tips for Publishing: Februari 2012

Minggu, 26 Februari 2012

My Synopsis - stepping up to the plate

Well, I thought, if I'm a) expecting you all to write a synopsis and b) going on about how easy and lovely the process is, I should step up to the plate and do one for you. This was the same thought I had while writing Write a Great Synopsis (WAGS - see cover image on the right), which is why I wrote a couple of sample synopses in that book.

At the end of the book, I use three of the Synopsis

Data sharing

Posted by Jean Adams

As you may know, I am fairly relaxed about the idea of sharing data about me for the purposes of research. But now I find myself in a dilemma about sharing my research data.

The vast majority of public health research funding in the UK comes directly, or indirectly, from government, or charities. As someone who has benefitted personally (they pay my salary) and professionally (they pay for my research) from this public funding, I feel some duty to remember who is paying for it all. I make efforts to share my findings with the public, and have tried to learn how to do this better. I believe strongly in the very concept of Fuse and the need to engage with those working in public health policy and practice to ensure that my research is relevant and usable, and is used.

The research data produced as a result of my public funding is not my data, it is our data. I know this. And yet now that I have been asked to share some, I keep trying to think of reasons not to.

Sharing is caring

A few years ago, Ofcom introduced new regulations on the content and scheduling of television food advertising to children. A complex definition of what constituted ‘unhealthy’ food was devised and the regulations prevented advertisements for these foods during programmes that have particularly high child viewerships. We were awarded funding from a consortium of public and charity funders to explore the impact of these regulations on what advertisements children were seeing on TV.

The research was very data intensive. We bought a large spreadsheet of information describing every single advertisement on UK television over four different weeks – before, during, and after the regulations were implemented. From among these 2.5 million adverts, we picked out the food ads and collected separate information on the nutritional content of every food advertised. Next, we worked out which foods met the definition of ‘unhealthy’ and compared the number of ads seen for unhealthy foods across our four study weeks. You can imagine that it needed a very special sort of person to have the patience and attention to detail to do all of this. It took her a year.

Our findings were published last week and there was a small amount of media coverage. I thought it wasn’t enough coverage, but it was enough to attract the attention of a snack food marketing organisation. Now they would like to know if our data could be used to track changes in snack food advertising. They are even suggesting that they could pay for a researcher to perform such an analysis.

I feel deeply unsure about getting involved in this. As someone who has real concerns about the public health impacts of the food industry in general, merely speaking to these people feels like dancing with the devil. But, presumably my publically funded data belongs to British industry as much as it does to the British public.

Right now I am employing delaying tactics – and not just writing this. Soon I will have to make a real decision about what to do.

Jumat, 24 Februari 2012

On air...again

Posted by Jean Adams

Yesterday I got up at 0530 to speak to someone from Radio 5 Live for their breakfast programme. Then I made and ate my porridge and drove to the airport for the early flight to Bristol. I am so not a morning person. But my morning, day, week, month, year was totally made by hearing my research mentioned on the Today programme during the 0630 headlines. I nearly crashed the car.

About 18 months ago, I was asked for ideas for final year projects for Food & Human Nutrition students. I don’t remember now why I thought it would be interesting to look at price promotions on alcohol. But I did. I was given two students to do the project. Between them, they surveyed all the shops selling alcohol within 1500m of Newcastle’s Student Union, noting down all price promotions they saw on their rounds. The students split up the data and wrote up their dissertations.

When I put the all the data back together, it became clear that of more than 2000 promotions found, less than 2% led to alcohol being sold at less than cost price – the new minimum price that will be introduced in England in April. The implication is obvious – banning below cost sales of alcohol wont effect the cost of alcohol in the shops. The research was accepted for publication in Alcohol & Alcoholism.

I told the press office about the research because it felt policy relevant to me. I’m not sure they were desperately interested, but they agreed to press release it.

I ended up doing TV interviews for BBC Breakfast, Tyne Tees and Sky Tyne & Wear. As well as Radio 5, I did Sky Radio too. The research was mentioned without interviews on Radio 3 and 4 morning news. But by far the most adrenalin-surging was a live telephone interview with Winifred Robinson on Radio 4’s You & Yours.

It feels so unfair that the media loved my quickly done, undergraduate students projects paper, and dismissed my really important, publically funded evaluation of new regulations on TV food advertising that took years to produce.

Well...I am in Bristol for the third instalment (and final exam) of a Science Writing course. So I think this all has something to do with ‘news values’. Our work on alcohol promotions plays to the “continuity” and “consonance” news values – it builds on David Cameron’s statement last week that he was going to tackle the “scandal” of binge drinking, but it also allows well rehearsed arguments about minimum unit pricing to be dredged up again. All in all, it’s a nice little piece that journalists can easily relate to other ongoing public debates. Can you tell I’ve been revising?

So now I can diagnose the problem. But I still don’t know how to treat it and get the media to take note of stuff they just don’t want to.

Selasa, 21 Februari 2012

Platforms, networking, blogging and Twitter for authors - resources

I'm doing an event on Twitter for the Society of Authors in London today. And a talk about blogging and Twitter for authors at a conference in Peterborough at the weekend. And one about Twitter and blogging at a dinner for senior people in publishing a couple of days later. For the benefit of the participants at those, and also any of you who would like all this info in one place, I have made a

Senin, 20 Februari 2012

Do Legacy Publishers Treat Authors Badly?

