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Author: Mary Anne

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There's no doubt about who's winning the  American Indie Revolution.  The castle walls of the old publishing royals stand in ruins.  Even former staunch allies like Barnes & Noble have defected to the insurgent writers.   

“Digital publishing and digital book selling will soon become the most explosive development in the history of our industry and will sweep aside those who aren’t participating,” Leonard Riggio, B&N's founder and chairman, said during a recent presentation highlighting the company's expanding forray into the digital market. 

The e-reader market is in the midst of a price war that is putting more and more of the devices into the hands of the book-buying American public.  Fewer readers visit the brick and mortar bookstores as more readers demand that the bookstores come to them, via their PCs, Macs, e-readers, iPods and cell phones.  Via America's strong and ever expanding wireless networks ebooks get delivered to readers instantly. 

When American publishers lost control of the distribution system, they lost control of the readers and the writers.  Today authors like Joe Konrath have chosen to forego offered publishing contracts for some books, electing to get them out in print and ebook format on their own, thank you very much.  Books of writers doing it their way are, more and more,  transitioning readers to expect stories undiluted by editorial changes demanded by publishers.  An American indie book or ebook is becoming an intimate experience shared only by the writer and the reader.    

But even in the present economic downturn, America's companies invested the time and resources to build the pipelines that allowed the Indie Revolt to succeed.   Those pipelines are being strengthened as demand encourages more investment.  Our writers can now write their books, publish them, sell them to readers and get paid via those same magic pipelines that funnel money directly into their bank accounts. 

In the heady atmosphere of power and possibility now held by the creators themselves, it becomes rather easy to forget that America's Indie Revolt is not yet the world's.  Imagine an American publisher today saying the following:  “Everyone knows that almost all publishers cheat their authors on their royalty payments, and there’s ­nothing the authors can do about it.”

...continue reading "America’s Indie Revolt: Why It Matters & Will It Spread"

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It's a buyer's market for almost everything, right? 

So, lets say you are better off than most of us (me, especially) and you decide that this is the time to buy a house.  You hire a realtor and she drives you out to Neighborhood A to see a traditional ranch.   It turns out to be too traditional for you, but on your way to Neighborhood B to see the next house on the realtor's list you pass a cunning little craftsman with a "For Sale" sign in the yard.  It has charm and character and doesn't look turned out of a cookie cutter. 

So you draw your realtor's attention to it and tell her you want to see that house.  She hems and haws and tries to evade but when you insist, the realtor finally gives you an answer.  "No," the realtor says, "you can't see that house. "  She's already met with the committee at the office.  They reviewed who you were and what you would like and dislike and composed a list of acceptable houses.  The craftsman wasn't on the list so it's not for you. 

In reality, that scenario may not have happened to you on a house hunt, but in the past it happened every single time a reader walked into a bookstore.  All of the books on the shelves had been screened for the readers by the publishing royals - agents, editors and publishing companies.  The royals decided what readers should want and only put the acceptable books out there for the bookstores to stock and sell.  So if a reader wanted a book, he or she had to buy one of those in the store.  And when the sale was made, the royals patted each other on the shoulder and said, "See, we were right again."

...continue reading "What The Indie Revolution Means To Readers"

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Published on 1 Comment on If Michael Jackson Wrote Romance Novels…

For the upcoming anniversary of Michael Jackson's passing, I repost the following which originally appeared on the blog shortly after his death.

 Okay, get your mind off of all the weirdness of MJ's latter years.  As for the criminal charges, don't go there.  Think about the music and the performances.  Get yourself in that mind space.  Maybe it'll help if you squeal "Ooh" and "I'm Bad" three or four times.  Okay, focused now? 

 His death was tragic. Having a creative force like his snuffed out so quickly, so needlessly has deprived the world of years of music and magic.  So while it's certainly his tragedy, his family's tragedy, it's also a loss for everyone who ever turned on a radio or downloaded music.  In the wake of the sudden loss there were many retrospectives and tributes.

As one of those tributes Fox re-broadcast the first American Idol finalist show of this season featuring the top 13 performing Michael Jackson songs.  I watch American Idol and enjoy seeing the group working and growing into music professionals.  It's always fun to see someone working to make their dream come true.  But I'd forgotten about that MJ show because, at the time, it was just another show.  Too bad it wasn't done later in the season with the gloved one giving the finalists performance critiques and suggestions. 

...continue reading "If Michael Jackson Wrote Romance Novels…"

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God knows, I understand that even in good times people need weekends to stay sane.  In my world of today, which is the polar opposite of "good times," sanity is mostly a fond memory, but I still need my weekends.  My family and that little two-day break from work are the only things keeping me from jumping. 

