I find it easy to erase an eBook file… but truly painful to throw away a paper book. And so I own a shelf full of college textbooks written during the Bronze Age and a set of obsolete Encyclopedia Britannica that I should have used as kindling years ago.

On the one hand, there’s not a doubt in my mind that eBooks will take over the lion’s share of book publishing. On the other hand, I also believe that paper will be persistent—in the way that sailing vessels were persistent when steamships took over.

It’s a technological truth that the fastest, most efficient sailing ships were developed after the first steam-powered boats were built. Similarly, the best-performing vacuum tubes were developed early in the “transistor age.” In both industries, innovators faced with annihilation from revolutionary new technologies did their best to hold back the tide of change for a few years with significantly improved products.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the most efficient paper-book-manufacturing technologies were invented more or less simultaneously with the first eBook readers.

If you’re interested in knowing how state-of-the-art Print on Demand (POD) works, Google “Océ Roll-Fed Digital Printer” (used by many companies to produce book interiors) and “HP Indigo Digital Offset Press” (widely used to produce book covers). These and related technologies make it possible to crank out good looking paper books at relatively low cost, at high speed, and—best of all—in convenient quantities.

POD print houses can quickly produce a full-size novel in small quantities (1 to 5 copies) for only five or so dollars per book. (Astonishingly, that’s less than you’d pay a copy center to photocopy the manuscript.) The price drops significantly as quantity increase. Two-hundred-fifty copies cost about $4.00 each. This represents an almost magical improvement: Not long ago, an “economical print run”—the minimum number of books required to justify starting-up a big commercial printing press—was a few thousand paper books. Consequently, many traditional book publishers have switched to POD technology to lower production costs and eliminate warehousing.

How quick is “quickly”? POD houses generally use high-quality PDF files as the starting point of a book: One file for the book’s interior, a second file for the wrap-around cover (front panel, spine, and rear panel). If these files are resident in the company’s computer system, a typical POD company can print and ship a hundred books in two days (some printers offer faster delivery for customers willing to pay an additional “rush fee”).

All of this means that the initial investment to produce a paper book in addition to an eBook is relatively modest for most publishers: the cost of cover art, the cost of paper book design and desktop publishing, the cost of a different International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and a few other front-end costs.

The bottom line: it’s become fairly inexpensive to market paper books—if (and it’s a big if) a publisher stops short of making the massive investment required to produce, warehouse, ship, and sell the thousands of books required to stock the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Of course, if a publisher doesn’t sell paper books into bookstores, they won’t be available for browsing by potential customers. Rather, they will only be purchasable at online booksellers and at the special-order desks in bookstores.

And of course, a paper book (a tangible object) will always need to carry a higher price tag than eBook (a digital file). For starters, bookstores have traditionally earned 40-50 percent (sometimes 55 percent) of a book’s retail price. Add this to the cost of a POD paper book, leave a modest margin for the publisher and even-more-modest royalties for the author, and the typical selling price a paper book quickly reaches a minimum of $13-14 and is likely to soar to $19-20.

Here we have the factors of what I call the paper-book compromise. If you prefer buying and reading paper books:

1. You’ll find fewer available for browsing on bookseller shelves.
2. You’ll buy many (most?) of them online or at special-order desks (and wait a few days for POD delivery).
3. You’ll pay a premium for the privilege of buying paper books.

It’s items #2 and #3 that drove me toward eBooks. They usually cost less and are available almost instantly. I admit that I make fewer browsing expeditions to well-stocked bookstores—the core of many past enjoyable afternoons out—but no bookstore in our part of the world begins to match the variety of books available on Amazon and B&N.com.

Having said this, it’s also true that I still buy the occasional paper book. And Janet and I are delighted to see our latest books available in paper. Nowhere is it written that late-blooming novelists have to be consistent.

