Crime Fiction Dossier

Book of the Week: F. Paul Wilson's "Bloodline"

The eleventh book in the Repairman Jack series is another excellent, haunting thriller that will doubtless impress this cult favorite's many fans. Jack, the ultimate urban fix-it man, uncovers a plot to "rehabilitate" violent criminals by tinkering with their DNA. At the same time, he runs into the followers of a shady self-help guru with plans for world domination. Could these two plot threads be related? (Ya think?) This is not the easiest series to pick up if you haven't read the earlier books. But if you haven't, you should, because Wilson is one of the best.

Review of M.J. Rose's "The Reincarnationist"

My review of M.J. Rose's The Reincarnationist is in this morning's Chicago Sun-Times. This is one of my favorite books of the summer; a rousing, fun and romantic adventure story. Give it a try!

Thoughts on self-publishing from M.J. Rose

Linda L. Richard recently interviewed author M.J. Rose for January Magazine. It's a fascinating interview, and I wanted to highlight one segment of it. (For those who aren't familiar with M.J. Rose, she's one of the smartest people in this business, an expert on marketing and the publishing industry in general. She's also a fine thriller writer.)
 

Q. Your first book, Lip Service, was self-published. It was an amazing job. It was beautiful, well-edited, really professional from cover to cover. A lot of people are interested in self-publishing. Is the path you took one that you’d recommend?

A. No. Not for fiction, no.

It was a different time in 1998. There weren’t many self published books at the time, and now there are over 100,000 a year. Plus I didn’t do it as a career move. I never intended to stay self-published. It was an experiment.

I did it because my agent had real interest in the novel but everyone kept telling her there was no way to market my kind of fiction. Since my background is in advertising, I told her I was going to self-publish a few copies, and market them online and then she could show the publishers how to market my kind of fiction. I had no doubt I could figure out how to market the book.

That’s a very different reason to do what I did than so many people now who do it now.

Q. In what way?

 A. So many self published authors tell me they’ve self published after being rejected by one or two agents and/or one or two publishers who have criticized the quality of their work. Said it wasn’t well written, or original or needed more work. Those are the last writers who should be self publishing. When I ask them how they know their books are ready to be published, they say because their friends love their work, or their family.

I think no one who can’t get a quality agent should publish on their own. Agents are always looking for new authors and I believe if the book can’t interest an agent, the author would be better served working on his or her craft for a while longer. I had written three horrible novels before I got an agent with a fourth novel. And then Lip Service was my fifth.

My advice hasn’t changed for the last eight years. Self-publishing fiction is a last step. It’s only an option when you’ve tried the traditional route and rewritten the book a dozen times.

I say this because even wonderful writers published with top houses can’t break out. So much is published now and book marketing is so difficult. How much hope is there really for an average or less than quality book that's got no support behind it? Stores don’t want to give the self published books a chance, most reviewers don't want to to either. It’s not an uphill climb anymore: it’s a Mt. Everest climb times 100,000.

You won't get any better advice than that. Rose has been there and she understands the realities of the publishing industry today better than almost anyone else. For more of her thoughts, read her excellent blog.

Why I love publishing: Reason #42

The other day I got a big box dropped on my doorstep by FedEx. "Cool!" I thought to myself. "That's a lot of books!" I get books nearly every day, but I still enjoy the anticipation of seeing what each package will bring, especially when it's a such a large box. (There's got to be something good in there, I reckon.)

So I tear the box open to find... Thirty-four audiobooks! Unfortunately, they're all the same audiobook, I've never heard of it, it's not a crime novel, and it doesn't look like anything I'd be interested in.

Clearly, there's been some error. And not, unfortunately, an error that does me much good. What the hell am I going to do with all of these audiobooks?

So I find the shipping label and get the sender's name off of it (an employee of one of the big houses),  figure out her email address, and send her a message. You sent me these audiobooks by mistake, I write. I assume you want them back?

I hear back: Sorry! Don't know why those went to you. They were supposed to go to the surplus warehouse. You can throw them away.

Talk about a little perspective on the realities of this business. On the other hand, my Christmas shopping is all done, and it's only September!

More on Kirkus Discoveries

I dug up a few articles from 2004-5 about the launch of Kirkus' paid review program, in case anyone is interested in reading some of the early reactions. (I didn't find any more recent commentary, so I suppose this is old news.) As you'd expect, nearly everyone thought it was a bad idea.

Ron Charles in the Christian Science Monitor
David Milofsky in the Denver Post
Edward Wyatt in the New York Times

My favorite revelation was a quote in the Times from Jerome Kramer, managing director of the company that publishes Kirkus: "If someone is desperately unhappy with the review and wanted it to be removed from KirkusDiscoveries.com, I imagine we would do that."

