Review of DEED SO posted on Kirkus Today

A review of my coming-of-age novel DEED SO was published by Kirkus Discoveries today. The reviewer said, Deed So was "A long, provocative work of historical fiction anchored by a young, winning protagonist." Click the link for the complete review. Deed So is available at Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com, Kindle, Barnes & Nobel Nook, Apple iPad and other retailers.

DEED SO goes live on Amazon.com!

It took longer this time, but my new novel finally came up on Amazon.com. The timeline for the Kindle version of this book is January. I think the folks at CreateSpace did another gorgeous job on the cover and interior design. Sorry that the 'search inside' feature is up yet, or you could see for yourself.

12 Predictions about the New Publishing Business Model

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The publishing business is changing faster than almost anyone wants to admit. I feel like I am watching the Berlin Wall come down again. Change is scary, but it is exciting to contemplate the new structures that might emerge in the wake of all the carnage. Here are some predictions based on the opportunities that new technology and new spaces are creating:

1. Blended bookstore business strategies. I believe some bookstores will survive by marrying bookselling with other businesses. The chains already have cooped the coffeehouse marriage, but other combinations are available. The childcare bookstore. The women's fitness bookstore. The movie house bookstore. The speed dating bookstore (possibly franchised by eHarmony.) The over 55 bookstore (absolutely no children please). My favorite is the bar bookstore, where you are served the cocktail of the day (the Poetini, the Bronterita) by your favorite librista (or would it be booktender?) as you thumb through prospective purchases. Just remember, if you spill on it, you've bought it.

2. The Cadillac editorial business. I know freelance editors abound nationwide, but soon some smart New Yorker will aggregate a brain trust of editorial staff who have been laid off from the big houses. This first rate talent won't come cheap, but authors who want the best will be able to access top editors. This business will be web centered, and will offer personal consultation via webcam or conference call. There might be a sliding scale of charges. As an author becomes more successful, she might 'trade up' to a more experienced editor. The brand would offer related services including legal and translation support.

3. The Cadillac book review source. Reviewing is alive and well on the web, but quality is all over the ballpark and review content is not organized. I believe there is an audience willing to pay for quality review and critique content that is packaged and delivered attractively and efficiently. The New York Review of Books, the Midwest Book Review and other respected players already are online, but they are behind the curve in technical terms. Soon, a geekier bibliophile will create a snappy subscription service that delivers a high-end, independent daily ezine to your computer, mobile or Kindle.

4. Seamless software. I have purchased software or downloaded freeware purporting to be the perfect tool for authors creating manuscripts. I've been disappointed in every case. Now, we also need integrated solutions for delivering manuscripts in proper formats to the production departments of POD publishers and to Kindle and other reader devices. Soon a sophisticated software deliverer will create the single solution, with pull-down menus for appropriate publishing fonts, trim size, HTML and MOBI conversion, and tools that facilitate the sectioning and pagination of front matter, back matter, chapters and tables of contents. Perhaps we could convince Quickbooks to perform the same service for authors that they do for the accounting-challenged, where they provide a template for double entry bookkeeping that a non-CPA can use with confidence. Then, we authors could finally have quick books, pardon the pun.

5. The Amazon insider business report. Amazon is aggregating a community of authors and supplying them with useful products. I believe Amazon will expand its offerings to include market data. Imagine getting a report on the publishing industry that looks like the report you get from your broker each month. Amazon will charge a fee, but for working writers these data are a business expense.

6. Pre-publishing analytical services. Authors need feedback that is constructive, unbiased and actionable. Such support used to come from agents and editors, but many writers no longer have access to these resources. Does the sidekick need additional character development? Does the plot momentum grind to a halt in the middle of the book? Of course, there are critiquing groups, but often fellow writers have axes to grind, like to hear themselves talk or never read anything in your genre. I believe there is a significant unmet need within the writing community for professional reader services, essentially a service that provides pre-publication feedback from focus groups or beta test groups of objective, experienced reviewers who are using standardized evaluation templates. The service also could control for variables including geography, age, sex and other factors that affect an individual's assessment of a manuscript. This is a wonderful revenue opportunity for teaching faculty, retirees, home-bound moms and other writers.