Some people have disagreed with my statement that legacy publishers treat authors like shit.

So I've made this list. Decide for yourself if these actions constitute treating authors badly. FWIW, all the things I'm mentioning have either happened to me or to my peers.

Legacy publishers offer the author 17.5% royalties on ebooks, and keep 52.5% for themselves.

Legacy publishers have full control over the title of the book.

Legacy publishers have full control over the cover art.

Legacy publishers can demand editing changes or refuse to publish.

Legacy publishers promise marketing or advertising. In fact, they promise lots of things. Then they don't follow through.

Legacy publishers fail to get paper books into certain important bookselling outlets, resulting in fewer sales.

Legacy publishers generate royalty statements that are incomprehensible.

Legacy publishers don't try grow an author's fanbase these days. If the books don't show increased sales with each new title, the author gets dumped, even if the reason for decreasing sales is the publisher's fault.

Legacy publishers hold onto rights even if the book is no longer selling. Getting rights back is a nightmare, and it takes forever.

Legacy publishers try to grab erights to books retroactively.

Legacy publishers take a ridiculously long time to publish a book. In some cases, more than 18 months.

Legacy publishers are a cartel. I suppose it could be a coincidence that the Big 6 all have exactly the same (low) royalty structure, and shockingly similar contract terms. But collusion seems easier to believe, and this collusion is aimed at limiting the income and power of authors. Legacy publishing contracts are painfully one-sided.

Legacy publishers have zero transparency when it comes to things like sales, returns, print runs, and inventory, and keep authors in the dark.

Legacy publishers fix prices. That's what the agency model is. Even worse, these prices are too high and hurt authors' sales.

Legacy publishers sometimes fail to edit.

Legacy publishers abandon books, releasing them into the market without any push at all.

Legacy publishers pay royalties twice a year. Are you freaking kidding me?!? It's 2012! Why are their accounting and payroll departments stuck in 1943?

Legacy publishers embraced returns for full credit. This is the biggest fail in the history of retail, and the reserves against returns practice has screwed thousands of authors. Isn't it funny how whenever you hear about an author auditing a publisher, unreported sales are always discovered?

Legacy publishers have done everything they can to postpone the switch from paper to digital. I was talking about this two years ago. This has cost authors a great deal of money.

Legacy publishers buy subsidiary rights they never exploit. Why buy them if you won't use them?

Legacy publishers waste huge amounts of money. They have offices in the most expensive city in the US, spend tens of thousands of dollars on booths at BEA, spend millions of dollars advertising bestselling authors who don't need the advertising, then say they can't offer more than a $12k advance? Fail. Move to Jersey, cut the expense accounts for lunch, and offer authors more money since they're the reason you exist in the first place.

Legacy publishers reject good books. I got half a mil in the bank that proves this one.

Do the above actions sound like legacy publishers are treating authors with consideration, respect, and affection? Or does it seem like they're treating authors like shit?

I've dealt with a lot of folks who work for legacy publishers. These are talented, dedicated, smart people.

That doesn't mean their companies don't screw authors.

I've spent hours upon hours talking to these publishers, trying to get them to innovate, to evolve.

They didn't listen.

I've spent a smaller amount of time talking to Amazon, trying to get them to innovate, to evolve.

Amazon did listen. And guess what? My Amazon published books made more money, faster, than any of my legacy published books.

If you're an author who has worked with a legacy publisher, you know how demeaning it is when your ideas, pleas, and plans are ignored. And if you've worked with Amazon, you know how empowering it is to be listened to. To have your opinions and ideas count, and be implemented.

I know many legacy pubbed authors who then self-publish. The majority of them agree with me: unless it was for a whole lot of money, they'd never take another legacy contract. Why is that? Doesn't that say something?

I know several self-pubbed newbies who had some success and got picked up by legacy publishers. Where are their blog posts about how well they're being treated and how their sales numbers went up? Where are their recommendations to other authors, urging them to abandon self-pubbing and sign a legacy deal?

I don't rant against legacy publishers because because they've wronged me. I rant against them to warn other authors, and show them better options. The path I'm on now is so much more rewarding, both monetarily and emotionally.

As Blake Crouch said in a recent Tweet: Where are all the longtime authors jumping to the defense of legacy publishing? Surely, since legacy publishers treat their authors so well, there should be thousands of happy authors rallying behind their publishers, disagreeing with my points, telling the world how wonderful their legacy experience has been.

There's a reason we don't see any of this. What could they possibly say?

"I love the fact that my royalty statements make no sense and I only get paid twice a year!"

"I love that my publisher prices my ebook at $12.99 and then keeps 52.5% of the list price!"

"I love getting my title changed to something I hate, and getting stuck with terrible covers!"

"I love the fact that my publisher didn't get me a single review!"

"I love turning in a manuscript and not getting the rest of my advance money until publication 18 months later!"

"I love the fact that it takes my publisher three months to give me the proofs, and then I have to return them in four days!