A bunch of months ago, I defined the five ingredients of a “publishable” novel—a novel likely to twang an agent’s interest or be bought by a traditional publishing company—as:

1. A marketable genre (in other words, a genre with a large readership).
2. A strong authorial voice (a voice that readers enjoy “hearing” when they read a novel).
3. A compelling story (one that will make readers turn pages).
4. Writing that creates a vivid fictional dream in readers’ minds (readers read novels in order to enjoy fictional dreams; any “novel” that doesn’t create an exciting fictional dream will likely be abandoned after a few pages).
5. No errors that jar the reader out of a fictional dream (the most common of these are spelling and grammatical goofs, point of view mistakes, and factual glitches).

In those halcyon days, I considered Items #2 and #4 as the most important ingredients. Why? Because those were the “qualities” that experienced agents and editors used to quickly decide whether or not a manuscript was worth reading. As Janet often said during her agenting days, “Why should I invest any time in a novel that doesn’t have decent voice or creates a shaky fictional dream?”

Deficiencies in these things are visible on the first page of a manuscript. The problems typically continue on every page that follows. Consequently, voice and fictional dream glitches are—along with genre—exceedingly difficult factors to fix, because it usually takes a total rewrite of a manuscript to correct what’s wrong.

By contrast, a weak story may not reveal itself until the end of the manuscript and some factual errors may remain undiscovered until a knowledgeable, eagle-eyed reader of the published novel spots them. Consequently, agents and editors may “fall in love” with a novel on the basis of its great voice long before they recognize shortcomings in story structure. Janet and I have heard many acquisition editors at traditional publishers acknowledge that “voice” is their chief concern when they evaluate a manuscript.

I think this explains why agents and editors have routinely strengthened weak stories as part of preparing a novel for publication. The lion’s share of the “The Letters” publishers send to novelists after their novels are purchased focus on story. Most of the experienced novelists we know have been asked to add a scene or two to a “finished” novel, move chapters around, make characters more (or less) prominent, heighten tension, write new endings (or beginnings) … or otherwise repair story problems.

Now that the new publishing paradigm is taking hold, “publishability” is not as important as it used to be. What counts these days is “buzzability” (to coin a useful word) — the qualities that will encourage the start and growth of a readership buzz that will eventually generate significant book sales (of both eBooks and paper books).

A good way to find out which factor(s) are most related to buzz is to read reviews on Amazon, Nook, and other Internet bookseller sites. Hardly any of the reviewers talk about “fresh voice,” “robust fictional dream,” or “salable genre.”

Most comments—positive or negative—seem to focus on story. You read words and phrases like: I loved the story. Interesting from start to finish. I couldn’t wait to find out what happened. Fast-paced. Clunky. Muddled middle. Stiff. Boring. Unoriginal. Way too drawn out.

You can also find a small, but significant, number of complaints about “sloppiness”—an umbrella term that encompasses factual mistakes, bad grammar, typographical errors, and a multitude of minor writing (and formatting) sins.

I interpret this as follows: Voice and fictional dream remain essential factors of a novel, but readers don’t “isolate” them the way that experienced agents and editors do. Rather, they become integral aspects of storytelling — today’s most-important success factor.

There’s nothing really new about the idea that a good story well told will bring fame and fortune to a novelist. Great storytelling has generated popular buzzes since Ancient Greece. What is new is the dwindling influence of the traditional gatekeepers. The upside, here, is that more debut novelists will see their manuscripts published. The downside is that the storytelling improvements “forced” by agents and editors will no longer be made.

It’s probably a truism that every novelist needs an experienced editor (an enthusiastic critique group is rarely an equivalent). But how many authors are willing to invest the money a proven fiction editor can demand—all without any guarantee of success after the job is done?

I suspect that relatively few novelists will take the plunge. Which guarantees an steadily increasing number of One-Star reviews.

Janet recently wrote a post for another blog (part of our eBook promotion efforts) about the benefits that accrue when the buzz starts for a novel. “Buzz” is that half-magical phenomenon when paper books fly off shelves and eBooks whiz out of servers — propelled by word of mouth.