So I rarely hope anybody else has their tailhook at their desk over a weekend, especially a holiday weekend.  Rarely.  But this weekend is an exception.   This weekend every darned programmer and web guru in the Amazonian Kingdom best be chained to their desks - including the fathers in the group.   At least one of 'em deserves to be chained, and with a big new system change-over coming at the end of June where the whole staff is most likely working on bits and pieces of the new system, someone supervising the chain-deserving code monkey didn't do his or her job.  Somebody screwed up royally. 

Amazon's DTP Platform publishes Kindle pieces from indie authors and includes a dashboard to monitor sales.  The numbers don't go backwards unless there was a return or two OR unless a code monkey didn't do his job right.  Early Thursday evening (June 17th) over about a two hour span, the DTP numbers of indie authors went backwards without any returns.  Sales disappeared. 

...continue reading "Amazon’s FUBAR Agitates The Already Agitated"

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Is having breakfast for supper a Southern thing? 

Last night I decided that I wanted breakfast for supper.  Okay, maybe recalling that IHOP has those cheesecake stacker pancakes right now had something to do with it.  The other factor - if one needs more than the idea of cheesecake as an incentive - was that at suppertime we could get into IHOP.  You've got to remember that the family Graham resides in Myrtle Beach which is a tourist town. 

Tourists, God love 'em, come down on vacation talking a good game.  You'll hear them in line at the grocery store or passing by at the mall talking about how stupid folks are to travel to somewhere different and still eat at the chain restaurants.  Like I said, they talk a good game.  Anybody who lives in Myrtle and has tried to get into an Olive Garden for supper or an IHOP for breakfast knows that it's all talk.  Locals will drive up to those places, see the throngs crowding around, and leave and go somewhere else.

So there was a stroke of genius in my madness last night.  It occurred to me that maybe breakfast for supper was a Southern thing and maybe IHOP wouldn't be crowded.  And EUREKA!!  Once in a great while - I'm right.  It was so not crowded that my kids, seeing the nearly empty parking lot, wondered if it was open.  But it was and not only did I get my cheesecake stackers (strawberry), but we were seated in a nearly empty section that allowed the family to have a loud and raucous debate.  (Apologies to the one smart diner - a single man - who decided to leave and likely swore off the ideas of marriage and children for life.)

Mr. Quack brought up a debate we'd been having at home as he is in the throes of designing the man tittie cover for the serialization of my WIP, a regency historical.  He doesn't get my reference to "Eden Without The Apple."  He's also convinced that readers wouldn't get it either and would be confused by theological implications.  I replied that women drawn in by  man titties wouldn't be thinking about the Bible at the time. 

...continue reading "IHOP Insanity and Its Aftermath"

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Published on 1 Comment on The Perils of Quacking Alone

Many famous novels have appeared in serial form but, perhaps the most famous serial wasn't a novel at all.  In 1914 the motion picture serial, The Perils of Pauline, was shown in installments.  The title character is the archetype for "damsels in distress" as each episode featured her getting embroiled in various life-threatening situations - like being tied to the railroad tracks.  The heroine, of course, was inevitably rescued or escaped certain death - only to get herself into trouble again next time. 

Pauline aside, a host of acclaimed books have been serialized. One of the first was One Thousand And One Nights which introduced famous characters like Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin.  One of the most famous serial authors was Charles Dickens who published each chapter as a serialized piece.  That's why most of his work is so long - more chapters equal more money.  Dickens' left off each piece with a cliffhanger.  Famously, for his chase story The Old Curiosity Shop,  American fans waiting at the docks to meet the ships bringing in the next installment shouted at the ships' crew demanding to be told whether Little Nell was dead.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his Sherlock Holmes  tales as serial pieces for a magazine.  Thomas Hardy created many pieces via serialization, including Tess Of The D'Urbervilles.  More recent writers have also returned to the format.  Stephen King has dabbled in the genre.  King began offering "The Plant" in serial form on his website, charging $1.00 for each of the 6 chapters that he'd written.  However, in late 2000 he abruptly halted the project, leaving readers without an ending.  Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities was serialized by Rolling Stone magazine, and Douglas Clegg got a 5 figure advance for serialization of his novel, Nightmare House. ...continue reading "The Perils of Quacking Alone"

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Published on 1 Comment on Idol thoughts: Why Lee Won

After Lee DeWyze was crowned American Idol instead of Crystal Bowersox, an amazing thing happened.  I finally understood why Adam Lambert lost Idol.  It just took me a year to figure it out.  Okay, so I'm a little slow.  But judging from the goobeldygob of irate stories and reviews that followed the competition, a whole bunch of folks are even slower than me.

I'm slow, but I'm not the slowest.  That's always a comfort. 

Last year, Adam Lambert was amazing on Idol and he lost.  Okay, some of his post-Idol antics made me a wee bit glad that he lost.  But still, the thought remained kicking around in my head until this season. How did Adam lose?  How could he be that good, that far above the others, and still not win the whole thing? 