"I love it when I painstakingly go through a copy edit, and then when the book comes out none of my changes were made, and brand new mistakes were added!"

"I love being told there is no money for marketing my title, and then seeing a TV commercial for an author who has my same publisher!"

"I love it that my publisher insisted on owning world rights, and then only published in the US and Canada!"

"I love that my next-book option wasn't picked up because Barnes & Noble couldn't offer a big enough buy-in!"

"I love releasing only one book a year, even though I could easily write more! Non-compete clauses are awesome!"

"I love the 70% return rate on mass market paperbacks!"

"I love DRM!"

You don't hear a lot of stories about authors being treated well.

Instead, go to any writing conference, belly up to the hotel bar, and listen to the writers commiserate with one another, trading stories of who got screwed the worst.

Is legacy publishing all bad? Of course not. Some authors get rich. Some authors get much-needed editing help. Some authors get treated like royalty.

But I'm pretty sure that if we polled one thousand authors, and had them weigh all the good things their publishers do against the bad things their publishers do, the bad would far outweigh the good. I bet you'd find a lot of them having the same complaints I've mentioned. I bet you'd find even more complaints that I'm not even aware of.

The industry is broken. It cannot continue to treat its content providers as if it's doing them a favor. It cannot continue to engage in business practices that are so one-sided.

Writers are necessary. Publishers are not.

If you want to climb aboard a sinking ship, don't be surprised when you get handed a pail and ordered to start bailing.

If you disagree, I'd love to hear why. You can even post anonymously. All of you legacy publishers who love authors can come and tell me how I'm wrong.

But you won't. Because I'm right. The best you'll do is whine about my tone, or reiterate incorrect memes about my current self-pub success being the result of my legacy backlist, or call me a broken record, or get angry because I'm killing the sacred cow you suckle at, while ignoring all of the valid points I've made.

I'm sure all of you legacy folks have good intentions when it comes to how you treat your writers.

What was it someone said about hell and good intentions?

Minggu, 19 Februari 2012

The 90/10 promotion rule: what to do with the 10%?

I said a while ago that I favour the 90/10 rule for self-promotion on social media. In other words, if you spend 90% of your time there being generous - offering my three pillars of Friendship, Information and/or Entertainment - people will allow you to spend the other 10% promoting yourself, whether that means mentioning that you have a book out or telling your friends about a nice review, or

Guest Post by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

AN OLDBIE’S GUIDE TO E-BOOK PUBLISHING by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Some people say Joe’s an angel. Some say he’s a devil.

I tend to think he’s both.

Joe is the angel who gives us hope and inspiration. Joe is the devil who gives us hope and inspiration.

Joe was also responsible for one of the single most fun experiences I’ve ever had as a writer, when he let me interview him for my old Disrespectful Interviewer feature at BiblioBuffet.com, which you can read here: http://bibliobuffet.com/archive-index-writer-in-residence/1377-the-disrespectful-interviewer-dissing-ja-konrath-100310.

But that’s enough about Joe, for the time being. Let’s talk about me for a bit and how I came by my decision to publish my latest comedic novel for adults as an ebook.

My publishing career began 22 published books ago with a dark comedy called The Thin Pink Line. In 2002, having written seven novels in nearly eight years while going through more than one agent, I sold that book on my own as part of a two-book deal to the then premier publisher of Chick Lit, Red Dress Ink. We can argue until the cows come home about whether The Thin Pink Line is or isn’t Chick Lit – it all depends on your definition – but one thing that can’t be argued is that this was a pretty good event for me. Before The Thin Pink Line was even published, RDI came to me with an offer for a subsequent three-book deal – my first book wasn’t even out yet, and I was already assured of at least a five-book career! Before all the pink dust had settled, The Thin Pink Line was published in 11 countries, optioned for a film, and was the first book published by any Harlequin imprint ever – with all the thousands of books they’d previously published over the years! – to earn a starred review from Kirkus.

Surely, my success as a writer of comedic novels for adults would go on forever!

Well, as publishing insiders have been known to say: Heh. Heh-heh-heh.

By the time my fifth book came out from RDI in fall of 2008, publishing was rolling back the red carpet they’d once extended to Chick Lit authors. Publishing itself, as publishing so often does when something gets hot, had over-saturated the market and now they wanted nothing to do with books like that; in fact, RDI published its final book in December of that year.

But that was OK! By then I’d already diversified by branching into the young adult market and was about to further branch into the children’s market with a series of books for young readers which I created with my husband and daughter, The Sisters 8. Both branches have proven to be successful for me. So who needed to publish books for adults anymore?

Well, actually, me.

I’m an eclectic reader, and an eclectic writer, and I like to scratch all my itches.