7. Aftermarket agents. Many agents will specialize in identifying promising self-published authors and assisting them in optimizing the return from their already published work. I believe that such relationships will increasingly be the subject of negotiation over fees, particularly with regard to nonfiction projects. Many attorneys will provide these services as well.

8. Survival of the fittest houses. Many existing publishing houses will be successful in negotiating a path between the Sylla and Charybdis of technology and competition. In order to strike a balance and differentiate themselves from the new players, they will bring back many of the services they used to provide to authors, countering technical expertise with the personal touch. Such houses will downsize their family of brands much as the car companies have done. They also will extend their brands into new content markets.

9. Author brands. Major authors like Stephen King and Janet Evanovich will publish the work of other authors. They are mentor/magnets and they will aggregate promising newcomers in their genres.

10. Reader's consortiums. Readers who are passionate about particular types of books will band together and approach authors to negotiate for content that fits their reading desires. In the future, 'advances' will come from genre and sub-genre groups like this, who will act like angel investors for mid-market authors. This trend will probably begin in the romance segment. Serialized stories also will be supported this way, with authors building a subscriber base for continuing stories. Proactive authors will begin to 'advertise' for financial supporters of specific projects on Craig's List.

11. Unique books. We will see more experimental and genre-defying works reach the market. Many of these efforts will end up in the cyber-dustbin. However, some will blaze new trails, inventing genres and content categories. Imaginative cyber-scribes will create a new generation of beloved characters and exciting yarns that surprise, terrify, comfort and amaze.

12. Always the lawyers. Because so many writers are reaching the market now who are working without a net of experienced professionals protecting their project, mistakes will be made. Litigation over libels, trademark infringement and plagiarism will increase. Unscrupulous hucksters also will prey on unsupported writers, because they don't have to fear the watchful presence of a publisher or agent. Cyber-publishing will be a bit like the Old West for a while, and in any commercial arena, your lawyer is the gunslinger.

Next, I'll blog about attributes of a successful cyber author.

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12 Things I'll Miss about the Old Publishing Business Model

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The brave new world of cyper-publishing has arrived, and while I love this exciting space, there are things I miss about the old publishing business model. I am publishing my mystery, A Pointed Death, the first book in the Pointer Mystery series as a POD and an eBook with Amazon under the penname, Kath Russell. This is a thrilling process, but the rhythm of birthing a book this way is different, and the market my book will enter is radically transformed from the comfortable bookseller world we knew. Here's what I'll miss:

1. Quality control. Traditional book publishing had a high barrier to entry and a myriad of checks and balances in the production process to assure a quality product. If a reader purchased a book from a major publisher, she was reasonably assured of a good experience. Now, on the web, a vanity book can have a cyber face that is the equal of a book from a venerable firm. The reader has to work harder to make sure she is not buying a pig in a poke. Thank heaven for Amazon's 'Look Inside' feature and the customer reviews.

2. Bookstores. I love bookstores, especially the quirky, smarmy, off-the-beaten-track independents, but, sadly, the vast majority of such stores are doomed. They cannot compete with the pricing, access to titles and ease of delivery of the cyber stores. The delicious shopping experience of wandering the aisles, handling the volumes and enjoying the themed displays offered by a local bookseller with whom you have developed a personal relationship is soon to be only a memory. Progress is painful.

3. Agents who represent new authors. Unless you are uber-connected or uber-platformed, you can forget about landing an agent if you are publishing your maiden book. Increasingly, first-time authors will publish first and attract representation based on the performance of their work. Savvy agents will swoop down and snap up the promising performers, making money on international markets, audio and film rights, etc.

4. Team effort, team spirit. It used to take a village to publish a book. A group of people representing a range of skills from editing to design and marketing to pr, came together to launch an author and her work. Today, a writer might assemble the same set of skills on behalf of her project, but the experts are strangers and many are faceless contacts. The warmth, support and camaraderie of interpersonal relationships are lost. There is no professional shoulder to cry on when you get that first bad review, so your husband, partner or mother is going to have to bear the brunt.

5. Publishing a hardbound book. As irrational as it is, I know I would love to see my own work between hard covers. The heft. The gravitas. However, this makes less and less sense for the vast majority of books. The price of a well-made hardcover is too high for escapist reading, and the cheaply produced hard-bounds you find in CostCo, diminish good books and the authors who write them. Hard-bound publishing is destined to shrink to a coffee table business.