As every novelist knows, readers who enjoy a novel provide the best kind of book promotion. Because they will take the time to post positive reviews for the novel — and feel compelled to urge their friends and relatives to buy copies — satisfied readers become a rapidly multiplying “sales force” that has boundless reach and indefinable power. A few months of determined buzzing can create a blockbuster bestseller and transform an obscure novelist into a household name.

Buzz costs nothing — yet is priceless to an author.

Janet acknowledged that only readers can start a buzz. After all, if there were obvious buzz makers lurking about, traditional publishing would still be going strong.

Nonetheless, Janet did offer a list of six do’s for increasing the sales of an eBook novel:

1. Write the best novel possible—and hope that reader will recommend your book.
2. Give your novel a title that works for your genre.
3. Wrap your eBook in a stunningly suitable cover.
4. Price your eBook to encourage impulsive purchasing.
5. Market like crazy—do everything you can without going broke.
6. Tell your fans there’s a new book on the way.

This list summarizes the game plan of several successful novelists — including one we know well. He’s currently selling many thousands of eBooks every month, and the pace is accelerating as the buzz for his novels grows louder and louder.

I hate to second-guess Janet (well … most of the time). But the first item on her list raised two immediate questions in my mind:

1. What is the “best novel possible”?
2. What kind of novel are readers “likely to recommend”?

Actionable answers to these questions — “universal rules” I can apply while writing — would be slightly less valuable than a Golden Goose. Unfortunately, sure-fire novel-writing rules are also as nonexistent as a Golden Goose. I know, because I’ve diligently searched for them.

I’ve tried to reverse-engineer several bestsellers and decode the formula for a buzz worthy novel.

I’ve gathered — and tried to apply — “guaranteed” advice from hundreds of fiction gurus.

I’ve tried to write the kind of novel I like to read — on the theory that if I please myself I’m likely to please the other readers out there who enjoy the same genre.

I’ve even tried to start writing without an outline and see where my muse leads me?

Legend has it that bestselling novels have emerged from all of these strategies. But so have a zillion manuscripts that earned hisses rather than buzzes — and tens of thousands of published “mid-list” novels that achieved mediocre sales.

And so, the other day, I threw caution to the wind and reminded Janet what William Goldman, the well-known screenwriter, said about the movie biz: “Nobody knows nothing.” His point is that no one knows from the get-go whether a particular story line is the stuff of a wildly successful movie. You have to make and release a movie to find out if it “works.”

Alas, much the same thing can be said about novels.

We can think our plots are buzz-worthy, we can chuckle at our sparking dialog as we type, we can hope and pray for a future buzz, but the simple truth is that most of don’t know if we’re writing the kind of book that readers will want to read—and talk about. It’s only after the long slog of writing the thing that we find out if anyone wants to read it.

Therein lies the great gamble of being a novelist.

That is the question?

Whether ‘tis nobler in novelizing to suffer the nays and go-aways of repeated rejections
Or to take charge against publishing realities
And by Kindlizing overcome them?

Now that the 2011 writer’s conference season is in full bloom, thousands of novelists are listening to hundreds of presentations about eBooks. The central question in the minds of participants is often: Should I E?

Those of us late-blooming writers who have eBooks on sale are likely to answer: Why would you not Kindlize or Nook your novel?

The true answer to this question—although you may not hear all of it it unless you probe deeply—has three components, all of them significant.

1. eBook publishing is two full steps removed from the dream of traditional publishing that’s still dreamed by many yet-to-be-published novelists.
   • Kindlizing a book seems like another form of self publishing.
   • Kindlizing a book deprives the author of that that jolt of pride when he or she holds the first copy of a “real” book (which everyone knows is made out of paper).
2. Many novelists—including a large proportion of late bloomers—simply don’t like eBooks. They argue vociferously for paper books and insist that they will never buy a Kindle, Nook, or iPad.
3. eBook publishing requires that the authors take an active role in marketing his/her novel — at least to “get the ball rolling.” And many (most?) novelists dislike thought of marketing their work.

