Crime Fiction Dossier

Book of the Week: Steve Hockensmith's "The Black Dove"

Steve Hockensmith returns to the rambunctious frontier world of the late-19th century American West, with his deducifying detective duo of Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer. The Amlingmeyers are between jobs, having been fired by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and at loose ends in San Francisco. When their friend Dr. Chan is murdered, the brothers head for Chinatown to track down his killer. The Black Dove is an amusing homage to the great Sherlock Holmes (the Amlingmeyers' hero) and an entertaining period mystery.

Oscar Predictions

I used to be famous for my Oscar Prognostications -- I once won a newspaper contest 3 years running. I don't pay as much attention to the competition as I used to, but in case you need some picks, here ya go:

BEST PICTURE
No Country for Old Men

BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

BEST ACTRESS
Julie Christie, Away from Her

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Ruby Dee, American Gangster

BEST DIRECTOR
The Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody, Juno

BONUS PREDICTION
Host Jon Stewart will do a better job than Ellen DeGeneres (Carrot Top could do better than she did), but he'll still pale in comparison to Billy Crystal and Steve Martin.

2/25 Edit:

Six out of eight right -- not too shabby! The ones I missed were Best Actress (Winner: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose -- never heard of her or the film) and Best Supporting Actress (Winner: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton -- I had originally picked her before I changed it to Ruby Dee. I thought Dee would get the sentimental vote, but apparently not. Cruel, unsentimental Academy voters!)

Latest Chicago Sun-Times roundup column

At long last, my new mystery/thriller roundup ran this morning in the Chicago Sun-Times.

It contains:

T. Jefferson Parker - L.A. Outlaws
Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin
Christa Faust - Money Shot
William Bernhardt - Capitol Conspiracy
Alex Berenson - The Ghost War

Big publishing speaks

Jason Pinter, author of The Guilty and formerly an editor at St. Martin's Press (among other places), offered the following thoughts on the subject of vanity press publishing. For background on the discussion, see my post "Big publisher is watching." (This was originally posted on Lee Goldberg's blog. Jason kindly gave permission for me to repost it here.)

Having worked in publishing, with actual editorial experience at three "big publishing" houses, I thought I'd dispel a few myths that have been bandied about here. In my five years in editorial, I acquired both fiction and non-fiction. I've sat in hundreds of editorial meetings, and gotten thousands of submissions from reputable--and disreputable--agents. This is not to toot any sort of horn, but merely to offer proof that I know what I'm talking about. Anyway:

1) Amazon, despite what Yvonne says, is not a distributor. They are a retailer. There is a huge difference. A distributor buys x number of books from a publisher, then "distributes" them among their sales channels. Levy is an example of a distributor. Ingram is a distributor. Distributors have a financial stake in the success of the book. If it does not sell, they lose money.

2) Amazon is not the preferred distributor, or retailer, or anything like that. They are a piece of the puzzle, sure, but as of today only about 3%-5% of that puzzle. Brick and mortar stores, with few exceptions, are the most important part of the puzzle (though big box stores, like Sam's Club and BJ's are growing in importance). It costs Amazon nothing to put up a page for a self-published book, and it certainly doesn't mean they have to order any copies. If a self-published book doesn't sell any copies on Amazon, they lose nothing but the time it took to post the page.

3) There are authors who benefit from self-publishing, but they are extremely rare. They are, with very few exceptions, non-fiction authors who have either a substantial platform or take part in many speaking engagements at which to sell their books. In this case, they benefit from increased royalties. Many NF authors that publish with traditional publishers actually negotiate to buy back a certain amount of copies--at a large discount--in order to both sell at their lectures as well as in B&M stores. Though yes, it is true that sometimes publishers do acquire a book solely because the author commits to a substantial buyback. Yes this is cynical publishing, but publishing is a business, and publishers do what they need to do to stay in business.

4) Big name publishing is only watching if you make them watch. The fact of the matter is, when a self-published novel comes in on submission, it is assumed, often correctly, that the novel could not find a mainstream publisher. Yes, there are self-published novels that are well-written and do eventually land contracts, but again they are exceedingly few and far between. Anyone who thinks self-publishing is the best route to getting a mainstream contract, give me a ring, I have some real estate to sell you...

5) "Big Publishing" generally takes longer to publish books because it takes months to properly sell and promote the book to their accounts. Any publisher, if they wanted to could, put out a book out lickity split. In fact, those books are called "crash books," and they're only done if a book is especially timely and/or publicity driven. But if you print a book in a month just because you can, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, etc...wouldn't take diddly squat because they'd have no reason to.