6. Book rooms at conferences. When the panelists finish speaking at a writers' or book lovers' conference, a throng of avid attendees surges toward the book room to score a book by a speaker who impressed them. They head to the signing room with their prize and ask the author to autograph the book. In the future, listeners will simply open their Kindle's internet connection and download the book without ever leaving their seats. The panelists will be 'approved' by electronic orders the way political ads are rated in a Frank Luntz opinion poll. I'll miss milling around in the book room, running into friends and making new finds at the book tables, but I won't miss lugging the sagging bag of purchases back home on the plane. I hope conference organizers can work a deal with Amazon so that any attendee who downloads a speaker's book during the meeting can receive a conference discount. This could be accomplished by providing Amazon with a list of attendee Kindle account e-mail addresses, author/speaker names and the conference dates.

7. Newspaper book reviews and book sections. Most people who love books love reading about books and authors. Increasingly, you have to do this on the Internet. Every morning I read The Wall Street Journal which offers a daily book review, but the newspaper business is under siege and few papers can afford to provide such features or attract audiences who will support book critics.

8. Libraries, book mobiles and stacks. I have vivid, happy memories of the libraries of my childhood and college years. Surviving small town libraries now are community centers, and the amount of space occupied by books is shrinking. At Northwestern University, the stacks were a labyrinth of cerebral and tactile exploration. Of course, I also remember the frustration, even horror of discovering that a particular volume needed for a term paper was missing and quite possibly miss-shelved. Soon you will download a cyber copy of a book from the library's web site and the copy will become unusable when your borrowing period runs out. This means we also are to be deprived of those great news stories about the library books that were twenty years overdue found after the funeral in Uncle Elmer's attic.

9. Used textbooks with annotations. Academic publishing will be transformed by the new technologies, liberating professors pursuing exoteric subjects of interest to a handful of other academics, and students with shrinking education dollars from the crushing costs of the traditional system. I'll miss the little coffee stains, doodles and class notes of students of yesteryear, and the sense of continuity and solidarity those marginalia engendered.

10. Giving fiction books as gifts. Passing on a favorite author to a friend is always a treat. Acknowledging a special connection with your friend or demonstrating your understanding of your friend's love affair with London or passion for locked box mysteries through your specific choice enhances the meaning of the gift. Somehow, an Amazon gift card is not as personal.

Donating books is another form of giving. When things get out of control on our bookshelves, and we feel the floor boards in the house can no longer be expected to support the weight of our hoard, we make a trip to the local library, senor center or church thrift shop. As more books become electronic, we need to make sure that we find ways to provide reading material to people on limited incomes and to children. Free cyber content is one way, but we need to make sure this is working at least as well as the old methods and, one hopes, better.

11. Sensory loss. Books and book places smell. New books, old books, reaaaaalllllyyy old books, cookbooks, your birding field manual, all have an odor. My boy scout manual which belonged to my father had a variety of mysterious smudges and a blood stain. I expect the blood was my father's spilled during one of my uncle's pranks. Uncle Carroll became a doctor. The book smells of mildew, gunpowder and seaweed. Books also bring us tactile pleasure. A crisp jacket, creamy pages, a firm spine. The crumbling front plate of the family bible. Books make sounds too. The smack of satisfaction when you close the binding after finishing the thrilling last page of an international adventure tome. The rustle of the pages as you try to find that perfect description of San Francisco at dusk. The beckoning whisper of the pages of the novel you left open on your desk by the window. Is it the wind, or are the pages alive? You be the judge, but one thing is for certain -- that whimpy click the Kindle's 'next page' button makes has a lot to live up to.

12. Glamour. The old publishing industry had a certain glamour. It was the fashion industry for your gray matter. Read the right books and you could partake a tiny bit of the allure of the New York deals and the martinis, the dressmaker suits, the gossip, the scandal and the money. During the classic era of film, there was always a character who was an agent, or an author or a publisher, a critic or a columnist. And of course, there was that symbiotic relationship with the movie business. Steve Jobs has created an aura of hipness around Apple. Although you can sense Jeff Bezos' energy and vision, I don't think he has created a replacement culture for the publishing business, nor can the thousands of self-publishers accomplish this. We'll have to wait and see what the new ethos of the emerging publishing model will be.

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