So when I got the idea for a new comedic novel for adults, I just had to write it, whether anyone would ever publish it or not. I called the book THE BRO-MAGNET and here’s a description of it:

Women have been known to lament, "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride." For Johnny Smith, the problem is, "Always a Best Man, never a groom." At age 33, housepainter Johnny has been Best Man eight times. The ultimate man's man, Johnny loves the Mets, the Jets, his weekly poker game, and the hula girl lamp that hangs over his basement pool table. Johnny has the instant affection of nearly every man he meets, but one thing he doesn't have is a woman to share his life with, and he wants that desperately. When Johnny meets District Attorney Helen Troy, he decides to renounce his bro-magnet ways in order to impress her. With the aid and advice of his friends and family, soon he's transforming his wardrobe, buying throw pillows, ditching the hula girl lamp, getting a cat and even changing his name to the more mature-sounding John. And through it all, he's pretending to have no interest in sports, which Helen claims to abhor. As things heat up with Helen, the questions arise: Will Johnny finally get the girl? And, if he's successful in that pursuit, who will he be now that he's no longer really himself? THE BRO-MAGNET is a rollicking comedic novel about what one man is willing to give up for the sake of love.

Of course once I’d completed the book, I knew there was little point in trying to sell it to a big publishing company. Even if they were enticed by the description, even if they loved the actual writing, as soon as they looked up the BookScan numbers on me and saw the paltry figures for that last book done with RDI, which received no promotion whatsoever because the publisher was going away, well, they’d go away too.

So, what to do, what to do...

Enter the ebook revolution.

I’d only had limited experiences with ebooks. A while back, I’d asked RDI for the rights back to The Thin Pink Line and the sequel, Crossing the Line, and they’d graciously agreed. Then I had a friend do the formatting and create a new cover for The Thin Pink Line, and I’d also written new cover copy reflecting what I’d always wanted the description to be, and we put it up for sale for $2.99 on Kindle last year. Before today – more on this later – it was only selling about two copies per week, earning me just enough to take myself out to lunch once a month. Not exactly raking in the dollars, but that was OK. What did I expect? It was an older title that had already been widely read, so really, it wasn’t like I was expecting to get a lot of new readers for it. I was happy enough.

But now I had this new book and I wanted more.

Enter the agency that’s represented me since 2005, The Knight Agency.

Sometime last year my agent there, Pamela Harty, let me know that TKA was going to make it possible for existing clients – if the clients so chose – to partner with TKA to publish their ebooks. I said I’d be interested in seeing their publishing plan. Once I saw it, I knew that this was the path for me to take with this particular book.

Some people will say this is crazy. Why give an agent a percentage of each ebook sold when you can hire out tech and art for a flat fee? In fact, TKA received a lot of blogger flak when they announced what they would be doing, even public flak from some of their clients. My personal take is that that’s just rude. No one – and here’s the only time I’ll talk to you in screaming all-caps here – NO ONE at TKA was strong-arming anyone into doing this. It was simply another option clients might take if they elected to.

Here’s the thing: As far as I’m concerned, TKA is just adjusting to changing times.

Here’s another thing: For those of you who don’t know me, you need to know I’ve never been one of these party-line authors who say anything an agent says must be right because agents know the business while authors are stoopid. If anything, I’ve gone the other way for most of my career, advocating for the rights of writers above all else. In fact, before joining forces with TKA in 2005, I parted company with no less than five agents because they weren’t doing what I thought they should, making me something of The Elizabeth Taylor Of Writers.

You know what, though? TKA has sold 18 books for me since I’ve been with them, they’ve been nothing but supportive despite the fact that I don’t make it easy by not being brandable, and I wanted to see how we’d do as publishing partners together.

So how have the results been since THE BRO-MAGNET launched on December 11?

I couldn’t be happier. TKA has done everything they said they’d do in their proposal and more, getting some high-profile attention for the book that I know I’d never get on my own. More than that, it’s re-invigorated our relationship because now more than ever there’s the feeling of, “We’re in this together.” It’s exciting. It’s been everything I dreamed it could be.

Am I saying every author, if given the chance, should follow the exact path I’ve taken? Of course not! I’ve been around the publishing industry in one capacity or another for nearly 30 years – now you can try to guess how old that makes me, but I hope that whatever your guess, you will conclude that I’m looking good – and if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that there’s no “one size fits all” about any of this stuff. We learn things, we learn as much as we can – we learn a lot from people like Joe – and then we make the decisions that are right for us.

Oh, before I go, I do want to say that for all the flak Joe gets from some quarters, he really is right about so much. You may remember earlier, I said that The Thin Pink Line was averaging about two downloads a week prior to today. Well, you know how Joe’s always advising to make some things free to increase distribution and author visibility? The Thin Pink Line is part of the KDP Select program, which means that every 90 days I can make it free for 5 of those days. Last month I figured, what the heck? That book, which is usually somewhere in the 100,000-200,000 ranking in the Kindle store got to 223 in the Free Kindle Store and #11 in the Humor category; in the U.K., it went to 113 overall and #3 in Humour. In 16 hours it was been downloaded 1,114 times in the U.S. and 319 times in the U.K. Will this translate into some sales once the free promotion is over? And will there be a positive impact on sales for THE BRO-MAGNET? Who knows??? But on days like today, it feels like anything is possible. Most important of all, I’m having fun.

One last thing: Please buy THE BRO-MAGNET!

And one more last thing, the final last thing: Thank you, Joe, for loaning me your megaphone today and for everything you’ve ever shared about e-pubilshing, you angel/devil you.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted can always be found at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

Joe sez: I like Lauren, and encourage everyone reading this to buy her ebooks. I promised Lauren this would run during her freebie promo, but then I got crazy busy and went out of town and let her down like I've let down the dozens of other authors who have sent me guest blogs.