6) Publishers do drop the ball. That's the way it works, unfortunately. Good books go unread and don't get the promotion they need or deserve, and bad books become monster bestsellers. Hell, "Fools Gold" was #1 at the box office.

7) There's no doubt publishing is changing, though change is certainly taking its time. The Kindle might be doing well relatively, but ebooks are such a small fraction of book sales (like 1% of 1%) that it's far too early in the device's release for it to have made anywhere near a dent, or even a smudge, on the market.

Just a few thoughts.

Jason Pinter

Plots with Guns is back!

The first issue of the reborn Plots with Guns is now live. It includes a story by FOTD (Friend of the Dossier) Tim Maleeny.

Check it out!

Legal question

Here's a question for you shyster types out there:

If workmen make a GODAWFUL UNENDING POUNDING noise outside your house for two days running, can you legally bludgeon them with a baseball bat?

I'm just wondering...

(This might be the plot for my next story...which quite possibly will be written from prison.)

Big publisher is watching

As part of the discussion on vanity presses mentioned below, Lee Goldberg cited a quote by the proprietor of a POD press that I wanted to address:

"In today’s emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big name publishers are watching." --Yvonne DiVita, WME Books.com

If that were true, it might be a compelling argument in favor of the vanity press model. Unfortunately, it is patently false.

In the five years that I've been a professional book critic and commentator on publishing, I've had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of published authors, ranging from first-timers to seasoned pros, small press to large, mid-list to the biggest bestsellers.

Of those hundreds of authors, I am aware of only two that began their careers with a POD-printed book. One of the authors went from a vanity press to a traditional NY publishing house. After two books, she was dropped by the NY house and returned to self publishing.

The other author -- already something of a unique case in that he had significant publishing industry contacts -- used his POD books essentially as promotional items, sending them to reviewers, editors, etc. in an attempt to garner attention for his work. He eventually got a contact with a traditional publisher. Subsequent to that, he stated that he wouldn't advise others to go the POD route and that he didn't think it helped him significantly.

Contrast those two to the hundreds and hundreds of published authors who pursued their career the traditional way. They wrote a book, they submitted it to agents and/or publishers, they got published, they got paid.

So who are all these writers who are attracting the "big name publishers" with their POD books? If the big name publishers really are watching, would any of them care to write in and let me know that? I'm sure my readers would be interested in hearing the news.

Vanity press "publishing"

There's an interesting (and often nasty) discussion going on over at Lee Goldberg's blog regarding the merits of vanity press "publishing." (I put that in quotes because what these presses do is much closer to printing than it is publishing.) The discussion started with a particular vanity press operation and has expanded beyond that to include the method in general.

I've written on this subject before, but as vanity publishing (usually masquerading as POD publishing) becomes more and more popular, it becomes an increasingly important topic for writers to be aware of.

Obviously I don't think very much of the vanity press business. But regardless of your own views, it would behoove any prospective customer of such a company to do extensive research on the subject before they spend their money.

There are too many operations out there that are little more than con jobs, preying on the gullibility and desperation of aspiring writers. Be sure you've done your homework and educated yourself before handing over your credit card number.

Do we all read a different book?

There's an expression that some readers like to use -- I just saw it earlier today -- and I've always found it a curious one: "We all read a different book."

I know what people are trying to say when they use that phrase, but it still grates every time I see it. One of the things that I think is most enjoyable about reading is that, to the contrary, we all read the same book. Thus it's a shared experience that provides a common point of interest and reference for fellow readers.

Books are immutable -- one of their most remarkable features, I think. While everything around us changes, the words on the page stay the same. When we pick up a copy of Huckleberry Finn, the story is the same as Twain wrote it over 120 years ago. And that's a wonderful connection to the past that is almost impossible to get otherwise. (How else can we have a direct experience of late-19th century American life and thought?)

Of course, we as readers are all different, and we bring our own thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, expectations, emotions, biases and everything else to a book -- so the way in which we experience it is different. But it is we that are different; not the book.

No matter how times change, and technology advances, and trends come in and out of fashion, the book remains the same. And thank God for that.

Zodiac

Mystery author Megan Abbott has a wonderful essay on David Fincher's film Zodiac over on The Rap Sheet. I read it last night and was blown away by her insightful analysis. I enjoyed the film a lot, although I also found it frustrating. Having grown up in Northern California during the 1970s, the Zodiac Killer was something everybody knew about. Watching the film, I was fascinated to see the case (and its time and place) brought back to life -- and I kept hoping that someone the filmmakers had found an answer to the mystery. But, of course, they didn't. It takes balls to make a police procedural where the bad guy isn't caught and justice isn't served. But the makers of Zodiac did it, with excellent results.