When trying to counter these anti-eBook arguments, I usually begin with the second: You may hate eBooks, but millions of your potential readers love them! (Consider that many stores ran out of Kindles, Nooks, and iPads last Christmas.) Why would you cut yourself off from such a fast-growing audience by not Kindlizing your novel?

Then I move on to the self-publishing argument:

The simple fact is that—in the world of eBooks—your book is presented in exactly the same way as a book published by a traditional publisher. A novel by James Patterson gets one page on the Kindle or Nook website, so does your novel. The growing number of Kindle millionaires testifies to the way the new publishing paradigm has reshaped the concept of “self-publishing” eBooks—and eliminated most of the traditional stigma.

If you do it right, your eBook will have the same look and feel as eBooks from a major house. As I noted in a previous post, a customer has to work to find the publisher’s name on some eBook retailer pages. That’s probably because readers don’t care as much about publishers as they once did, because publisher branding has lost its significance. Do you know (or care) who published the last five books you bought? I’ve stopped paying attention, and I presume that lots of other folks have, too.

Lastly, if you really want to self-publish a paper version of your book, print on demand (POD) technology means that it, too, will be sold on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers. It will also be orderable at most brick-and-mortar bookstores — and you can buy all the copies you need to dazzle your family and friends.

The complaint about marketing is heartfelt; I commiserate because I feel the same way. Alas—as I and many comment writers have noted—traditional publishers rely on mid-list authors to market their own novels. Unless you’re a bestselling author, you have to market aggressively, or your book will die on the vine.

If you’ve written a good novel, eBook promotion pays off. Case in point: Janet represented a previously published thriller called “As Catch Can,” written by Vincent Zandri. The novel was epublished by StoneHouse Ink under the title, “The Innocent.” The last time I looked, it was Number Two on Kindle’s “Hard Boiled” list. Vince invested in a promotion campaign the relied heavily on social-network marketing. It worked!

Do my counterarguments convince the authors I talk to?

Probably only a few. The traditional publishing dream is almost as strong as the survival instinct. It takes more than mere facts to change committed hearts and minds. But Janet and I keep trying.

Most late-blooming novelists began the heavy-duty slog to write a novel because they were driven by what is commonly called the “dream to be published.” The thing is, different novelists are likely to dream differently because each one of us has his or her own definition of success.

• Some authors ache to tell a specific story.
• Other novelists long to see their names on book covers and spines.
• Writers of inspirational novels are called to change hearts and minds.
• A bunch want to earn big bucks by writing bestselling novels.
• A few see their novels as “paybacks” aimed at people who did them wrong.
• Some dream that their novel(s) will be “taught” in college literature classes.

Janet and I have run into these forms of succeeding (and many more) when we’ve taught at writers conferences. Alas, we’ve often had to point out that the writer’s idea of a fulfilled dream has to be subordinated to the publisher’s definition of success.

In the world of traditional publishing, a successful novel must …

• Get a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
• Intrigue TV talk-show producers, who then invite the author for a guest shot.
• Quickly appear on several “best seller” lists.
• Eventually win several awards.
• Earn bushels of money for the publisher.
• Be transformed into a movie (or a play) — and earn more money.
• Sell gazillions of copies overseas — and earn even more money.

Publishers don’t expect all of the novels they publish to succeed, but to increase the odds in their favor, they pass candidate novels through a gauntlet of determined gatekeepers (agent, acquisition editor, publication board, marketing team) who apply their cumulative wisdom to decide if a novel is worthy to be published, if it has the “stuff” to succeed according to a publisher’s criteria — most of which are fundamentally different than an author’s criteria.

As one of my novelist friends pointed out, gatekeepers often make decisions for purely arbitrary and subjective reasons. The process is out of the author’s hands; all s/he can do is wait, worry, and hope.
Then, if a book makes it through the filtering process, the publisher decides on the final title, what the cover looks like, how much marketing money to spend, when the book should be published, and what it’s price will be. These too are often arbitrary and subjective decisions, made via a process that is also out of the author’s hands.