But I'll get to you all. I promise. :)

I'm hoping Lauren will chime in and let us know if her free giveaways translated to some sales, but more importantly I wanted to discuss her use of an estributor.

I blogged about estributors back in 2009. An estributor is a person or company who assists an author with self-publishing and gets a percentage of the profits. An agent, in my opinion, is the perfect entity suited for this position. And unlike a lot of folks who believe that is a conflict of interest, it's not. An agent is out to make the most money she can for her clients, so she can make a commission for herself. If that via a big legacy deal, fine. It that's via self-pubbing, fine. Either way, she's serving her client.

I'm working with my agent, Jane Dystel, in an estributor capacity for my upcoming book Timecaster Supersymmetry (that is, if she agrees after reading it--the novel is decidedly un-PC and loaded with graphic sex and violence and zombies and talking dinosaurs and a banana who sings the blues.)

The idea is that if my agent takes over all of the work required to bring an ebook to market, I can focus on writing. Bringing an ebook to market takes a lot of time. The more time I have to write, the more money I can make.

A notable opponent of this methodology is Dean Wesley Smith, whom I admire and greatly respect. He feels authors shouldn't share royalties when the tasks of bringing an ebook to market can be work-for-hire sunk costs.

My response to Dean is: I have to try it before I can judge if it works or not. I also believe (I may be wrong) that Dean and his equally smart and savvy wife Kristen Kathryn Rusch are incredibly prolific authors who have many pieces of writing that aren't yet available as ebooks even though they own the rights.

Well, come on Dean and Kris! These are all properties that could be earning money, and every day they aren't live is a day you missed making some dough. If you gave an estributor a cut and they get these live sooner than you can, you'd be earning more. Plus there's no upfront expense, because the estributor covers the costs.

Make money tomorrow or lose valuable writing time doing it yourself and make money in 2014? Seems like a no brainer to me, even if you're giving someone 15%. After all, it's better to make 85% of something that is for sale than 100% of something that isn't for sale.

I made a ridiculous amount of money last year (about $600k) and over 1/6 of that was through my agent. A lot of that was backlist titles (sales of which are buoyed by my self-pubbed titles) but there was also new foreign, audio, and movie deals my agents landed.

In other words, my agents are still making me a considerable amount of money. More than I could make on my own, and they more than pay for themselves in the extra income they bring me. I want to see what they can do in an estributor capacity. If they bring enough value to the table to make it worth a 15% commission, I'll consider it money well spent.

The publishing industry is in a state of upheaval. The old ways are dying. The only way to survive is to change, evolve, adapt.

That said, here are my rules for estributors.

1. The estributor covers all costs of book production. Artwork, editing, proofing, formatting, layout, everything.

2. The estributor does all of the uploading to various sites (Kindle, B&N, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords, Createspace, etc.)

3. The estributor pays immediately after she receives money, and her accounting is transparent.

4. The estributor gets a cut of no more than 15%, equal to her agency commission.

5. When the estributor gets big enough, she facilitates translations and the uploading to foreign ebook sites. For this she can receive a larger royalty share.

6. The estributor markets the ebooks above and beyond what an author can do on her own.

7. The author retains the rights to the work, and sets the price of the work.

8. If the estributor is an agent, she will also continue to exploit the subsidiary rights of the work.

9. The author or estributor can dissolve the relationship at any time. That brings into question who owns the artwork/formatting etc. That should be resolved on a case by case basis in a way that is fair to both parties.

Am I missing anything?

Kamis, 16 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: -

I have another Pitch Pitch for you. I think you're familiar with this process now but if not please go here and read the guidelines. And then comment - the writer would like your help!

Niki describes her book as a "fiction story" - Niki, just say "novel", ok? For the genre, you said "suspenseful romance" - just say romance. It is supposed to be suspenseful anyway!

STALKING HER HEART by Niki

On air

Posted by Jean Adams

I was on BBC Radio Newcastle this morning with Charlie and Alfie. We were talking about some new research that we’ve just published on the effects of regulations restricting TV junk food advertising to kids. It was kind of fun. Charlie and Alfie seem to just mess around a bit, link to the weather and traffic, and sometimes talk in a light hearted way about semi-serious subjects (is it bad that I’ve never listened to the local radio breakfast show before?).

Charlie & Alfie

Our research explored the nutritional content of food being advertised on UK TV before and after new regulations came in restricting advertising of less healthy foods during children’s programming. We found no difference in the amount of advertising for less healthy foods that kids were seeing following the regulations. But the regulations were widely adhered to. The explanation? Kids watch more than just children’s programmes.

The work has also been covered by BBC News Online, Sky Tyne and Wear, and some other places you’ll likely never have heard of.

I think the work is really, really important: regulations on TV food advertising are adhered to by broadcasters, but as they stand they have no effect on kids exposure to unhealthy food ads. Implication: extend the regulations to all TV and they will work. The study also draws attention to an, ineffective, government initiative that both Labour and the Coalition have been quite enthusiastic about.

I spent quite a lot of time working with the University Press Office on a press release. The press officers tried pretty hard to get a variety of journalists interested yesterday. Local radio and BBC online is so not good coverage. So why doesn’t anyone care about my ~~baby~~ research?