Satisfaction guaranteed! That's what I want from my book reviews. (At least this presupposes that the review could be negative.)

If these books are worthy of review, Kirkus should write about them in the magazine. If not, they shouldn't be charging these people to bury a review on their website.

Paying for book reviews

During one of the many debates on vanity publishing over at Lee Goldberg's always entertaining blog, a vanity press author commented at length about his positive experience with the process. I think that pathway is a bad one for nearly all prospective authors, but that's not the point of this post.

During the discussion, it came out that the writer in question had paid Kirkus Discoveries $300 for a review -- which, not surprisingly, was a rave. The author blurbed this review prominently on his website and obviously took great pride in it.

Folks, I can't tell you enough what a mistake it is to purchase a book review. A Kirkus Discoveries review is like a real Kirkus Review in the same way that chicken salad is like chicken shit. A purchased review has less than no credibility; it actually diminishes the reputation of the work and the author, rather than bolstering it. It shows that the author is naive about the publishing industry, and that s/he couldn't get any legitimate reviews.

The people who buy them argue that they are fair and honest reviews, not snow jobs at all. (Kirkus maintains the same thing.) Yet when you read through the Kirkus Discoveries reviews, you'll find that they're surprisingly positive. (Remember, these are reviews of vanity published works. Are we really supposed to believe that the overall quality of vanity press novels is really that high?)

I read the 10 most recent reviews posted on their website and 8 of them were positive. Only 2 of them were mixed reviews, and they were still positive enough to recommend the book. By comparison, read the latest 10 reviews from the real Kirkus and see how many of them are positive. But, of course, those people didn't pay $300 each for the critique.

If anyone is thinking of buying one of these reviews, I hope they'll reconsider. There are outlets that will review vanity press works. Granted, they are few and with little reputation, but they do exist. Any one of them would be better than paying for a review.

Book of the Week: Joseph Finder's "Power Play"

Joseph Finder unleashes another white-knuckle tale of suspense with Power Play. This time Finder's focus is on the aviation industry, telling the story of Jake Landry, a lowlevel executive at Hammond Aerospace. When Landry's boss is called away, he is invited to attend the company's team-building retreat at a remote lodge in the Canadian wilderness. What is supposed to be a fun weekend turns deadly when a gang of woodsmen take over the lodge and hold the executives hostage. Finder has proven over his past few novels that he writes some of the best thrillers in the business. Power Play is another winner in the same mold. (Read the full-length review.)

Blog study

I'm doing a study on crime fiction/writing blogs and was hoping I could get your feedback on a couple of points.

What do you like best about the blogs you read? What don't you like about them?

What's the one thing you'd like to see on a blog that you don't see right now?

Any feedback you'd like to share would be greatly appreciated. You can either post a comment with your thoughts or email me.

Thanks!

Why your book didn't get reviewed

One of the questions writers often ask is, "Why didn't my book get reviewed?" There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is also one of the most surprising:

Because the reviewer never got a copy of the book.

Case in point: A bestselling crime writer has a book coming out in 10 days or so. I reviewed a couple books by this author previously, and was generally pleased with them, so this latest work was on my radar screen as a strong contender for review.

(My editor likes it when I can include a bestseller or two in my roundup column, so I'm always on the lookout for candidates that I think are worthy of review.)

The problem is, I never received a copy of the book. Usually I get ARCs of upcoming titles at least a couple months before the release date. This is necessary so that reviewers can plan and write their reviews. (My lead time for deciding what I'm going to review is usually at least a month before my column actually appears in the newspaper.)

I don't know if the publisher didn't print galleys or they just didn't send me one. I do know that for the author's last book, which I reviewed, I never did get a galley and had to practically pull their teeth to get a copy of the book to review. I also know that they did print ARCs -- they just didn't bother to send me one.

So I contacted the author directly and asked him to make sure his publicist sent me a book as soon as possible. He said he'd take care of it.

Well, a finished copy of the book finally arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, I've already written my September column, and obviously this book wasn't included. So I won't be reviewing it. I doubt I'll even have time to read it, as I've now moved on to October and November books.

Frustrating? A little, I suppose. But I just read a different book and wrote about that instead. The real losers are the author, the author's fans and the publisher. This is not an isolated incident either; it happens all the time.

No matter how long I work in this business, I don't think I'll ever understand why publishers do the things they do.

Guyot on TV writing, Pt. 2

The second installment of Paul Guyot's series on TV writing, this one focused on the Network Pitch, is now up at Murderati.

As always when I read stuff like this, I'm amazed that anyone wants to be a writer.