This season turned out to be deja vu all over again.  There were all the others and then there was Mama Sox.  Just like last year, the judges would periodically slide in a sly comment about her superiority.  Once she was accused of being too certain that she'd win - a charge she protested heartily.  On Tuesday her final songs outclassed Lee's so easily that she looked like a sure thing.  But then again, so did Adam last year after his final competition performance.

But this year, my feelings were different.  This year, I was hoping that Lee would pull it off, and I cheered when he did.  Last year I just walked away from the finale bummed.  You know what, Simon's last interviews made me think that he'd had the same transformation as little ole' me, little Mrs. Nobody from the Redneck Rivera.  (Heck, if I was gonna have something in common with Cowell, couldn't it have been my bank balance?)

That's why it took this year to make me understand last year and to possibly predict next season.  Now that I get it, I'll be able to watch the process happen and chart it in my twisted little brain.  What is it, you ask? 

...continue reading "Idol thoughts: Why Lee Won"

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Published on 2 Comments on Konrath Sieges The Castle

Joe Konrath,  author of the Jack Daniels thriller series and of the new resource for indie writers - The Newbies Guide to Publishing - has inked a deal that sieges the Publishing Royals' Castle.  It also charts the course, showing the Royals, authors and agents where the future lies.  The deal itself and the fact that it is with the biggest, baddest ebookseller AND bookseller on the planet has traditional publishing Royals hunkering down in the castle in the futile hope that they can survive the coming indie siege.

Konrath signed a publishing deal with AmazonEncore for the newest JD thriller, Shaken. Under the deal, Shaken will be available in the Kindle store this October and will then be available in print about four months later, in February 2011.   The deal turns the traditional arrangements around 180 degrees and has the Kindle version released first with the print book following several months later.  Some of the Royals have been trying to kill the  upstart ebook industry by releasing their "big" books only in paper form for several months.  That would force loyal fans to buy the paper version and discourage the fans from investing in the future.  Or so the Royals thought and the Royals are used to deciding what we will read, when we will read it and how we will read it. 

...continue reading "Konrath Sieges The Castle"

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Writers have lots of ideas.  We have great, immense, goobledegobs of ideas. Most of them are destined to be born and die within the disturbed realms of our fertile little brains.  Most, but not all.  A few of those notions do grow up to be books. 

I germinate ideas or script scenarios in my head all the time.  My imagination is where I go to escape when the job is too sad or demanding or when reality bites too hard.  But it's not only stress or sadness that sends me to Mary Anne World.  Sometimes a great TV show will send me there.  I've written alternate scripts for many a Grey's Anatomy episode, and I've made up whole romances that only lived in my head (Cristina and Webber, anyone? And I always thought Izzie belonged with Dr. Burke)  Like I said, my head is a strange place. 

Of course, it's not just Grey's that gives birth to ideas.  I've gotten romance ideas for Dr. House and Cuddy or Gordon Ramsey and a Hell's Kitchen contestant.  So far, none of those has grown up to be a book, but in the future, you never know.  Griffin's Law came to be after I imagined Grey's in a law school. 

But its not just TV that brings ideas.  Sometimes they grow from reading an interesting legend on the Internet (the MacLeods of Skye and their famed faerie flag became my - so far - three part Forever Series).  The idea for E-mail Enticement came during a CLE seminar.  The first book I ever wrote , Brotherly Love, came from the most unique place.  Usually the characters create the story but with my first book, the message created the story.  I got to thinking about how big and broad love is and I wondered why we create boxes and rules to try to limit and define what we should only celebrate.  The characters in Brotherly are more "real" than in most romance novels, because they were intended to be more like us - flaws and all - and the story was written to make the reader think instead of just experience.

...continue reading "How A Little Idea Grows Up To Be A Book"

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I will not eat it with a spoon.  I will not ponder it all through June.  I do not want heartache stew. Sunshine, Sunshine how could you? 

'Tis said that one of the real deal couples on the show will be calling it quits this season.  The cause of the breakup is "a very serious issue" that they can't get past.  'Tis also said that there's gonna be a new hook up on the show.  And the new hook-up allegedly involves McSteamy reconnecting with his man whore roots. People are speculating that the break up will not involve the dream team (Mer/Der).  But the grist for everyone's mill has been the same as the grist churning around in mine - Sunshine says the finale will be a game changer for every single character; see links above and this one. 

So, Grey's fans, this Thursday's episode - "Hook Line & Sinner" - will be the first new one in several weeks and it will begin the march to the finale.  Now's the time for all Grey's fans to strap on the swami hat and commence speculating.  I've got mine on and I'm reaching under the sofa for my crystal ball - man that thing is dusty.  

...continue reading "Grey’s Return: Heartache Stew"