I haven’t quite worked out the answer to this yet. But I think there might be a variety of reasons. Firstly, the whole idea that adverts and marketing might alter our behaviour is pretty difficult – it rather challenges the idea of free-will. Next, even if food adverts do effect what our kids eat (they do), it’s probably only a small effect amongst many other (also small) effects. So it’s a difficult topic to get excited about. Also, I’m wondering if the ‘no effect’ message is just not that exciting – ‘kids seeing more junk food ads, despite regulations’ might have been a much more interesting line.

But what I’m starting to think more about, is that the problem might be related to how the media works. Our university press officers primarily work with biomedical scientists. They are used to targeting science journalists with releases. Is an analysis of the effect of food advertising rules science? Or is it maybe consumer studies, or some other sort of wishy-washy social science? Personally, I don’t really care what it is, and I’m happy to be a multi-disciplinary public health researcher. But if journalists at national daily outlets only cover their own beat, and there’s no beat for multi-disciplinary public health research/wishy-washy social science, I guess we’re screwed.

Selasa, 14 Februari 2012

Blogging for writers - make your blog work

I'm supposed to talk mostly about writing and publishing on this blog, but I seem mostly to be talking about networking, Twitter and blogging these days. Thing is a) this platformy stuff is becoming ever more important b) writers are worrying a LOT about how to do it and how to do it better and c) I'm doing loads of talks about it at the moment and it's quite useful to have some posts where

Peer review

Posted by Jean Adams

“Dear Dr Adams - Given your extensive expertise in the area, we would be grateful if you would be able to review this paper.”

Peer review by Josh

Another day, another flattering invitation to peer-review a manuscript submitted to a journal. Sometimes they even call me Prof. Adams. Time was when I thought that it was pretty cool to be mistaken for Prof. Adams. These days I just think they were probably too lazy to check.

Peer-review is self-regulation for scientists. You do your research. You write it up and send it to a journal. The journal editor asks someone else an independent expert to check that the research and write-up are kosher. Depending on the peer-review report, your manuscript is either accepted, returned to you for corrections, or rejected out of hand.

The idea of peer-review is that mistakes will be identified, flaws in an argument spotted, and over-enthusiastic interpretation of results calmed before a manuscript makes it to print. But like self-regulation, peer-reviewed is notoriously flawed. Not only do genuine mistakes make it past peer-review, but so too do serious errors with important and ongoing implications.

Despite this, peer-review is an academic’s life blood. Unless my papers are peer-reviewed, they will not get published. So I feel an obligation to contribute to the peer-review roundabout and to review papers that are sent for my ‘expert’ assessment. Even when the abstract sent with the invitation to review looks like the paper is likely to be nonsense, I routinely accept: because I submitted a paper this week too, and because if I don’t, who will?

So what am I to do when a 5000 word paper promises to tell me about the relationship between variable x and “human behaviour”? Should I send the paper back with a brief note pointing out that no 5000 word paper could possible ever hope to explore the relationship between anything and all human behaviour? Or should I painstakingly go through the paper and identify each over-simplification, and each wild assumption, line-by-line, point-by-point?

One of the problems with peer-review is that you are rarely given any instructions. I genuinely don’t know what I am supposed to do in this situation. Mostly I am super-conscientious and end up doing the point-by-point response, but at the same time feeling like I have been duped into providing supervisory feedback without having agreed to supervise.

I recently started following @richardhorton1, the editor of the Lancet. He is full of hilariously bombastic wisdom:

“The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”

So maybe I should just stop doing peer-review at all? Then what would happen?

Senin, 13 Februari 2012

Amazon Will Destroy You

I've been hearing a lot of whiny bitching on the interwebs over the past year.

"Amazon is going to put Big 6 publishers out of business!"

"Amazon is a bully!"

"Amazon is going to destroy bookstores!"

"Amazon engages in unfair business practices!"

"Amazon is the devil!"

"Amazon is going to monopolize the industry, then force all authors to work in labor camps for 6 cents an hour!"

"Amazon is going to invent a car that is fueled by the screams of puppies!"

"Amazon is going to take over the world!"

That last one is probably true.

I just got back from Seattle with my cohorts Blake Crouch and Barry Eisler, and we met with some key players in Amazon's various publishing endeavors.

None of them discussed anything confidential with us. We pretty much just ate and drank and had fun. And it also pretty much confirmed what I've known for a while now.

Amazon is going to destroy the Big 6, destroy bookstores, destroy 95% of all agents, destroy distributors (Ingram, Baker & Taylor), and revolutionize the publishing industry by becoming the dominant force.

If you are any of the above I mentioned, you probably want to blame Amazon.

You'd be wrong.

Most of the blame falls upon that person you see in the mirror.

Some of it falls on your customers and authors, who like Amazon more than they like you because Amazon treats us better than you ever did.

Blaming Amazon for your eventual downfall is like blaming a lion for being king of the jungle.

If you don't like apex predators, get the hell out of the food chain.

Here's the thing, all you whiners. You had your shot. And you blew it.

Hardcovers cost too much. So do paperbacks. As media goes, paper books cost too many dollars per hour of entertainment they provide.