Even before the author sees a finished copy of his/her novel, various professional reviewers get to opine about the book — yep, another process that’s out of the author’s hands and is chock full of arbitrary and subjective decisions.

My friend went on to point out that ePublishing has changed the nature of things by eliminating the countless decisions that authors don’t make. When you upload a book to the Kindle or Nook stores, the only thing that really matters is what readers think of your work.

If readers enjoy your novel, the word-of-mouth buzz will generate a steady stream of sales that — if your book is a genuine favorite — can become a torrent of many thousands of eBooks sold each month.

Many writers have done this. One of Janet’s clients is now selling tens of thousands of eBooks per month of a novel that was originally published by a major publisher but failed to achieve even modest sales. The paper-book simply never reached its intended audience — and was quickly declared a failure according to the publisher’s success criteria.

But even if your personal success criteria require that you sell “only” a handful of novels a month, you’ll soon repay the modest costs involved in ePublishing your manuscript. And, you will have achieved your dream to be published — and all of the other non-monetary measures of success.

Bottom line: Publishing “success” is no longer defined by a process outside of your control. You get to define it for yourself.

It seems so confusing …

In mid-March, Barry Eisler, a best-selling novelist turned down a $500,000 advance from a traditional publisher and announced he planned to self-publish his new novel. He explained that it would take forever to earn-out his advance, but that he would receive 70-percent royalties from the get-go by launching the novel as an eBook—and would probably earn more than the advance fairly quickly.

A few days later, Amanda Hocking, a young novelist who made her bones (and more than a million dollars) self-publishing eBooks said yes to a multi-book deal and a seven-figure advance from the very same traditional publisher. Her explanation: she wants to spend all her time writing.

Do these success stories conflict? Do they suggest that the death of traditional publishing has been exaggerated? Do they provide any guidance for late-blooming novelists who are seeking a winning publishing strategy?

In fact, both of these happenings make perfect sense if you keep your eye on the realities of the new publishing paradigm. For starters, it’s great to see novelists truly acting in their own best interests (which clearly vary). For the first time in the recent history of publishing, authors have gained the ability to control their destiny.

Eisler’s choice demonstrates the power and potential of ePublishing — and IMO proves that the seductive “dream” of traditional publishing is fading. An author can go it alone and achieve success without a publisher. And while receiving a big advance is certainly nice, today’s eBook publishing environment enables a writer with a large fan base to earn $500,000 in one year by selling 300,000 eBooks priced at $2.99. That’s “only” 800 eBooks per day—25,000 per month—not an outrageous number for a best-selling author.

But many authors still have that traditional-publishing dream. They want to be published by a “real” publisher. Amanda Hocking, for example.

Her dream came true, because publishers rightly assume that anyone who sold more than million Kindle eBooks has a well-established fan base. That is what St. Martin’s Press, the traditional publisher in question, bought with its large advance.

But, that big front-end payment entails financial risk for the publisher. Consequently, St. Martin’s will almost certainly price her new eBooks way out of the $2.99 Kindle sweet spot. Many knowledgeable observers wonder if Hocking’s readers will be willing to pay $14.99 for her new novels?

The big advance probably also came with short strings. It’s a logical guess that Hocking’s publishing agreement with St. Martin’s includes strong non-compete language that will foreclose self-publishing for years to come.

Nonetheless, the Hocking deal offers real encouragement to self-published novelists, because it shows that publishers take independent eBook sales seriously. She was able to leverage her Kindle success and reach the publishing destination of her choice.

The growing clout of novelists was further demonstrated by a third decision that received somewhat less coverage than the Eisler and Hocking stories: Terrill Lee Lankford, also a best-selling author, turned down a lucrative traditional publishing contract—and a hefty advance—because the publisher refused to agree to more than a 25 percent royalty rate for eBook sales.

IMO Lankford did the right thing. Given the low cost of creating publishing, and distributing eBooks, publishers can afford to pay 40-percent to 50-percent royalties for eBooks. Author and agents know that—and authors now have the ability to say No to obviously bad deals.