The return policy for books is archaic, wasteful, and stupid. It encourages overspending, overbuying, and underselling.

Underestimating the importance of digital was suicide. Then trying to prevent its widespread adoption via windowing titles, the agency model, high prices, and DRM was just throwing gas on a fire.

Treating authors like shit, when authors are essential to the process, is bad business.

Treating readers like shit, when readers are essential to the process, is bad business.

Bookstores and publishers and distributors are NOT essential to the process. You should have evolved.

Why didn't the Big 6 invent online bookstores and ereaders? Why didn't the ABA?

Amazon INNOVATES. That's the thing you whiners don't understand. They're not dominating because they undercut you on price. Price is just one way to please customers. Service is another. Value is another. But the biggest one is technology.

Anyone can sell for cheap. Not anyone can single-handedly jump-start the digital revolution. Not everyone can create an online store that is not only a pleasure to shop at, but where it is fun to spend time.

Amazon is going to eat you all for lunch because they aren't thinking about how to make money tomorrow. They're thinking about how to make money in 2018.

They're doing all the stuff you never did--hell, they're doing stuff that you never even thought of. They're all about pushing it forward. They're all about gathering and analyzing data. They're all about challenging themselves to do better, to focus on the future, to learn from the past. They're all about pleasing the customer (and I heard from no less than half a dozen Amazonians that they consider authors to be their customers.)

They experiment. They change. They evolve.

Are they perfect? Hardly. Show me a business, no matter how tiny, that is perfect. In fact, show me a person who is perfect. We all make mistakes as we strive to better ourselves.

But when Amazon makes a mistake, they own it. They don't compile mistake upon mistake until an industry is satisfied with an 80% return rate for books and a maximum of 17.5% royalties for authors and a $35 price tag for the new Stephen King.

It's easy to hate your competition, especially when the competition is kicking your ass.

But do you innovate?

Do you push the industry into the future, or try to protect the past?

I'm not seeing any innovation. At best, I'm seeing imitation. At worst, I'm seeing whiners.

"Poor me! Someone does my job better than I do!"

"My girlfriend likes another guy more than me because he's smarter, nicer-looking, and treats her better!"

My advice: if you're sick of getting beaten up, go to the gym and start training.

For years I've been telling publishers and booksellers how they can compete. I haven't seen any of them follow any of my suggestions.

But guess what? I've spent hours talking to Amazon. And Amazon listened. They took notes. And I've seen them adopt my suggestions. Many times. And I'm not the only one they're listening to.

An open mind beats a closed mind, every single time. Once you start blaming, you've lost.

Winners don't blame. Winners don't whine.

Winners keep at it until they win.

And to Amazon: don't worry about the blamers and the whiners and the haters and the naysayers.

History is written by the victors.

It was great hanging out with you Amazon folks. And as always, thanks for listening. ;)

Minggu, 12 Februari 2012

Twitter etiquette - careful with DMs

A load of people have asked me to write about this. DMs - Direct Messages - are a source of enormous irritation on Twitter and I feel the urge to lead you gently (or possibly even crabbitly) through the etiquette of this thorny subject. After all, lovely writers, you don't want to bug the pants off people and make them not want to read your book, do you? Or make them unfollow you? (Because that

Kamis, 09 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: - BENEATH THE RAINBOW

Final pitch of Pitch Pitch week (though I'll do some more irregularly over the next couple of weeks.) Check back over the rest of this week to see what happens, and do do do please add your comments because these brave writers really need you.

Beneath The Rainbowby Lisa ShambrookChildren's, age 9-12 (I'd like Lisa to say 10-12 or 9-11 because 9-12 is too wide.Freya's strong-will and

Rabu, 08 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: - DESPRITE MEASURES

Pitch Pitch week continues apace. You know the form by now - if not, please read the earlier posts this week and the comments.

Today's brave and hopeful writer is Deborah Jay with an urban fantasy, DESPRITE MEASURES. Following one too many close encounters with modern plumbing, Scottish water sprite, Cassie, is trying to adapt to life as a human when she is captured by a magician. He intends

Selasa, 07 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: - BELLADONNA

Here's the third of this week's Pitch Pitches. If you are new, please see this post here. See Monday and Tuesday's posts and do comment there, too. It's a whole Pitch Pitch week!
Here is Erin Johnson's pitch for a YA fantasy, BELLADONNA
One hot August day, a fractious young lady named Hazel escapes from her governess, raids an apple orchard, kisses a boy, and smashes a witch's window. The witch

Senin, 06 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: - IS IT NOW YET?

Here's the second of this week's Pitch Pitches. If you don't know about the commenting parameters, please see this post here. Remember, this is to be the "hook" paragraph in the covering letter. A full synopsis would accompany it, along with the sample chapters. See yesterday's post and do comment there, too. I'd love lot of comments throughout the week, to help these intrepid writers!

Today's

Minggu, 05 Februari 2012

Pitch Pitch: - ANTHONY WISH HITS PAYDIRT

Announcing the beginning of PITCH WEEK! Every day this week, another brave writer will see his or her proposed pitch here for your constructive feedback. This is the "hook" paragraph for the covering letter of the submission. It needs to have "must-read" factor suitable for its intended genre and age-range. It should be more informative and concrete than the blurb on the back of the book and

Jumat, 03 Februari 2012

The REF

Posted by Jean Adams

Sometimes when you work at a university you get lured into thinking that the REF is the only thing that matters in the whole world.

REF = research excellence framework: “the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions”.

Ref gives Pablo Zabalete red card

Once every 5 years or so the whole UK university system evaluates itself. Each department at each university submits information on its work since the last assessment exercise. Panels of experts make judgements on the scientific importance of all the work submitted and every department is ranked for excellence within its field. Then the central university funding agency uses the rankings to decide how much money each university gets.

When I say they review our ‘work’, I primarily mean they review the papers we’ve published in scientific journals. Some other things are taken into account, but mostly it’s our journal papers that matter. Each academic submits four papers and the expert panel rates them as world leading, internationally excellent, internationally recognised, nationally recognised, or zero. There is no difference here between doing work that is not ‘nationally recognised’ and not having bothered at all.

Cue academics getting their knickers in a big twist about what ‘world leading’ means and how we can demonstrate that our publications are ‘world leading’. Not so long ago, we got totally obsessed by the impact factor. This is a rating given to every scientific journal that is simply the average number of times a paper published in the journal is referenced in another paper in a scientific journal.

The assumption was that if your research was published in the sort of journal that people tend to reference a lot then it was likely to be pretty good research. Yes really. That really was how we decided if research was good or not. Not anything like will it save a life, or make the world a better place, or improve out understand of human nature. Just: is it published in the sort of journal that other people mention in their work? There are even rumours of journals explicitly manipulating the system by only publishing papers that referenced other papers in the same journal – presumably specifically to help increase the impact factor of the journal.

But for REF2014 we have a totally new and improved method of deciding how good your work is: the citation count. It ignores anything to do with the journal itself and is a simple count of the number of times someone else references your paper in another journal paper. Yes really (again). Even after thinking about it quite hard, and recognising that we might have got it wrong last time, this is the best a bunch of clever people can do for determining how well we’re all doing.

In my world, the only thing that matters is if someone else is writing about me. You are welcome to write: “Adams et al., (2009) were clearly talking nonsense”. But please do remember to write it.

Kamis, 02 Februari 2012

Mondays are Red in Waterstones

I'm uncomfortable about the dominance of Amazon. As someone who is doing some self-publishing, I have no choice but to use them and, of course, I cannot pretend for one moment to be disappointed by the income I get from them. Mixed feelings, then. They provide enormous opportunities but they are also trying to rule the world, which I don't like. Despite what I might sometimes say, I don't even

Rabu, 01 Februari 2012

The Big Kindle Boogie

Today through February 2 (Thursday), Lee Goldberg, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, J. Carson Black, and yours truly are giving away 10 Kindle Fires, $300 in gift cards, making a $500 donation to the local library of one Kindle Fire winner, and releasing the five-book Ultimate Thriller Box Set for free during the event. In addition, 75 ebooks from our collective Amazon catalog will be free on Feb 1 and 2.

Contest is international, no purchase necessary. You can also join the Facebook party at http://www.facebook.com/BigKindleBoogie.

Entries for 10 free Kindle Fires are underway at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com and gift cards are being randomly awarded on Twitter for those who tweet about the Big Kindle Boogie.

Three easy ways to enter:

Use the entry counters at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com
You can also enter manually by tweeting to be eligible for Kindle Fires and Amazon gift cards: 10 free Kindle Fires. 75 free ebooks. http://bit.ly/xWOoKN #bigkindleboogie RT to enter for a Fire!
You can email bigkindleboogie@yahoo.com ONCE PER DAY with "Boogie entry" as subject line

Everything free, everything fun. Good luck and Happy New Year!

Free Kindle Thrillers Feb. 1-2

These Kindle books are scheduled to be free on Amazon Feb. 1-2, but please be sure it says "Kindle price: $0.00" before you click for free. Some of the titles will also be free on Feb. 3 on a case-by-case basis. (U.K. Kindle users, simply replace the "com" in the address with "co.uk" to get the proper link)

Ultimate Thriller Box Set

Konrath, Crouch, Black, Goldberg, Nicholson

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Thriller-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B0073J0XVC

LEE GOLDBERG

Author Central: http://www.amazon.com/author/leegoldberg

WATCH ME DIE http://www.amazon.com/Watch-Me-Die-ebook/dp/B003BLPGZO/

MY GUN HAS BULLETS http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Bullets-Charlie-Willis-ebook/dp/B002HK35IU

ADJOURNED http://www.amazon.com/Adjourned-The-Jury-Series-ebook/dp/B002KMJPFM

GUILTY http://www.amazon.com/Guilty-The-Jury-Series-ebook/dp/B002OHD2XO/

PAYBACK http://www.amazon.com/Payback-The-Jury-Series-ebook/dp/B002RWJOSS/

THE JURY SERIES http://www.amazon.com/Jury-Four-Complete-Novels-ebook/dp/B002OL1XCW

DOUBLE HEADER http://www.amazon.com/Double-Header-Complete-Novels-ebook/dp/B004NIFT24